Spiderman comes to India. This development, on the surface just another marketing tool, is an interesting twist on the way stories and archetypes travel and morph from culture to culture. Having itself borrowed frequently from myth (Thor, Loki, Wonder Woman, etc.), comics are refashioning their sometimes very American characters to fit a new culture:
Spider-Man India interweaves the local customs, culture and mystery of modern India, with an eye to making Spider-Man’s mythology more relevant to this particular audience. Readers of this series will not see the familiar Peter Parker of Queens under the classic Spider-Man mask, but rather a new hero – a young, Indian boy named Pavitr Prabhakar. As Spider-Man, Pavitr leaps around rickshaws and scooters in Indian streets, while swinging from monuments such as the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal.Mumbai’s (Bombay’s) first web-swinging superhero will be joined by a reinterpretation of the classic Spider-Man villain, the Green Goblin -- reinvented as a Rakshasa, an Indian mythological demon.
It's a rich culture to plunder, certainly. I'm not up on Indian comics, but there seems to be a superhero tradition of their own, obviously American-influenced, and a butt-kicking feminist superhero based on Kali. That's one I'd like to see imported here.
Here's to cultural cross-pollination.
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