How Bengali comic artist Mayukh Chowdhury charmed adult readers with his modern realism
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Telling stories through pictures – what we now call comics – is hard to date precisely when it comes to Bengali. Still, the journey of Bengali comics can be traced back to 19th‑century scroll paintings and terracotta panels.
In the early 20th century, Bengali magazines began publishing comics on a regular basis. From Sukhalata Rao to Shail Chakraborty and Prafulla Chandra Lahiri, many artists started experimenting with visual storytelling, which gradually became popular with Bengali readers.
Of course, the very word “comics” seems to carry a built‑in sense of fun and humour. If we look at the history of cartoons in Bengali, though, it would be a big mistake to write them off as mere vehicles of jokes. Alongside a long tradition of “funnies”, there is also a strong history of political cartoons and a striking presence of graphic novels. Once you start digging into the history of Bengali comics, you find its branches proliferating.
Take the 1960s. If you look at Bengali comics from this period, you will see that “funnies” were riding high. It is true that in the history of Bengali cartoons, this one stream became so dominant that many other strands never got the attention they deserved. Pushed to focus on “cartoons...