Meet Spiderman, the friendly Indian

Get used to this name: Pavitr Prabhakar. A frail-looking Indian boy, he will soon be the new avatar of Peter Parker aka Spiderman.Marvel Com...

Get used to this name: Pavitr Prabhakar. A frail-looking Indian boy, he will soon be the new avatar of Peter Parker aka Spiderman.

Marvel Comics, in association with Gotham Entertainment Group, have decided to give a new face and spin to the adventures of Spiderman. Come July, when the superhero with the webbed hands unmasks in Mumbai, it will be Pavitr who will emerge, ready to take on an evil Rakshas, who in the original comic strip was the nefarious Green Goblin. In the Indian version, Pavitr gets his magical powers from a yogi.

The locales of the new Spiderman adventures will be all in India, including some exciting chases on two-wheelers and autorickshaws through the streets of Agra, culminating in a battle at the Taj Mahal, and a struggle to save the world at the Gateway of India. India-based Jeevan Kang has done the artwork for the comic strips.

Sharad Devarajan, CEO, Gotham Entertainment, said in an e-mail interview to The Indian Express that the reinvention of Spiderman is not just a gimmick to boost sales of the comic strip, especially with the Spider-Man 2 movie soon to be screened, but 8216;8216;epitomises the globalisation taking place between India and the US8217;8217;.

He says that the comic strip, with Pavitr as the hero, will not only be released in India, but also in the US, at a later date.

8216;8216;Marvel is working with our studio to completely reinvent the whole Spiderman mythology, to remake it set in India with all the characters and villains being Indians. This will allow us to interweave his origins, powers and costume with local customs and mythologies,8217;8217; says Devarajan. 8216;8216;Unlike traditional translations, this is what we call a true transcreation, making an American hero also a local hero.8217;8217;

In India, Gotham Entertainment brings out comics in English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Malayalam.

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But it will be the first time though that a superhero will be seen in an ethnic identity anywhere in the world.

Obvously, the re-invention of Spiderman is a strong indication of the qualitative growth of the animation industry in India, and acceptance by the West of a powerful market.

Incidentally, a soothsayer to the Spiderman phenomenon was director Shekhar Kapur, who at the recent Bollywood awards in Singapore, said that as countries like India and China rival the Western economic superpowers, there will be a reverse cultural colonisation. 8216;8216;We will still have Spiderman, but when Spiderman takes off his mask, he will probably be Chinese or Indian,8217;8217; Kapur predicted. Now we know he was right.