The New York Magazine delves deeper into a story that hit the news over a month ago, about a new Indian Spiderman comic. Author Sukhdev Sandhu writes:
Farewell, Peter Parker; namaste, Pavitr Prabhakar. His fiefdom is the mean streets of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) instead of Manhattan. When crisis calls, he still dons his Spidey bodysuit, but he also sports a billowing dhoti and a pair of snazzy curl-toed slippers on his feet. The Green Goblin, his chief enemy, now takes the form of a rakshasa, a demon drawn from Indian mythology.
According to the article this brand of outsourcing has stirred up controversy among comic book purists (i.e. geeks) worldwide. India may be finally ready for a western superhero though, as it becomes an ever more industrialized nation. Continuing:
If the creative talent needed to bring an Indian version of Spider-Man to life is almost in place, so is the social context. Metropolis, Gotham City, Opal City—comics were both a product of and a commentary on the twentieth-century American city in all its exhilaration, capitalist energy, and sprawling loneliness. Until recently, India didn’t have enough urban breeding grounds for would-be superheroes.
Will this little experiment work? Will Indians be open to an imported hero when they have had a long tradition of their own comic book heroes in the form of the Amar Chitra Katha series? I remember when people thought that Coke couldn’t compete with Thumbs Up. I was one of them.
