Not so superhero
Hey, PFC. My first post, and it’s good to be here.
I just saw Drona, and it seems like it’s about fifteen hours of my life that I’ll never get back. Why is it that in our country of myths and heroes, strange customs and costumes, out country where the weird and the wonderful are part of everyday urban life, we cannot get our arses around the essentially simple concept of a superhero movie?
Sure, Mr. India and Krish have their fans, but let’s face facts, they’re good movies only when viewed in the context of Indian superhero movies. I keep reading about all of our stars working on some superhero project or other – I can only hope that at least one of them pays some attention to the script and story and doesn’t spend the entire budget on SFX and costumes, none of which will impress your not-so-naive current Indian movie viewer.
What’s the essential problem? It’s not like we have a shortage of superheroes. I’ll just copy in a bit of an essay I wrote on the Indian superhero for context:
Indian comics have also featured a number of interesting spec-fic
heroes, from Chacha Chowdhury’s sidekick Sabu from Jupiter to Amitabh
Bachchan as the pink-clad Supremo, in an Indrajaal Comics series
featuring Bollywood scriptwriter Gulzar, from half-machine RAW spy
Koushik to Raj Comics snake-man Nagraj. The heroes of Indrajaal
comics, notably the dashing detective Bahadur, commanded genuine cult
appeal and are cherished collectors’ items today. The superheroes of
Raj, Diamond and Manoj comics also inspired a considerable fan
following in India, thriving on local content, the intrinsic appeal of
comics and the lack of high-quality alternatives. Comprehensive lists
are available on the Internet, created lovingly by fans who grew up
devouring the adventures of Indrajaal Comics heroes Mandrake the
Magician and Lee Falk’s Phantom – indeed, the lack of memorable Indian
superheroes is even more ironic when one considers that the Phantom,
widely believed to be the first comics action hero to wear a
skin-tight costume, was originally based in India, in the ‘Bengalla’
forests, and his first enemies were the Singh Brotherhood.
There are a surprisingly large number of Indian superheroes out there
in the universes created by Marvel and DC, which no doubt means that
there is a significant market among the South Asian diaspora for the
comic series they feature in. And since Gotham comics started
distributing Marvel and DC comics in India a few years ago, the demand
can only have increased. The only thing that hasn’t happened yet,
alas, is research. Indian characters continue to fit into standard
roles, and we’re yet to see a South Asian comics hero who does for
South Asians what Luke Cage did for African Americans, or what Northstar did for the gay community. And the arrival of Virgin Comics,and
potentially other comic-book companies in its wake if its projects
turn out to be successful, mean that the mainstream speculative comic
becomes a tremendously exciting avenue of exploration for the South
Asian writer and artist, both in its existing form and in potentially
reinvented forms. Which is not to say that writers outside the
subcontinent can’t create South Asian convincing spec-fic comicbook
heroes; just that they haven’t really bothered to, yet, as the
following list of Indian superheroes currently stomping around in the
West will demonstrate. While the list is by no means comprehensive, it
serves as a pointer to the roles available for South Asians in comics
published worldwide today – and also reveals, alarmingly, that the
Indian superheroes created in America, by and large, aren’t
particularly any better or more convincing than the American-clone
superheroes created in India.
Bombaby, the Screen Goddess, was a creation of Slave Labor Graphics,
California, starring Saira Banu-esque Sangeeta Mukherjee, dutiful
daughter (!), struggling sister, potential arranged marriage victim
(!) and avatar of that well-known Hindu deity (!), the goddess of
Mumbai (?)
Grant Morrison, one of the brightest talents in comics worldwide,
mind-bending writer of The Invisibles and Animal Man, came up with
Vimanarama, where a young British-Asian boy named Ali, whose father
runs a corner-shop (!) in Bradford (!) accidentally releases ancient
monsters who want, of course, to destroy the world, and can only be
stopped by the Ultra-Hadeen, a team of giant metal-clad
Vishnu-avatar-esque superheroes similar to Jack Kirby’s Eternals.
Featured Bollywood (!) inspired artwork starring many lotuses.
DC comics’ deadliest assassin, Lady Shiva, isn’t Indian, but is
worshipped by turban-wearing fanatics (!) as an avatar (!) of Shiva
(!) the famous Hindu goddess of death (?)
Chandi Gupta, a DC Justice Leage Europe (JLE) member, was left by her
parents with a cult (!) who, again, thought she was a Shiva
incarnation (?). This cult was evil (!) and planned to sacrifice her.
Like all clever Indians, Chandi turned NRI – in London, where she
lived under the name Maya, she helped the JLE win a battle, and then
joined them. On one of her earliest missions, she encountered and
defeated her former guru, (!) the Mahayogi (!)
Adri Nitall, was an unfortunate young lad from the village of Jajpur
(!) who was turned into a vampire by Marvel’s version of Dracula’s
minions, while his father, Taj (!) Nitall, hunted vampires with Van
Helsingh.
Black Box aka Commcast, Garabed Bashur (?), is a Marvel supervillain
from India, who, now that India is a known IT hub, is a cyberpath who
can psychically process electronic data. Right up there with Bashur in
terms of common Indian names is Shakti Haddad, a genetics expert
code-named Cerebra, who co-founded the X-Men of the future. Their
names, however, fade into insignificance when confronted by Chris
Claremont’s IT genius Muaharam Ram. Chris Claremont, one of superhero
comicdom’s most respected writers, is also a frequent Indian character
introducer, which is nice, except that his Indians are terrible
caricatures like the bindi-wearing Amina Synge (?) or his two most
famous Indian characters, Neal Sharra (?), or Thunderbird, who is from
Calcutta, in Bangladesh and Assam (!), where his family owns a tea
plantation and runs the Indian National Police (?). His lover, Karima
Shapandar (?), the Omega Sentinel, is a former Indian National Police
operative doomed to destroy mutants like Neal, which might have been a
good idea.
Of course, some Indian characters are better drawn than others – where
‘better’ is taken to mean ‘no obvious mistakes.’ Jinx, an Indian
elemental sorceress, is a relatively inoffensive DC supervillain.
Paras Gavaskar, or Indra, is a mutant Marvel superhero from the New
X-Men, who is probably one of the most believable Indian superheroes
out there. Fortunately there’s nothing Hindu or god-like about him, he
just has retractable armour plates. Spiderman India, an interesting
relocation of the world’s favourite web-crawler, featured a lungi-clad
teenager named Pavitr Prabhakar taking on green goblin/rakshas and a
multi-armed Doc Octopus-esque Hindu demon, and drew a lot of media
attention in India, where even mainstream literary coverage is
minimal.
The winner of the prize for best-done Indian comics character goes to
Fables creator Bill Willingham, for his stylish, smart and clich'©-free
version of the Jungle Book gang – Mowgli, a world-roaming secret agent
who goes under the name of Vincent Jagatbehari, is an excellent
creation and probably the only charismatic Indian in world comics
today, and Kipling’s animals are well extrapolated from the book.
Of course, given how rare well-rounded (emotionally, that is)
characters are in mainstream comics as a whole, and that the new
evolved spec-fic comicbook (Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen, Sandman, Preacher, Transmetropolitan, Fables, V for
Vendetta, Hellboy) is essentially a product of the last two decades,
the result of the maturing of an industry after years of professionals
gaining expertise and experimenting with the form, it seems
unreasonable to expect a wave of intelligent, fully formed South Asian
heroes to emerge immediately, no matter how demanding the market. But
given time, opportunities and a sufficiently large wave of talented
writers and artists, there’s no reason why Indians shouldn’t be a
significant force in the evolution of the superhero comicbook,
adapting it to create new, exciting, entertaining and enriching
varieties of speculative fiction. It’s actually possible now, for the
very first time.
Ok, I clearly wrote that a long time ago. But let’s look at the picture as it is today. Dark Knight has just broken down most of the barriers constructed against the superhero genre – superhero films have been mainstream commercial blockbusters for a long time, of course, but this is the first time people are seriously talking Oscar nominations in the major categories – and Marvel Studios are going to make a whole line-up of movies that will end up becoming an Avengers movie. The superhero bubble won’t last forever, not in the fickle world of film – so if there’s any time to get it right, that time is now.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
a day of welcomes!!!
Welcome to PFC Samit and a killer line “I just saw Drona, and it seems like it’s about fifteen hours of my life”
I devoured Indrajal comics as a kid. Still remember the sound effects for fights: “Thak!” in Bahadur comics.
But what exactly has happened to Gotham comics? Haven’t seen any new comics for over three years now.
The Mahabharat would make a wonderful epic Lord of the Rings style 3 hours-each trilogy
Gotham comics closed down
Nice essay Samit,.Thanks
Lot of information is here in your essay,.
When I was very young, my father used to buy me lot of comic books from the pavements of Pune streets,
( I was lucky)
Like Phantom, Mandrake, Chaha Chaudhary and other Diamond comics,
Spiderman, Batman, Superman,. from DC & Marvel
That time I was majorly into Spiderman,
And then one day; years later
I saw “Indian Spiderman”, And I became Angry young man,
It was an Insult!!!
I didn’t find Indian Spiderman interesting at all.
Pavitr Prabhakar for Peter Parker
And Meera Jain is for Mary Jain (utter nonsense)
I felt so humiliated by this Indian Spiderman;
That time I was doing designs for
Marvel’s “Wolverine & the X-Men “(Animated Series),.
And people over there ridiculing this “Pavitr Spidrman”.
And why not, It is ridiculous indeed,
Spiderman wearing Dhoti and Mojadi , (Shoes) WAH!!!!
There should be purpose behind the costumes;
Indian thing doesn’t mean wearing dhotis and bindi (Pavitr Spidy ko bindiya bhi hai)
Check out:
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i24/thewolfsisters/spiderman_long1.jpg
I prefer “Makkad man”
http://www.makkadman.com/
would love to see Simoquin on screen.
Makkad man was fantastic!
someone needs to make a movie on Naagraaj in bollywood it can work
he is india’s answer to superman
Supremo wasn’t an Indrajaal hero. There was another short lived publishing house- I think it was called Star comics.
It is ‘Star Comics’(IBH)
A warm welcome, Samit. It’s an honor to have you here. Waiting to read more about your writing excursions for the Game World Trilogy, and on Devi, and more on what you think of all the Hollywood superhero projects in the pieline. They seem to be multiplying by the hour!
Yet to check out Untouchable.
@Shekhar, we did discuss desi Spiderman long back here.
http://passionforcinema.com/spiderman-india-your-friendly-expatr-superhero/
For all others, here are 2 short stories of Samit available online:
The Plasmoids
http://www.sffworld.com/authors/b/basu_samit/fiction/plasmoids2.html
Roundabout – a Delhi Fable
http://samitbasu.blogspot.com/2005/08/roundabout-delhi-fable.html
At the risk of sounding star-struck…..OHMIGOD!!!!!
Samit Basu on PFC!!!!
Might I add my own warm welcome to the author’s club…. hope to be dazzled by your posts in the days to come, just as I was enthralled by the Game World books!!!
Pawan, Shekhar: Thanks for the Star Comics correction. Didn’t know about them.
Tushar, Aditya, Nizam: Thanks. It’s good to be here. I’d been following the site for a while, and love the, well, passion for cinema on it.
Hi Samit; Welcome ;
I didn’t realize that you are the ‘Samit Basu’,
Author of “The Simoqin Prophecies”,
I would love to design the characters in “GameWorld Trilogy”.