Gotham's Liquid Heroes

Even in the world of comics, it is difficult to avoid corporate culture. Gotham Chopra does his best, though, in part by not assuming an executive title at Liquid Comics, the once traditional publishing company he co-founded six years ago and then “re-envisioned” as the world turned digital.

“When we reorganized three years ago, I did not take a title,” Chopra explains. “I’ve never been in the corporate culture. I think of myself as a creator and a storyteller, so the title is a bit of a distraction. That’s why I call myself the co-founder. I just sort of create and have fun.”

In its original permutation, Liquid Comics produced comic books and graphic novels under the name Virgin Comics. That was in the “early days,” Chopra says, when there were no iPads, no iPhones, no Androids. But around 2007, things started to look different, and the company was rebranded and renamed to embrace the digital future. Comics seemed perfectly suited for segueing into a new narrative medium.

“Graphic fiction is an interesting form of storytelling,” Chopra says. “It’s the oldest in many ways, from a creative standpoint. From a business standpoint, it’s also compelling because the publishing market is not what it has been in the past. It’s still an incredibly dynamic way for creators to create stories.”

Chopra has told stories as a journalist, documentary filmmaker and blogger, but the medium of the graphic comic is the space where he is finding the most creative freedom. The idea of keeping things “liquid” reflects the way today’s media forms flow into one another, not just through devices, but through genres as well. Comic books become e-books with moving graphics, and with a little magic, they eventually become films: “The filmmakers we’ve found love it because the graphic novel is basically storyboarding an idea.”

Into this increasingly competitive market, Chopra infuses his own sensibilities. Growing up in Boston, he was immersed in the heroic exploits of not only the Red Sox and the Celtics, but also in the adventures of Batman, Superman and other classic American superheroes. However, Chopra was also seeped in the mythology of his own Indian ancestry, such as the Indian mystics known as the Sadhus. Founding Liquid Comics with his sister, Mallika, was a way to bring those mythic figures into the American mainstream.

“Pokeman and Yu-Gi-Oh! are more East Asian,” Chopra notes. “There was never an Indian equivalent of that stuff, no deep, amazing archive of great myths and characters. Part of the mission of the company is to mine that creativity. In India, most of the young creators are always pushed toward outsourcing. We wanted to help pioneer a shift in thinking: Be creators, think up new characters and bring them into the world.”

In fulfilling its mission, Liquid Comics helps rising Indian artists find expression on a global canvas as they tell the ancient stories of India. And the heroes are not so different from those of Western mythology, Chopra says. Much of the same basic narrative is at play: reluctant heroes get their powers from some divine or alternate realm and go on quests. The difference, he says, is that Western heroes often battle the natural world, whereas Indian mythic figures tend to confront the mystic realm. Their quest is to understand the true nature of reality and to master it.

“Indian heroes operate at a different spiritual level,” Chopra says. “Physically, they tend to be much slighter, smaller, sleeker and more androgynous than a typical Western heroic figure.”

The liberating effect of graphic comics, according to Chopra, is that they show the possibility of melding the physical and spiritual elements of Western and Eastern philosophies. They bring the past, present and future into conversation with one another in a way that unfetters the mind and ignites a powerful, healing curiosity.

Graphic comics show the possibility of a world with no boundaries—in essence, the very antithesis of the rigid corporate structure Chopra has so long resisted. “I know that, even for the things I feel intuitively, there’s nothing absolute. We like to think in terms of black and white, but the world is a pretty colorful place.”