Virgin Comics: Hindu Narrative Themes for a Cosmopolitan Audience

Abstract:Virgin Comics (subsequently known as Liquid Comics and Graphic India) was founded in 2006 as a comic book publisher that aimed to market Indian comics to a global, cosmopolitan audience. This article focuses on their Shakti line, which draws upon Hindu narratives about gods, goddesses, and holy people. In order to market these narratives, Virgin Comics unsettled them from their contexts using creative forms of transcultural intertextuality and secularizing apologetic. The resulting product illustrates the tensions of globalization in the early 2000s: optimism about a shrinking world together with the pressures of global financescapes and the harbingers of resurgent nationalisms.