Anger as a feminist instrument of the female superhero in Abhijit Kini’s Angry Maushi trilogy

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay examines the unexplored comics trilogy, Abhijeet Kini’s Angry Maushi (2012–2014), studying it against the backdrop of the polemical Indian activism of the 2010s to understand its deployment of the figure of the female superhero and the idea of feminist rage to portray the mapping of citizen dissent against state apathy. Following a mock-heroic format, and drawing on the traditions of the female superhero and citizen caricatures, the trilogy parodies the defining socio-political crises of the 2010s and posits the angry working-class protagonist as a subversive take on the female vigilante superhero to express the collective public rage against the structural political/bureaucratic corruption around her. Harnessing the new visual and verbal vocabularies of civic discontent in contemporary popular culture, the essay attempts to decode the revised templates of protest founded on scepticism, irreverence, and rage as depicted in the comics trilogy.