Picaresque or episodic comics, published periodically, involving a set of characters, have been a staple of Bengali popular cultural life for half a century now. Some of them are here. So are what is now commonly called the graphic novel – a late 20th-century genre. But there are also works of mercurial undertaking from early 20th century Bengal, which were so richly and organically illustrated that they preempted the late century graphic novel in more ways than one.
