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By Tom Marcinko
Picture this: A global pop-culture renaissance out of India. Headquartered in New York and Bangalore,
a small army of writers and artists unleashes a new breed of
India-infused comic books and Asian-edged animated film.These
works captivate the world on a scale previously achieved only by Hollywood, Japan or rock and hip-hop. They shape new mythologies for the 21st century.
That’s the vision
behind Virgin Comics and Animation, a media company founded by an
unlikely group of business partners: Deepak Chopra, the renowned
self-help author; Richard Branson, whose Virgin Enterprises business
empire covers travel, entertainment, mobile phones, lifestyle products,
and, recently, space tourism; filmmaker Shekhar Kapur; and South Asian
comics publisher Gotham Entertainment Group. The joint venture also
includes Chopra’s son, Gotham.
Sharad Devarajan, CEO of Virgin Comics, sees his mission as twofold: First, to captivate India’s
reading public — already fans of Western and Japanese comics and
animation — with high-grade home-grown material. Second, to make India
a major player in the global culture market. “Specifically, I
think the American audience has an appetite for something new and
different,” he says, pointing to India’s perennial influence in music, fashion and film and to Hollywood’s
numerous big-screen projects that began as comic books. That means not
just Batman and Superman but also “Road to Perdition,” “A History of
Violence” and “Ghost World.”  Few would question India's
worldwide impact on the arts and sciences, on literature and fashion
and on politics and philosophy. Indian film, both highbrow and
Bollywood, continues to inspire the moviemakers of many nations, so an
influential wave of Indian pop-culture certainly seems possible.
Still: comic
books? That's where Virgin has decided to start. Where it will end
is anybody's guess — and the visionaries behind the company plan to
take it pretty far.
Virgin Comics is actually three imprints, or lines, of
comics. The Shakti imprint, from the Sanskrit word for “power,”
will tell stories illustrated in India
and loosely based on Indian myth. It debuts July 12 with “Devi,”
the story of a goddess reborn as a young woman who fights crime in
modern Sitapur. Also slated to be released as part of the Shakti
line are “Snakewoman,” created by Kapur about an L.A.
woman possessed by a demon, and “The Sadhu,” the story of a young man
who abandons enlightenment for revenge. The latter tale is
written by Gotham Chopra, who was one of the executive producers of the
Chow Yun-Fat film “Bulletproof Monk” and is chief creative officer at
Virgin Comics.
A second imprint,
Director’s Cut — named after a movie director’s preferred version of
his or her film — will be devoted to comics by creators best-known for
cinema. Famed Hong Kong
director John Woo’s comic “Seven Brothers” will make its debut as part
of the line later this summer. And the third imprint, Maverick
Comics, will feature works by leading talents in the graphic-novel
business.
But even with
such grandiose plans and big names, can India-infused comics find a
worldwide audience? In 2004, Jeevan J. Kang scripted and drew
“Spider-Man: India,”
a four-issue miniseries published by Marvel Comics to coincide with the
release of the second Spider-Man movie. The Indian "transcreation," as
Devarajan calls it, was well-received in India, the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere, providing some of the inspiration for Virgin Comics.
In “Spider-Man: India,”
the face under the famous mask is familiar – sort of.
Mumbai-dwelling teen misfit Pavitr Prabhakar gains superhuman
powers. This time, though, they come not from the bite of a mutant
spider, but by karmic decree from a godlike being. Kang portrays the
familiar villains Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus as demons of Hindu
mythology. Characters use modern Hindi slang and make knowing
Bollywood references (glossary thoughtfully provided). But like his New York
counterpart, Pavitr learns the hard way that “with great power there
must also come great responsibility.” Some things are true in
every culture.
 Devarajan
— who as CEO of Gotham Entertainment Group has Indian rights to 700
Western-hemisphere titles, from X-Men to The Powerpuff Girls —says the
time is right for new heroes drawn from India’s deep well of myth and
legend: “A new wave of characters that simultaneously appeal to
audiences from Boston to Beijing to Bangalore.”
Certainly the reading audience for visual thrills is expanding. In the U.S.,
the market for graphic novels grew by almost 45 percent in the year to
date, says Virgin Books Executive Chairman Adrian Sington. In the U.K., he adds, the market has doubled since 2003. The boom in both places is driven largely by comics coming out of Asia.
In fact, Devarajan
says, “today's Western world has an increasing global appetite for the
most engaging content, regardless of its cultural affiliation. If you
told parents 10 years ago in America
that their children would know characters named Yu Gi Oh! and Pokemon
as well as they would Spider-Man, those parents would have thought you
were crazy -- yet in America today an estimated 30 percent of major children's animated programming is now Japanese animation.”
Indeed, go to any
large bookstore and you’re likely to notice racks of Japanese manga
books. Japanese anime has become a staple of U.S.
culture, and the forces behind Virgin Comics hope lightning will strike
twice. But, says Kapur: “The success of the Indian comic book and its
related offshoots will come not from copying manga, but from using the
base of existing Indian mythology and art, and creating a unique
product that has international appeal. Just like manga did.”
Virgin Comics plans to go beyond the printed page with its wholly owned subsidiary Virgin Animation, slated to open in Bangalore
next year with a start-up staff of 250 artists and writers. Its
mission is to bring Virgin Comics content to the movies and TV, and
eventually, to video games, toy, clothing and more.
Even
with the buzz about the products, the art and the stories, many
industry-watcher's eyes are fixated on what Deepak Chopra’s involvement
will be.
When the
multimedia venture was announced, the elder Chopra declared: “I
see an opportunity to bring to our society a message that goes beyond
the narrow boundaries of nationalism, and invites them to a domain of
awareness where we experience our universality and hopefully go beyond
racism, ethnocentrism, bigotry, prejudice and hatred. The new
superheroes will be hybrids of all cultures helping us dream infinite
possibilities and actualize our highest potential.”
That’s certainly
something to picture, but before pop culture achieves anything on that
scale, it needs to grab the audience, and Chopra seems to get that. His
forthcoming novel about Buddha delves into the avatar’s
“pre-enlightenment” life of action, adventure, lust and rage. It sounds
like a good idea for a comic book, and Virgin is planning to publish
it. |
