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Spider-Man in India

Posted by michael on from the spidey-sense-is-tingling dept.

Lord Omlette writes "I'm really surprised no one else has mentioned this, but Spider-Man is getting redone in India! As an Indian-American, I'm quite excited. (Let's get it out of the way: even our comic book heroes are being outsourced, wtf!) The manga version of Star Wars was pretty good, but off the top of my head I can't think of any other comic books that were redone for a completely different culture. Anyone?"

3 of 358 comments (clear)

  1. What's he going to swing on? by l810c · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Spiderman's a character built on the premise of New York. Nothing against India, his character wouldn't work well in my home city of Atlanta either. They just don't have the rows and rows and rows of skyscrapers for him to climb up, scale over and swing through. He would kinda lose that advantage.

    And what's with the bottoms? American spiderman doesn't ware suit pants. Is this to make him look more Indian or would there be a cultural backlash against tights?

    1. Re:What's he going to swing on? by cygnusx · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's called a "dhoti". Allegedly more Indian, although you'd be hard-pressed to find a under-40 Indian wear one outside of a religious ceremony or political gathering. Looking through the changes, they are cute. Pavitr Prabhakar makes me laugh - it sounds *forced*.

      I like Spiderman, but for this to take off, Gotham Comics India better get their "localization" right - cosmetic changes like Parker -> Prabhakar are miles away from understanding what the typical (i.e., *not* English-speaking) Indian comic reader is looking for. And the Indian language audience already has lots of comic publishers (most notably Diamond) who do a far better job of creating characters that Indian language readers relate to. The (far smaller but still large) English language audience would never stand for something like this (has "cheap knockoff" written all over it) because they would rather read the originals.

      (offtopic) Of late /. has been accepting a lot of story submissions that originally appeared on Boing Boing days ago so here's a tip to get the stories early: use the Boing Boing slashbox.

  2. Re:Am I the only one saying WTF? by pla · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because the movie Spider Man was one of the top grossing movies in India.

    So let me get this straight... Indians loved Spider Man, so to capitalize on that, they plan to completely change him to make him more Indian.

    Riiiiiiight... So considering the popularity of Anime among geeks, Disney should add a more American touch to it? IIRC, Studio Ghibli had to invoke a minor miracle to prevent Disney from turning movies like Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta into Mickey's Vacation in Laputa.

    Strange. I will never understand the corporate world.