Born in 1986 from a Delhi pulp-fiction house, Nagraj turned an indigenous Hindi comic line into a multi-generation phenomenon. Decades on, the character still anchors Raj Comics even as a family dispute clouds the business.
Raj Comics was founded in 1984 by Rajkumar Gupta and his sons Manoj Gupta and Sanjay Gupta, operating under the family firm Raja Pocket Books in Burari, New Delhi. Raja Pocket Books had begun as a publisher of Hindi pulp fiction, printing popular crime-thriller authors such as Surender Mohan Pathak and Ved Prakash Sharma. While the elder Gupta loved crime thrillers, his sons wanted to create original Indian superheroes, and that ambition gave rise to the comics line.
The publisher's flagship character, Nagraj, first appeared in the comic Nagraj GENL #14, released on 1 April 1986. The debut issue was written by Parshuram Sharma and illustrated by Pratap Mullick. The character itself was conceived by the Raj Comics team, primarily Rajkumar Gupta and his sons. Nagraj was inspired in part by the mythological Ichchhadhari Nag, the shape-shifting serpent of Indian folklore, and the idea of a venom-laden human.
In the story, Nagraj begins as a living weapon. He is unleashed by an evil scientist, Professor Nagmani, who controls him through an implanted capsule. After being defeated by the centuries-old sage Baba Gorakhnath, who removes the mind-control device, Nagraj is freed and vows to fight crime and terror. His powers include superhuman strength, a poisonous bite, the ability to shed skin, and millions of microscopic snakes living inside his body.
From the mid-1990s, writer-artist Anupam Sinha, already running the successful Super Commando Dhruva series, took over Nagraj as well. Sinha favored multi-issue arcs to give his stories room, and he increased the frequency of Two-in-One comics that paired Nagraj with Dhruva. Over time, additional illustrators including Lalit Sharma and Hemant Kumar worked on the character as his look and abilities evolved.
Nagraj is only one part of a wider Raj Comics roster. Other well-known characters include Super Commando Dhruva, Doga, Parmanu, Bhokal, Bankelal, Shakti, Inspector Steel and Bheriya. Several of these heroes were grouped into a team called Brahmand Rakshak, the Protectors of the Universe, an Indian answer to the team-up format popular in Western comics.
The company published mainly in Hindi, with only a few titles and special editions in English, and concentrated on superhero stories alongside fantasy, horror and mystery. Raj Comics has produced close to 35,000 comics across its history and has experimented with formats including e-books, print, hardcover collections and motion comics, plus an online daily web series called Raj Rojana.
The business has not been without trouble. Raja Pocket Books is a family-owned partnership firm, and ongoing litigation among the owners over the company's assets has at times disrupted operations. Despite this, Raj Comics remains active, and Nagraj remains its central, continuously published superhero across several parallel series.
Nagraj endures because he localized the superhero idea, swapping capes and metropolises for serpent mythology, sages and Hindi-language storytelling, and built a fan base that has stayed loyal for decades.
Reported from Wikipedia (Raj Comics and Nagraj entries).
