Kerala Literature Festival: Graphic novel – a world of hybridity

KOZHIKODE: A medium that emerged as part of cartoon, which is the medium of protest and resistance, the

graphic novel

is still a new genre in Kerala, though G Aravindan had started his

comic strip

, ‘Cheriya Manushyarum Valiya Lokavum’, almost 17 years before American comic artist Will Eisner published ‘A Contract with God’, which defined the concept of the ‘graphic novel’ for the first time.

But a readership, which closely follows the graphic novels, is emerging here and the response that a session on it got at the

Kerala Literature Festival

on Saturday, moderated by artist

Sudheesh Kottembram

, was a pointer to this.

“It is good that a discussion on graphic novel began from Kozhikode, the town which formed the backdrop for Aravindan’s ‘Cheriya Manushyarum Valiya Lokavum’,” said eminent cartoonist and graphic narrator E P Unny. “This is such a medium which could bring those people who were used to good reading but departed from it, back to reading.”

Writer N S Madhavan observed that the graphic novel, which evolved as part of the underground literature in the 1970s as a voice of protest, has now become part of the mainstream, and the conventional bad habits in reading has changed today.

“It is the graphic novel that sustains the publishing industry today, and in my opinion, Art Spiegelman, the author of the graphic novels like Maus, should be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature,” he said.

Observing that graphic novel should not be seen as something new, graphic artist Ramu Aravindan, son of G Aravindan, said its elements could be seen in the children’s literature.

“The graphic novel is a world of hybridity and massive level of documentation can be seen in it,” he said pointing towards the examples of ‘Tin Tin’. Incidentally, Aravindan had also documented the life and times of Kozhikode in his comic strip.

Cartoonist and researcher Gokul Gopalakrishnan said that when Will Eisner used the word ‘graphic novel’, he was actually trying to overcome all the preconceived notions about comics.

“The text and image in a graphic novel could not be seen as separate and it should be read together,” he said adding that a graphic novel is an ethnographic documentation.