Civilized Monsters: These Savage Shores and the Colonialist Cage

Abstract

abstract:This CSS award-winning essay from NeoText Review explores the iconic 9-panel grid of Western comics in relation to Western Colonialist Perspective in the comic These Savage Shores by Ram V, Sumit Kuma, Vittorio Astone, and Aditya Bidikar. The essay examines the work, which pits a Western Vampire and an Indian Raakshas against one another and examines monstrosity in the context of an Indian under siege by the British East India Company. These Savage Shores is a text that explores the construct of the Vampire as a metaphor for colonialism, with the tool of the 9-panel grid as a visual expression of the cage the colonized people are trapped within.