Why Indian Superheroes Failed Drastically ?
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Today when we think about the superhero comics industry, then the first thought that comes to our mind is Marvel & DC. This is because these two American comic publishers have established themselves so well since the past century that whenever we think about any superhero or superhero brand, then Marvel & DC always reside at the top. But this was not the case always. In the 80s and 90s, there were a lot of comic publishers throughout the world who published superhero comics, and it may surprise you that India was considered as one in the list of top five countries that produced superhero comics. But what happened next? Why Indian comics and superheroes faded away in the 21st century? Check out the reason below.
Why Indian Superheroes Failed?
Nowadays, if you ask any kid or teenager to name any Indian superhero, then most probably they will name Krrish or Flying Jatt, or may be if they are a bit older then they will answer Shaktimaan.
Krrish and Flying Jatt are not bad, but if you compare these modern day superheroes to the superheroes of the 80s comics, then these modern day superheroes will fade like dust. Some of these Golden age superheroes were Nagraj, Doga, Parmanu, Shaktimaan, Dhruv, Shakti and many more. Let’s now check with the help of proper research and reasons that why these cool Indian superheroes vanished with time.
According to a survey, the main reason for the huge decrease in comics popularity is the emerging technology. But I don’t believe this. If technology is the main reason for the decreasing popularity of comics, then the popularities of comics in countries like England and America should have decreased long ago, but it is not so. You know, there was a time when 6–7 lakhs comics were published per month in India, but today a total of 50–60 thousand comics are published per year. You may not believe the fact that when Shaktimaan was introduced in comics, at that time more than 70 lakhs comics were sold in just two months. According to my perspective, there are some other major reasons why Indian superhero comics failed while American comics survived. These are:
1) Lack of Competition
Marvel and DC are the two rival comic publishers of America. Due to the similarity in their target audience, these two companies always keep competing with each other, which ultimately results in developing a fine and better product. You’ll also get to see such competition within French, Japanese and Korean comic book publishers.
In case of India, there were also a lot of publishers in the 70s, but they didn’t had any competition between them. For example, the Superheroes of Diamond comics were only meant for kids, whereas the superheroes of Raj comics mostly targeted the mature audience. Diamond comics soon stopped focusing on their superhero comics after the massive success of Chhachha Chowdhry.
2) Focusing on Quantity
The second major reason for the failure of Indian comics is focusing more on the quantity and not on the quality of the comics. This was because during the 80s, the comics industry was at its peak and every Indian publisher wanted to sell more and more comics to get ahead of the curve.
Due to this, the comic publishers focused more on publishing a lot of comics in a short period of time which ultimately decreased the quality of the comics. Also, due to rapid manufacturing of comics by all the publishers, the stories of the comics often remained similar to each other which made the fans angry.
3) Writer and Artist
The third major reason for the failure of the Indian comic industries is the insufficient wages of the writers and artists. While the writers of American comic brands were getting good salaries, the Indian writers had to suffer a lot for their wages.
Due to a lot of competition, often the publishers paid very less salary to their writers and artists. As a result, more and more writers and artists left their jobs and went for higher paying jobs like newspapers and magazines.
4) Logic
At present, Raj comics may be a very less known comic book brand of India, but in its time back then in 90s, it was the only publication which had thought about the future. Therefore it managed to sustain till now, whereas other comics have failed drastically. The major reason behind its survival is that Raj comics made its characters based on logic and reality, due to which fans could connect with them, not only in the 90s but till present day.
On the other hand, the other comic characters created at that time were all illogical and based on fantasies. Hence these characters didn’t manage to stand still with the changing perspective of the modern people. If only the publishers had given some more effort, they would have managed to exist in the frame till date.
5) Lack of Universe
If you even know very less about Marvel and DC, then also you would have figured that Marvel and DC both have their own universes. A comical universe is something which is formed when there are lots of characters published by the comics and they all would be appearing in some other hero’s comic storylines from time to time.
One of the major problem of many Indian comics was the lack of their comical characters. All the comic characters had their separate comics and didn’t have a connection. There were very few comic publications at that time which managed to survive the catastrophe only because they had their superhero universe, and Raj comics was one of those smart publications.
6) Foreign Superheroes
In 1964, Indrajal comics introduced foreign superheroes like Phantom and Flash Gordon in their comics. These characters were already very popular in other countries before coming to India. Due to this existing international popularity, these characters soon managed to rule the Indian comics industries too which resulted in the decreasing popularity of India’s own superheroes.
There was another hard hit in 1990, when the Indian comics law enforced a rule that stated that the publications have to issue a special permit if they want to use foreign superheroes in their comics. The Indian publishers viewed this as an opportunity and started importing more foreign superheroes to India. This was the time when famous characters like Tarzan, He-man, Superman, etc entered the Indian comics market and soon started gaining popularity. This ultimately resulted in the drowning of India’s own superheroes.
7) Shift to Movies
In the late 90s and the early years of 2000s, the comics publication of other countries started portraying their comic book characters in live action movies. The major example of these are Marvel’s Spiderman movie and DC’s Batman movies. The international comic book publishers figured this out very early that if they want to sustain for a long term, then they must have to make use of television.
On the other hand, the Indian comic book publications remained limited to comic books and didn’t figure out the necessary change. By the time they figured it out, it was very late. Also, we must consider the fact that India also tried to create some live action superheroes of its own, but the fans didn’t like it due to the poor storylines and not so cool CGI effects.
So this was our analysis to find out the cause why the Indian comics failed drastically. I hope you liked it. If you feel that we have missed some important points in this article then do let us know in the comments below.
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