Loosely translated, what makes me angry?

Pavitr Prabhakar, for one.

Right then, for those who have been yet unbombarded by a certain press release from this Indian company called Gotham comics ( would you believe I got twelve offline messages with the same link plastered all over it? ), Pavitr Prabhakar happens to be the Indian version of Spiderman. The name is a play on Peter Parker ( snicker, snicker, get it, all those people who have been thinking up names like Maikalal Jaikishen and Hari Puttar? Your brand of humour is being appreciated! ), and the press release says that he has been blessed with his powers by a sadhu, and he "leaps around rickshaws and scooters in Indian streets, while swinging from monuments such as the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal". He fights rakshasas. And he wears a dhoti and something that resembles your average Rajasthani jooti. There are stylish pinups scattered throughout the page, drawn by one Mr Jeevan J Kang, India's "superstar artist".

Are you laughing yet?

This is sick. Fine, so you can tell me things like "reinvention" (Marvel comics-"Gotham is helping us to expand the Marvel brand with a truly global vision.") and "transcreation" ( "Unlike traditional translations of American comics, Spider-Man India will become the first-ever ‘transcreation" - Sharad Devarajan, CEO, Gotham comics) I do realize I don't have the right to form an opinion against something that hasn't been released yet. Frankly speaking, I would give everything a chance, even the Halle Berry Catwoman movie, beyond redemption though it may be. But certain things irk me. Certain things piss me off BIG time. Bad ideas are one. Plagiarisation is another. Needless Hype even more so.

I think I have reached the end of my tether, as far as Mr Jeevan "The Genius" Kang ( that's how his name is being touted on the pages of Gotham comics, by the way), and Gotham Comics' atrocious new idea is concerned.

You know what? The only bit of artwork that Jeevan Kang has been doing on all those cool pinups is the dhoti. He's blatantly plagiarising artists like Alex Ross and Mark Bagley. Take a look at this piece of art, from the Gotham website and this one one, drawn by Alex Ross for the Spiderman movie. Exactly the same, except with a little digital brush-up and the dhoti, that too drawn by someone who has very little knowledge of perspective. The others are pretty familiar , most of them look like Mark Bagley's covers for Ultimate Spider-Man. And with whatever knowledge of comics I have, let me say this - anybody can draw pinups. Any one can get away with drawing folded legs and a swingy pose. But that's not what a comic-book is. It's a combination of a coherent, sensible storyline that's driven by pictures. A sensible storyline comes out of well-formed ideas. The kind of hype that's being formed around Pavitr Prabhakar has nothing to do with good ideas, trust me on that.

So it's about a kid who's got superpowers. Never mind the fact that his "origin" is the hackniest type of origin-stories ever. Does anyone realise that every Indian mythological TV series/horror show has the protagonist getting powers from a saint or a mystic? Think of ANY of those eighties B-films or Sunday serials involving kids with powers and you have a yogi somewhere bestowing boons on youngsters who have earnest expressions on their faces. Our storytellers and scriptwriters have nothing else to think about when they want mystical powers. That's what happens when you don't read comics, morons. Digression: Do you also notice that every horror movie has to end in some kind of a mystical fakir or baba or bibi who comes and shoves a trident into whatever's-causing-the-supernatural-brouahaha. (no, not the director) Or failing that, makes the hero shove a trident into etc etc. Screenwriters in India have this Exorcist fixation, I tell you.

There have been reinterpretations of Peter Parker before. You had Ultimate Spiderman where Brian Bendis retold the 60's story in the 90's, making Peter Parker a young, geeky teenager in the contemporary world. There was a manga-fied version of the Spiderman myth, called Rise of The Spider-Clan which modified the storyline to one involving Japanese Ninja Clans. But none of these went and made punny changes to names and settings. Uncle Ben will become Bhanu Chacha and Mary Jane will be Meera Jain, I suppose? Gah! Why couldn't Gotham comics come up with a superhero of their own? Why capitalise on an American myth to come up with an Indian one? Are we that starved of ideas?

This is India-pimping of the worst kind.