The Long Read

Return of the Jungle: Vaibhav Kumaresh's 15-Year Bet on an India Without Gods or Minions

The Lamput creator self-funded a family film about a grandfather, a school bully and the Panchatantra. It came back from Cannes to glowing reviews and empty theatres. Both facts matter.

From Webtoon to Netflix: How Hellbound Became One of Korea's Most Ambitious Live-Action Adaptations

Most creators license a comic and hope the show turns out fine. Yeon Sang-ho and Choi Gyu-seok stayed in charge, and turned their own webtoon into one of Netflix's sharpest Korean originals.

Supergirl Box Office Update: DCU Movie Faces a Crucial Second Weekend

Supergirl opened to $37 million and now faces a make-or-break second weekend; a heavy drop could make it one of the DCU's first major financial misses.

The Powerpuff Girls Return With an All-New Sequel in Brand-New Comic Adventure

Dynamite Entertainment's new 128-page graphic novel, New Year, New You, sends Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup back to Townsville with all-new stories this September.

Indrajal Comics: How The Phantom Became an Indian Household Hero

For 26 years a Times of India imprint turned an American jungle hero into a fixture of Indian childhoods, one 32-page issue at a time.

The Invisible Everyman: How Mr. India Became Indian Sci-Fi's Foundation Stone

Shekhar Kapur's 1987 fable about a violinist with a cloaking device gave Hindi cinema its first durable superhero template and its most quotable villain.

Narayan Debnath: The Man Who Drew Bengal's Comics for Sixty Years

From a jewellery-designing childhood in Howrah to a Padma Shri, Narayan Debnath drew Handa Bhonda for a record 53 unbroken years.

Enthiran to 2.0: Rajinikanth, Shankar and India's Biggest Sci-Fi Machine

A robot love story that took a decade to get made became the most expensive Indian film of its time, then did it all over again with a sequel shot natively in 3D.

River of Stories: The 1994 Book That Started the Indian Graphic Novel

Orijit Sen's account of the Narmada dam struggle was refused by bookshops in 1994, and reissued to acclaim 28 years later.

Eega: The Reincarnated Fly That Proved Rajamouli Could Do Anything

S. S. Rajamouli turned a family joke about a vengeful housefly into a National Award-winning fantasy that critics abroad now rank among the decade's best.

Bahadur: Aabid Surti's Action Hero for the Age of the Dacoits

Created in 1976 to take on The Phantom's grip on Indian readers, Bahadur fought the Chambal valley's bandits with a citizens' force instead of superpowers.

Baahubali and the Rise of India's Visual Effects Industry

Rajamouli's 2015 epic was not just a record-breaking film but a homegrown industrial project that turned Hyderabad into a serious visual effects capital.

Chandamama: The Illustrated Story Magazine That Raised Generations

Launched in the month before independence, the children's monthly carried kings, vampires and moral riddles into 13 languages for 66 years.

RRR: The Global Breakthrough and the Night Naatu Naatu Won the Oscar

Rajamouli's colonial-era bromance broke Indian box office records at home, conquered Western critics abroad, and gave India its first Academy Award for a feature film song.

Lion and Muthu Comics: The Tamil Pulp Phenomenon Printed in Sivakasi

From a fireworks town in southern Tamil Nadu, one family imprint turned European cowboys and steel-clawed spies into Tamil pulp legends.

Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama, the Indo-Japanese Anime That Refused to Die

Conceived by a Japanese documentarian, animated by 450 artists across two nations and nearly buried by the politics of its era, the 1992 anime Ramayana has returned as a 4K cult treasure.

Spider-Man: India, Pavitr Prabhakar and the Gotham Comics Era

In 2004 a Mumbai schoolboy swung into Marvel canon, the boldest experiment of the years when Gotham Entertainment carried American comics to South Asia.

My Dear Kuttichathan: The Kerala Goblin That Gave India Its First 3D Film

A Malayalam children's fantasy shot on imported lenses and home-built rigs beat Bollywood to stereoscopic cinema by decades, then kept resurrecting itself in new languages.

Pran's Diamond Comics Empire: Billoo, Pinki, Shrimatiji and the Rest

Beyond his most famous creation, cartoonist Pran built a whole neighbourhood of middle-class heroes, and Diamond Comics built India's biggest comics business around them.

Arjun: The Warrior Prince, the Disney-UTV Epic That Dared to Grow Up

Arnab Chaudhuri's 2012 retelling of the Mahabharata through Arjuna's eyes won festival respect and a FICCI award, even as the box office refused to follow.

Priya's Shakti: The Augmented Reality Comic That Fought Gender Violence

Born from the outrage of December 2012, a rape survivor on a flying tiger became India's first augmented reality comic heroine.

Kalki 2898 AD: Mythology Meets Science Fiction at Indian Cinema's Biggest Scale

Nag Ashwin fused the Mahabharata's immortal Ashwatthama with a dystopian future Kashi, and India's most expensive film ever made became a billion-rupee bet that paid off.

Devi, Ramayan 3392 AD and the Mythology Comics Wave

For one heady stretch of the 2000s, Richard Branson, Deepak Chopra and Shekhar Kapur bet that Indian mythology could power a global comics renaissance.

Ajooba: Amitabh Bachchan's Masked-Avenger Curiosity From the Indo-Soviet Frontier

Shashi Kapoor's Indo-Soviet fantasy put Amitabh Bachchan behind a mask, a magic sword and a dolphin foster mother, and became one of Hindi cinema's most fascinating expensive failures.

Osamu Tezuka and Astro Boy: how one cartoonist built the foundation of modern manga

The trained physician nicknamed the god of manga turned a small robot boy into the blueprint for an entire art form.

Nagraj at Raj Comics: How a snake-powered hero became India's homegrown superhero

Raj Comics built India's best-known superhero universe in Hindi, with the snake-man Nagraj at its center.

Raja Ravi Varma: the painter whose oleographs put gods on every Indian wall

How a Travancore prince fused European oil painting with Hindu iconography, then printed it cheaply enough to reach the whole country.

Inside the Kyoto International Manga Museum, where 50,000 volumes wait to be read

A converted 1920s elementary school in central Kyoto now holds one of the world's great public collections of manga, much of it free to pull off the shelf.

Minnal Murali: how a Kerala tailor became India's lightning-struck superhero

Basil Joseph's 2021 Malayalam film turned a small-town tailor into one of Indian cinema's most acclaimed homegrown superheroes.

Overgeared Anime Adaptation Set to Premiere October 2026 at J.C.Staff

The hit blacksmith-isekai manhwa gets a J.C.Staff series this autumn, with a stacked voice cast.

Eiichiro Oda and One Piece: the best-selling manga of all time

A boy from Kumamoto who wanted to draw pirates instead of getting a real job built the most-printed comic series in history.

Look Back Live-Action Film Sets September 11 Japan Release

Tatsuki Fujimoto's acclaimed one-shot becomes a live-action feature, with a September bow.

Chacha Chaudhary: the turbaned uncle whose brain runs faster than a computer

Cartoonist Pran Kumar Sharma created a wise, ordinary old man who outwits villains with common sense, not superpowers.

Iron Man's First Splash Page Leads Heritage's July Comic Art Auction

Don Heck's 1963 origin page anchors a sale that also features Joe Shuster and Charles Schulz.

Mario Miranda: the cartoonist who drew all of Goa into the frame

From village vignettes to crowded Bombay scenes, Mario Miranda turned everyday India into a teeming, witty line drawing.

The Fujiko F. Fujio Museum: Kawasaki's shrine to the creator of Doraemon

A timed-entry museum in suburban Kawasaki preserves the original artwork of Hiroshi Fujimoto, the artist who, as Fujiko F. Fujio, gave the world Doraemon.

Hunter x Hunter Volume 39 Confirmed for July 3 Release After Long Wait

Togashi's perennially-paused epic returns to shelves nearly two years after volume 38.

HanuMan and the rise of the Prasanth Varma Cinematic Universe

Prasanth Varma's 2024 Telugu hit launched an Indian superhero universe rooted in mythology, grossing far beyond its modest budget.

Independent Indian comics evolve with mature plots and a new readership

Two US universities compete to build the largest archive of Indian comics

Hindustan Times opens free access to Indian graphic novels online

Dark Horse workers move to unionize

Annecy Festival Highlights: New Batman, Tartakovsky's Conan, Adventure Time, Dark Shadows

Japanese Government Considers Subsidies for AI Translation in Media, Manga Industry

Petals of Reincarnation manga to conclude with 25th volume

Hideaki Anno's Death (True)² & Rebirth and The End of Evangelion return to U.S. theaters

"Joker: Laugh Riot" Anime Announced, Yasuhiro Aoki to Direct for Sola Entertainment

Akihiro Miwa, Influential Japanese Artist and Performer, Dies at 91

Dark Horse faces union challenge amid layoffs

Archie Comics embroiled in legal, financial disputes

Weekly Shonen Jump and Shueisha: the engine of mainstream manga

Japan's largest publisher and its flagship anthology turned weekly serialized comics into a global industry.

Kagurabachi Anime Lands on Crunchyroll for April 2027 With New Cast

The Shonen Jump sword-revenge sensation gets an anime and a global early-screening tour.

Amar Chitra Katha and Uncle Pai: the comics that gave India a route to its roots

Anant Pai founded Amar Chitra Katha in 1967 to teach Indian children their own mythology, history and folklore through comics.

Gond art and Jangarh Singh Shyam: the tribal line that reached the graphic novel

A buffalo-herder from a Madhya Pradesh village turned Pardhan Gond music into painting, founded a school of art, and seeded the visual language of Bhimayana.

Tokiwa-so: the Tokyo apartment that raised a generation of manga masters

A modest wooden apartment in Toshima once housed Tezuka, the Fujiko Fujio duo, Ishinomori and Akatsuka at the same time; today a faithful reconstruction tells their story.

Black Torch Returns as an Anime Eight Years After Its Manga Was Cancelled

A short-lived Shonen Jump title most fans had written off is getting a full anime, with its creator involved.

Brahmastra: Part One Shiva and Ayan Mukerji's decade-long Astraverse gamble

Conceived in 2011 and released in 2022, Ayan Mukerji's fantasy epic launched the planned Astraverse trilogy with a starry ensemble and heavy VFX.

Machiko Hasegawa and Sazae-san: a pioneering, long-running manga

One of Japan's first female manga artists drew a cheerful postwar housewife who is still on television today.

Skirball's Inventing America Traces How Comics Shaped the Nation

A Los Angeles show runs through February 2027, from Captain America to Maus.

Tinkle magazine: how Suppandi and Shikari Shambu became childhood companions for India

Launched in 1980 by Anant Pai, Tinkle mixed comics, stories and quizzes and gave India two of its most loved comic characters.

R. K. Laxman and the Common Man: fifty years of watching India from the corner

India's most famous newspaper cartoonist gave the nation a silent, bespectacled everyman who witnessed every absurdity of its democracy.

Comiket: how a 32-circle fan meet became the world's largest comics fair

Held twice a year at Tokyo Big Sight, Comic Market is the largest fan convention on earth, a sprawling volunteer-run marketplace for self-published manga.

Kyoto Animation's Sparks of Tomorrow Finally Reaches Screens in July 2026

A project announced before the studio's 2019 tragedy arrives at last: a steam-age dream of electricity.

From Jadoo to Krrish: how the Roshans built India's first superhero film series

Starting with Koi Mil Gaya in 2003, Rakesh and Hrithik Roshan turned an alien-friendship story into a multi-generational superhero saga.

Akihabara, Tokyo: the global capital of manga, anime and otaku culture

A postwar electronics market in central Tokyo reinvented itself as the world's headquarters for anime, manga and games.

University of Illinois Preserves India's Comic Book Heritage

An academic archive of roughly 1,000 titles treats Indian comics, from Amar Chitra Katha to Raj Comics, as cultural records worth preserving.

Haggin Museum Honours DC Pioneer Tony DeZuniga With a Stockton Retrospective

The first Filipino artist published by American comics, and Jonah Hex co-creator, gets his due.

Comic Con India: from one Delhi hall in 2011 to a multi-city pop-culture circuit

Founded in 2011, Comic Con India grew from a single Delhi event into a touring convention across several cities.

India in Panels: Six Decades of Comics, Culture and Imagination

How a newly independent nation built its own comic-book universe, from temple friezes and Amar Chitra Katha to Nagraj, Chacha Chaudhary and the webcomic revival.

Kalighat painting: the Calcutta bazaar art that now hangs in the V&A

Painted fast and cheap by temple-side scroll artists in 19th-century Calcutta, Kalighat pats compressed gods, gossip and satire into bold single frames.

Mizuki Shigeru Road: a seaside town where bronze yokai line the street

In Sakaiminato, the hometown of Shigeru Mizuki, a street running from the train station is lined with bronze statues of the yokai from GeGeGe no Kitaro.

Marvel and DC Line Up Eight Superhero Sequels Through 2029

The two studios map a packed multi-year run: Spider-Man, Avengers, Superman, Batman and more.

Ra.One: Shah Rukh Khan's 2011 bid to give India its own big-budget superhero

Built around a video-game villain who escapes into the real world, Ra.One was the most expensive Indian film of its time and a landmark VFX experiment.

George Lucas's Museum of Narrative Art Sets September 22 Opening

After years of delays, the Lucas Museum opens in LA with Kirby, Frazetta and Rockwell in its holdings.

Will Eisner: the cartoonist who gave the graphic novel its name

The Brooklyn-born artist behind The Spirit popularized the term graphic novel and lent his name to comics' most prestigious prize.

Corridor: the book marketed as India's first graphic novel

Sarnath Banerjee's 2004 debut Corridor became a touchstone of the Indian graphic novel, even as an earlier work quietly holds the historical title.

San Diego Comic-Con 2026 Runs July 22 to 26 With Eisners and Hall H

For the first time in three years, the show will not share its week with a major Marvel release.

Chhota Bheem: how Rajiv Chilaka's hero built India's biggest animation empire

A Hyderabad studio turned a comic-book-inspired village boy into a multilingual franchise that outlasted Mickey and Spider-Man on Indian screens.

Inside the Musee Herge, the Belgian shrine to Tintin's creator

A Pritzker-winning architect and a fellow cartoonist built a museum to Georges Remi, the artist the world knows as Herge.

Kari and Amruta Patil: India's first female graphic novelist

Amruta Patil's 2008 debut Kari broke ground for women in Indian comics and launched a career spanning myth, ecology and painting.

The Legend of Hanuman: how a comics house turned a god into a streaming-era hero

Graphic India's Disney+ Hotstar epic translated the visual grammar of the comic book into one of India's most ambitious mythological animated series.

The Takarazuka museum that honors the god of manga, Osamu Tezuka

The Japanese city where Osamu Tezuka grew up built a museum to the artist who launched the postwar manga revolution.

Bhimayana: Ambedkar's life retold in Pardhan Gond art

A 2011 graphic biography of B.R. Ambedkar, Bhimayana fuses a story of caste discrimination with the folk visual language of Pardhan Gond art.

Bhavesh Joshi Superhero: the grounded Indian vigilante film that became a comic-book cult

Vikramaditya Motwane's 2018 box-office bomb about a paper-bag-masked corruption fighter has aged into a cult origin story for the homemade Indian superhero.

Billy Ireland Cartoon Library, the world's largest comic-art archive

At Ohio State University, a single donation in 1977 grew into the most comprehensive academic home for cartoon and comic art on earth.

Doga: the dog-masked vigilante who became Mumbai's antihero

Created by Raj Comics in 1992, Doga is a brutal, street-level vigilante whose grounded, crime-driven stories set him apart from India's superpowered heroes.

Hanuman (2005): the animated feature that kickstarted modern Indian theatrical animation

A modest film about a sun-grabbing monkey god became a surprise hit and convinced an industry that homegrown animated features could fill cinemas.

The Norman Rockwell Museum, home to the world's largest Rockwell collection

In the Massachusetts town where Norman Rockwell spent his final decades, an art museum guards the world's largest trove of his original work.

The rise of Indian webtoons: inside Toonsutra's mobile comics push

Backed by Graphic India and a 3.2 million dollar seed round, Toonsutra is racing to bring vertical-scroll webtoon comics to India's vast mobile audience.

From back office to original IP: where India's animation industry actually stands

Seven decades after a Disney animator trained India's first studio, the country's animation and VFX business is wrestling with an outsourcing slowdown and a push toward home-grown stories.

Super Commando Dhruv: The Hero Without Superpowers

How Anupam Sinha's 1987 creation for Raj Comics, a teenager with no powers, no mask and a circus past, rewrote what an Indian superhero could be.

Wes Craig Reimagines Superman's Golden Age Roots in Superman: The Stranger

DC Black Label returns Superman to his Golden Age roots with Superman: The Stranger, a six-issue series by Wes Craig that blends Fleischer-inspired visuals with a darker, more mature take on the Man of Steel's earliest adventures.