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This is the first of the gods know how many part series of posts I have long wanted to write about my favourite storybook heroes. Ironically, I start with an anti-hero.

There is no mistaking Doga for one of Raj Comics’ cleaner heroes. He doesn’t have the powers to avert natural disasters or tackle alien menaces. The human menace on the other hand, is just his element. He gets his hands dirty. He kills.

He doesn’t have the heroic looks, not when he is on duty. He is the sort that wouldn’t fight for law and order if he can help it. What he would do is hunt down oppressors — the adult world equivalents of high school bullies, people who are scared of taking on someone their own size, and beat them black and blue in front of the terrified victims, just to show them they are nothing to be afraid of. He is, in every sense of the word, their size.

The good people at Raj Comics did give Doga one super power to be sure - he can talk to dogs. In a mostly grrr… woof… bark… way, but talk nevertheless.

His wears a bulldog mask. Stiff, unyielding and unforgiving. In one early Doga comic, Doga shouts out something to the effect of ‘Yes, I am a dog’. Corny as it may sound to our ears now, it was the basis of the Doga story back then (before it started wading deeper into fantasy waters).

Doga stood for free thinking and the right way. Regardless of what the law dictated or what ‘better sense’ demanded. His allegiance is not to any authority or power. He stands only for the right to live. He fights only fear.

Backstory-wise, he was an abandoned baby left to die in a public trash bin, discovered by street dogs and later adopted by Adrak Chacha who ran Lion Gym. Adrak and his brothers (Kali Mirch Chacha, Dhania Chacha et al) train the child, who they name Suraj, in the art of war. In later years, they are the only keepers of Doga’s secret.

Other interesting people in Doga’s world were the boastful but deadly efficient cop Inspector Cheeta and his sister Monica (who likes Suraj but hates the murdering Doga).

To be sure, the long lineup of villains that Doga frequently went up against was as interesting as Doga himself. Some were cowardly, some devious mean, some even as hot headed as Doga himself.

The fact that almost all of the Doga stories were set in the dark alleyways of Mumbai was another reader drawing factor. The cops wore regular uniforms (or didn’t!), the people spoke a Bambaiyya dialect that sounded more real than the chaste Sanskritised Hindi spoken in Nagdweep (home of many of Nagraj’s adventures - more later). The same went for the buildings and the buses.

You are thinking Batman, right? Not quite actually. I always felt Super Commando Dhruv was more Batman than Doga. Doga was by no means a detective. Not even approaching. His wit was limited to extremely short term applications like figuring out the best place to dash a baddy’s head against, or knowing where it would hurt his assailant most.

Brains, more than sheer muscle define Batman. Dhruv was it. Although the righteous variety. More later.

Posted on Sunday, September 24th, 2006 at 2:38 pm and filed under comics, books, characters.

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