With a focus on the Hindi language superhero comics produced by Raj Comics since the 1980s, this article investigates instances of “modernities in the backyard” and their implications for studying postcolonial popular culture. The graphic narratives in the comic books are neither simply Westernized or transgressive, nor necessarily framed by a mythicized or Orientalised discursive framework. Instead, they register a distinctive heritage combining vernacular and mythic prototypes with hypermodern visions with which to imagine new powers for Indian men and women, even though women may continue to be shaped by the masculinist, desirous gaze and modulated by patriarchal expectations to do with female docility and marriageability. The enquiry provides unique material to chart out the lineaments of postcolonial culture, gender, and power in order to provincialize the scope of cultural studies
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