How Bengali comic artist Mayukh Chowdhury charmed adult readers with his modern realism

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 for children”, many artists had to hold themselves back from doing more. As a result, Bengali cartooning did not grow as rich and varied as it could have.

But we must not forget that, alongside delightful strips like Handa‑Bhonda and Nonte‑Fonte, Bengali literature was at the same time quietly making room for adventure, fantasy, crime and horror comics. Among those who worked in these genres were Tushar Chattopadhyay, Pratul Bandyopadhyay and, of course, Narayan Debnath. Yet the artist many see as one of the real “stars” who pioneered this line of work is Mayukh Chowdhury.

Prasad Ray aka Mayukh Chowdhury

Chowdhury was born in Dhaka in 1926; his given name was Shaktiprasad Chowdhury. While he was still quite young, the family moved to Kolkata. Writer and close friend Manjil Sen recalled that Chowdhury’s family lived in a three‑storey house just behind theirs. The release of the 1932 film Tarzan made such an impression on young Mayukh that he imitated it constantly letting out huge yells and leaping into the tank in the courtyard.

From an early age, he showed an extraordinary command of Bengali and a natural gift for drawing. In 1942, Chowdhury passed his matriculation exams with distinction in Bengali – considered quite rare at the time. Instead of studying Bengali formally, however, he enrolled at the Government Art College. Even though he had teachers like Zainul Abedin and Atul Bose, he was so wilful that he walked away from college without taking his final‑year exams.

But dropping out of college did not mean he could avoid earning a living. To support himself, he took a job painting film banners. Later, he went to work at Sushil Banerjee’s studio. Well-known for his banners and hoardings for films, Banerjee felt the profession would never do justice to Chowdhury’s talent. He urged Chowdhury to move into publishing instead and introduced him to Satyajit Ray.

After meeting Ray, Chowdhury began working for Sandesh, the magazine Ray edited, in 1962. Under the pen name Prasad Ray, his first comic, Reenshodh (Repaying the Debt), appeared in Sandesh. This was a Bengali comic in a completely new style, ushering in adult reading and modernity to Bengali comics. Sandesh went on to publish a number of his works.

His second colourful and widely loved work was Shoytaner Dwip (The Devil’s Island), which first appeared in a Puja annual of a publishing house. The same publisher then began serialising another of his creations, Khape Dhaka Talowar (The Sword in the Scabbard). The visuals were drawn not as standalone illustrations, but as moving images with film‑like changes of camera angle. For raw material, Chowdhury turned to history, adventure and the animal world.

Chowdhury’s self‑contained stories were not just thrilling, but they also offered believable characters. His narratives moved with an assured rhythm. His animals were rendered with such anatomical accuracy and natural movement that they seemed alive on the page.

In many ways, his comics were in no way inferior to those from the West. The blend of imagination and realism appealed not only to young readers but to adults as well.

The illustrator and calligraphist

When Chowdhury worked solely as an illustrator for a story or a book, he usually signed off as Prasad Ray. Reflecting his depiction of wild animals in his comics, his drawings for fiction, too, looked uncannily real. Legend has it that he always began by drawing the tail. His influences included Neill Edmonds and Raymond Sheppard.

As Sen recalled: “For one of my stories, he drew two tigers. One was swimming across a river with its head held high, the other was trying to clamber into a boat with its forepaws. The pictures were so extraordinary, they seemed alive.” Chowdhury did the illustrations for the Bengali translation of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, for animal‑kingdom stories and for Jibjantuder Kotha (Tales of Animals). He also drew for many magazines, including Sandesh, Shuktara and Kishor Bharati. One of his best‑known sets of illustrations appears in Satyajit Ray’s story “Septopuser Khide” (The Septopus’s Hunger).

Interestingly, several years before Len Wein created Wolverine – who has three long claws springing from each hand – Chowdhury had created a strikingly similar figure in his graphic novel Agantuk (The Stranger). The character, named Ura, is an alien being whose hands extend sharp claws whenever needed for attack or self‑defence. And his ears resemble those of the Na’vi in Avatar.

Beyond his original stories and artwork, Chowdhury developed a distinctive approach to the calligraphy in his comics, often blending in artistic elements. In Khape Dhaka Talowar, the form of a sword emerged from the title. In Mahakaler Mandir (The Temple of Eternity), the word “mandir” (temple) looks like an ancient shrine whose walls are cracked and weather‑worn.
Despite his pioneering achievements in the field of comics and illustrations, Chowdhury had to combat financial difficulties in his later years. He died in a hospital in 1996. But his legacy lives on, with researchers unearthing and documenting the work he did over his lifetime.