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The 2016 Comix Creatrix: 100 Women Making Comics exhibition at London’s House of Illustration included three Indian artists: Manjula Padmanabhan, Kaveri Gopalakrishnan and Reshu Singh. Amruta Patil—often described as India’s best-known woman comics artist—was not included. The omission reflects the exhibition’s fixed 100-person limit, not a judgment that Patil was unimportant.
What the global 100 exhibition was
Comix Creatrix: 100 Women Making Comics ran at London’s House of Illustration from 5 February to 15 May 2016. Curated by Paul Gravett and Olivia Ahmad, it brought together women cartoonists working across humour, horror, superheroes, autobiography, erotica, history, surrealism, reportage and science fiction.
India had three representatives. The exhibition’s stated scale—100 artists from a worldwide field of thousands—meant that many significant cartoonists could not be shown. Gravett put the problem plainly: “With any exhibition, especially one limited to only 100 when as you know there are thousands of women making comics, past and present, worldwide, there will always be people and works left out.”
Scroll.in’s 6 February 2016 report is the source for the Indian selections and the curators’ explanation.
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The three Indian artists on the list
Manjula Padmanabhan: pioneer of the newspaper strip
Manjula Padmanabhan is presented as a pioneer of English-language comics in India. From 1982 to 1986 she wrote and drew Double Talk for the Sunday Observer, becoming the first woman to run a newspaper strip there. Its protagonist, Suki, acquired cult status, and Penguin Books India later collected the Suki stories.
Padmanabhan recalled that some readers attacked the strip as “a horrible eyesore, ‘Double Gawk’, ‘dragging and brazenly repetitive.’” That hostile reaction is part of the strip’s history: Double Talk occupied a mainstream newspaper slot while establishing a distinctive female cartoon voice.
Kaveri Gopalakrishnan: observational short-form storytelling
Kaveri Gopalakrishnan is a freelance comics artist and illustrator from Bangalore. She studied animation film design at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. Her sequential graphic narrative Basic Space appeared in Drawing The Line: Indian Women Fight Back.
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Her work grows from close observation. Gopalakrishnan said: “I used to document the things people did or said, ever since I started drawing as a toddler. This probably makes me an obsessively curious person; curious about other people and their quirks, which I still am.”
Reshu Singh: an autobiographical anthology contributor
Reshu Singh is an illustrator and artist from New Delhi and an alumna of the College of Art, New Delhi. Her short graphic narrative The Photo was also published in Drawing The Line: Indian Women Fight Back.
Singh and Gopalakrishnan were selected partly because the curators wanted to show autobiographical pages from that anthology, giving the exhibition a view of contemporary Indian women’s personal and social experience.
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The artist who was not included: Amruta Patil
Amruta Patil is identified in the contemporary coverage as India’s most well-known woman comics artist, yet she was absent from the 2016 selection. Her omission is striking because of the reach and ambition of her books.
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Patil’s Kari is described as path-breaking and as India’s first long-form graphic narrative with a lesbian theme. It is a sustained graphic novel rather than a newspaper strip or a brief anthology piece, and its focus on sexuality and identity places it on a different scale from the works represented by Padmanabhan, Gopalakrishnan and Singh.
Adi Parva: mythology in painted pages
Adi Parva is the first volume of Patil’s planned Mahabharata trilogy. Patil described the book as the beginning of her relationship with paint and painters, citing Odilon Redon, Paul Gauguin, Amrita Sher-Gil, folk art from the Indian subcontinent and Mexico, fashion-magazine collage and the “jewel box” motif as influences. The project therefore extends Indian comics into painted, collage-rich mythological storytelling.
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Why the curators left Patil out
Gravett’s explanation is logistical and curatorial rather than a claim about Patil’s quality: a show limited to 100 people must exclude many artists. For India, the curators chose pages by Reshu Singh and Kaveri Gopalakrishnan from Drawing The Line, an anthology created after a workshop held in the wake of the Nirbhaya rape. Their selection foregrounded autobiographical work connected to that collective, socially engaged project.
That rationale explains the particular Indian grouping: a newspaper-strip pioneer, two artists represented through a post-Nirbhaya anthology, and no place for an established long-form graphic novelist. It does not establish that Patil was considered less important; it establishes that the exhibition made a limited thematic and numerical choice.
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| Artist | Work named in the coverage | Format | Primary emphasis | Career position in this account |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manjula Padmanabhan | Double Talk; Suki stories | Newspaper strip and collected strips | Comic newspaper observation and character-driven humour | Pioneer of English comics and first woman to run a strip in the Sunday Observer |
| Kaveri Gopalakrishnan | Basic Space in Drawing The Line | Short sequential graphic narrative; anthology contribution | Observation, autobiography and social experience | Freelance illustrator and comics artist |
| Reshu Singh | The Photo in Drawing The Line | Short graphic narrative; anthology contribution | Autobiographical and socially engaged storytelling | Illustrator and artist represented through a collective anthology |
| Amruta Patil | Kari; Adi Parva | Long-form graphic novel and painted mythological cycle | Lesbian identity, sexuality, mythology, painting and collage | Established graphic novelist omitted from the 100 |
Where the named comics fit
Suki and Double Talk
Look for collected Suki stories published by Penguin Books India. The original strip ran in the Sunday Observer from 1982 to 1986; current editions, stock and pricing can vary.
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Drawing The Line: Indian Women Fight Back
This anthology is the common publication link for Gopalakrishnan’s Basic Space and Singh’s The Photo. It emerged from a workshop held after the Nirbhaya rape. No current edition, retailer or price has been published; check library catalogues and current booksellers for availability.
Kari and Adi Parva
Patil’s two named books are the relevant long-form works: Kari for its lesbian theme and Adi Parva as the opening volume of the Mahabharata trilogy. Current editions, prices or stock have not been verified; those details should be confirmed with a bookseller or library before purchase.
What the list shows about Indian women’s comics
The exhibition’s Indian presence was not a single style or generation. Padmanabhan represents the newspaper strip and an earlier breakthrough in English comics; Gopalakrishnan and Singh represent short, autobiographical anthology work shaped by a collective response to gender violence; Patil, though excluded, represents ambitious long-form graphic fiction joining sexuality, mythology, painting and collage. Reading the four together makes the omission visible without turning a necessarily selective exhibition into a definitive ranking.
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