To relieve us from our everyday mundane work routines, which includes working from home and dealing with the daily stressed up situations and trauma that haunts us even after our working hours, Corporat Comics, is here to our rescue! Corporat Comics is a popular webcomic that represents the idiosyncrasies of corporate world, the boring conferences over zoom calls, deadlines, annoying clients and a lot of weekend work pressures and many more, in a humorous manner.
Animation Xpress got in touch with Corporate Comics creator and Facebook client solutions manager Shubham Khurana who is actively involved in taking digs at the corporate life and works to bring a little laughter on the stressed out corporate worker’s face.
With more than 170,000 followers on Instagram, Corporat Comics is all set to be launched as a graphic novel this year. Khurana is also trying his hands in adapting the webcominf into an animated series.
What made you venture into the field of comics? When/how many years has it been in this field?
I started creating comics even before Corporat Comics came into being; I began in 2016 with Comic Pencil. Due to my hectic and packed work life, I able to come up with a few comics. At the end of 2017, I started an all new Corporat Comics where I began to post more comics about my corporate life, and people started finding it more relatable and eventually Corporat Comics became strong enough to replace my previous comics.
Why you chose Corporat as a title for your comics?
I am a corporate person myself and was working in a corporate firm from last 11 years. In one of my meetings, I heard this saying, ‘We all are corporate rats and we all running a rat race’. This phrase got stuck in my mind and I started scribbling and ended up drawing a rat. I thought that the corporate rat will be a great representation of talking about corporate life through characters. I find Corporat a very catchy, simple pun yet very relatable to everyone, so eventually I came up with this Corporat Comics title.
Who/what is your inspiration?
I am inspired by many people and works, especially Art Spiegelmen’s Maus and Marjane Satrapi’ Persepolis graphic novel. These are the works that introduced me to this entire genre. During 2016-17 there was the advent of a lot of web comics and creators like Gavin Aung Thong and Grant Snider who inspired and influenced me and whose works I follow till date.
What is the engine behind your creative process?
I am working as a corporate fellow and still do nine to five jobs like all my followers. I do keep getting inspiration from the situations every single day at my work. There are many work instances which I find very much interesting, amusing and funny that could be turned into peculiar situations and be demonstrated. I used to make note of such instances on a regular basis.
As a corporate myself, I am always finding these sorts of solutions every other day. The intention of my comics is to be able to represent some of these situations in a fun manner even though some situations may end up extremely serious themselves. People not only relate with it but they also find them as a coping mechanism that helps them laugh a little. So these are the things that keep inspiring me to churn these situations out and put them up in the comic medium.
What was the response you are receiving from the readers?
The response is tremendous and amazing. I get a pretty high degree of engagement on every single thing that I put out. The commonest thing people used to comment or share in every post is how they find it extremely relatable. I don’t find enough time to post on platforms other than Instagram but to my surprise, my comics are being shared and circulated widely on Facebook, LinkedIn and on WhatsApp as well! Especially in the last couple of years the reach of Corporat Comics is scaling up.
Does Corporat Comics believe in bringing revolution in the corporate world?
Revolution is a strong word, but I believe in bringing some bit of a laughter in the extremely mundane and boring corporate life. I don’t know that my work will bring revolution, but I want to do so and do believe that some of my posts may mock or criticize or bring out the idiosyncrasies of corporate life. I really hope Corporat Comics adds value or makes corporate people’s lives better.
Can you tell us about your other comic, All Caps No Chill?
I started this page last year to put out some simple non-work related content. During the lockdown, I wanted to do something new which I have never tried before, so it all started there. Corporat Comics takes a lot of time and effort but All Caps No Chill is extremely simple and represents everyday life that is so relatable to everyone.
The whole idea is to put out some of these comics, situations and humours that don’t pertain to corporate life and some of these things keep occurring on every other day basis. This page is also receiving a good response and I hope it will also reach the same level as Corporat Comics.
Is there any plan to publish a Corporat comic book?
Yes there is a plan, desire and thought to put out Corporat Comics in a graphic novel form as to represent an anthology of Corporat Comics because a lot of people at various points of time approached for gifting Corporat Comics to people or colleagues at office. This year I was very keen to publish it but a lockdown occurred and the plan of publishing the anthology Corporat Comics got derailed.
Hopefully if lockdown and external situation allows then definitely Corporat Comics will be published by this year or early next year.
Are you also planning to make Corporat Comics in other languages?
I have been toying with the idea of launching it in some vernacular languages but what I realised is that a lot of corporate humour and corporate lingo is common in all work setups. So if I launch it in any other language, the humour might possibly not be as effective as it is in English.
Are there any plans of transforming the comic into an animated series?
Yes, I am really planning to come up with an animated series but the only constraint is that I am not an animator. This is something I have been planning for the last couple of months and also held talks with some people for coming up with a pilot or short form of animated video to test run the reach among the audience.
I do think that Corporat Comics has great content to put out as an animated series and I am also planning to put together the idea-script to make a short animated video. If it actually turns out good and if it appeals to the audience then it is something I look forward to too.
Does social media really help budding artists to set up their work?
I have seen a lot of evolution in social media content from the past couple of years. There are many channels coming up and I look at them as different avenues for people to express their ideas. A few decades ago artists had to approach publication houses to showcase their works but today social media has given a wide platform to explore and express ideas in a single click.
Lastly, what are the future plans of Corporat Comics?
I have to work out improvising the existing line of merchandise of Corporat Comics, which I haven’t refreshed from for a long time in terms of designs and I also have to add more new things to the list and update the merchandising. We have Corporat Comics t-shirts, posters, stickers and badges and are looking forward to adding coffee mugs, pop-sockets and masks with new designs. As discussed earlier, I plan to release a graphic novel and am also keen and open to work with brand collaborations.