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Mere Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai

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.

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65 thoughts on “Mere Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai”

  1. Albert Pinto.

    And spiderman is sposed to be hero of A CITY, New York. It seems they will make him hop from Gateway of India to Taj Mahal. India is a big village or what?

    TO cool you off, will give you a ride to Mithaas & back :D Happy?

    Reply

  4. No.
    Please tell me that the “Press Release” page is fake.
    Please tell me that there does exist a custom called “June fool” and this is a June fool joke.
    oh God, no!

    Reply

    • Ah, one of those trick questions again….

      I will definitely flip through the pages when it comes out. And then, well, decisions shall be taken.

      Expect another LJ-post on this in the near future.

      Reply

  10. I agree – the whole thing stinks. Why do they have to Indianize superman, instead of creating a new superhero from scratch?

    And for some reason the new “Superman” reminds me more of Chacha Choudhray of Diamond Comics! Har har!

    Reply

  11. To me, it seems like a good idea gone wrong. Good because Spidey could have reached to a larger audience who probably would have liked Pavitr better than Peter as they could relate to the former more (I am not talking about the hard core comic fan here). Bad because they could have easily kept the supernatural away and stuck with the original tech science plots. In fact, minimal changes just enough to indianize the character and location is what would have been appropriate. They shouldn’t have mingled with the rest.

    //Why capitalise on an American myth to come up with an Indian one?//
    I see it more as an extension of the Spider man concept aimed basically to increase business rather than an indian dearth of new ideas.

    BTW, you write with such passion that it seems that you will just get up and strangle/slaughter all people involved in this. :)

    Reply

    • Remaking/Recreating/Indianizing/any-such-bullcrap anything to suit *Indian* tastes is never a good idea it can only be wrong. Any faithful comic reader or movie-goer (irrespective of his origin) will never accept a Pavitr Prabhakar over Peter Parker because he knows the original already. Some one who is not a hard core comic fan would rarely browse through a comic book section, so, his view hardly matters!

      Harry Potter, the book has been released in Hindi. But the English copies sell better.

      This more often ends up being like remaking Hollywood movies to suit *Indian* tastes and screwing up the whole thing. The original is ALWAYS superior. This is an welcome move. Period.

      Reply

    • Reinvention is a good idea, I heartily agree. Spiderman was a product of the sixties, and a reader, thirty years later, cannot be expected to follow the storyline as it was set up then, without changes coming in. I therefore applaud attempts at reinvention.

      Now, Pavitr Prabhakar.

      Larger audience, you say, who would have probably liked Pavitr better because they can relate to him. First thing is, you are banking on the fact that a reader( a kid or an adult), however his stunted his knowledge of comics may be, would come looking for something called “Spiderman” just because a dhoti-clad superhero comic is there on the stands. I think the only people who are interested in this particular bit of comic-book hype are those who have read Spiderman, or know about the character – face it, he’s an international icon. For curiousity’s sake, and for increasing saleability of the first issue, it’s a nice ploy. An unknown comicbook character would hardly garner the same kind of attention that an Indianised Icon already has.

      But what does it say about the Sorry State of Comicbooks? Can’t ANYONE come up with a nice readable comicbook with an identifiable character that does not rely on something created by someone in the 60’s? It’s like a major player (in this case, Sharad Devarajan and Gotham Comics) throwing their hands up and saying – “we can’t do this. We can’t create a new comicbook. Let’s rip off something already popular, license it, and then make Gullible Indians buy it.”

      Which, in my opinion, clearly sucks. For one, hardcore comic fans are being shown the finger, and non-comic book fans aren’t being given anything new. IF everything that comes to India is Indianised, we can very well stop watching Hollywood movies unless you have characters in them renamed to the appropriate phonetic parallel, and move the setting to India, so that we can “relate” to them more and thereby attain Nirvana. Ditto for books and novels and TV serials.

      All those licensing deals they have, all that Industry power that a monopolist can wield, and THIS is what Gotham comes up with. Shame!

      And yes, I know I am taking this extremely personally. That’s just me, I guess.

      Reply

  13. meera jain?

    hurts.
    Gobby being ‘reinvented’ as an asura?
    Holy Indrajaal Comics Meets Raaka, Batman!!

    am a classic, grade-a, webhead.
    and can totally empathise with all the angst in your StanLee worshipping pants.

    but, like I did when I first had to defend Ultimate Spiderman when it came out, I look for positives on any Spidey news. [You have to admit retelling the mythos was a massively ambitious effort, and it took all the talent of a Bendis to pull it off as well as he has, and the initial indignation of the purists died down.]

    Only two alternatives I can think of that can save this catastrophic effort:

    1. Based on the ridiculous dhoti drawings: If they decide not to take the whole thing Spidey-seriously, and turn it into a tongue-in-cheek spoofy sorta thing and have fun with it, it might actually not be half-bad. [Then again, considering our senseofhumour is still measured by David Dhawan movies and PiyushPandey advertisements, this is one helluva long shot!]

    2. Serioussam and I write it.

    Reply

  14. Part-1: The Drome

    Bored and dazed with the offerings of this drab afternoon,You, Dear Reader,are churfing on the nuero-ether, trying to catch the song of the millennium, by that prince among all stars that had morphed into rock-stars on the rocky dumb-holes of Phonom, the androgynous artist now represented only by the enigmatic symbol (!)(o).

    When suddenly you catch something interesting. You pause. an act unknown in the lifetime of a churfer nowadays. And stare in consternation at your retina-implanted nano-screen.

    Your eyes shut wide, unable to move on, for what is transpiring on that retinal space is something beyond your wildest daymares………..

    The scene shifts to the the interior of the Prom@He Holodrome. Yes, Dear Reader since the 15th century, the alphabet has evolved. @ (pronounced ath ) is now the 1Dth alphabet. @# ( pronounced pha) and $% ( pronounced ak ) being the 1Bth and 1Cth respectively. And yes, decimal was in vogue only till the 2nd millennium.

    Well maybe, “interior” is not the best way to describe the situation, for how do you enter a Hologram, which exists only in the 1Ath fractal dimension ? But I believe I have conveyed the virgeography well enough for an intelligence as immature as yours. And in that suspended theatre that we know very well, a translucent bionic compere holds centredrome.

    And starts to babble……

    ……….Welcome to the Final Round of the Mrissix PissedOff Contest. After the exciting Who-can-piss-the-longest? and Who-can-piss-someone-else-off-the-quickest? rounds, we have three utterly pissed off contestants left in the loo, er…fray.

    , , and for the last time,

    I can understand your consternation, Dear Reader, but we live in parallel multiverses nowadays and there are as many beatzos as there are universes and yes, a total of 2A beatzos did participate in the earlier rounds of this contest, Of that remarkable number, three alone survive to tell the tale.

    Ladies,Gentleman and Pogoms, please put your hands and tentacles together for the three contestants. And all you beautiful people out there, please don’t go away. For we will be back soon with the final, bed-wetting, Question and Answer round of this exciting contest. Do join me, after the break.

    Nonads of the primary sponsors of this prestigious contest are broadcast on the neuro-ether. Asspissrin,the well known pain reliever ( “Pissed off? Enemate an Asspissrin” ), Pissa Hut, the famous Pizza chain ( “Even If we do not piss you off in 1E minutes, the Pizza comes”) and Apiss Heliconcordes, the last name in transportation ( “We have No. 2. We try harder..”) roll on your nano – screen for the next 3C seconds. The screen flickers momentarily as we establish contact again with the Prom@He Holodrome.

    Consult glossary at the end of part 2 for enlightenment on unfamiliar terms.

    Reply

  15. Part-2: The Question

    And we are back. The fractal Xamera takes a long shot of the screaming audience, then slowly pans over to the glittering stage filled with our three lovely contestants, lingering for a few moments on each breathtaking ( yes, beatzo breathes, and does not live in a coffin as is the well spread rumor ) face and finally sweeps over to the translucent compere, now draped in a diaphanous, phosporscent caul. The cheers from the crowds die down as the compere launches into the next stage of the competition.

    Compere : Welcome back. I needed that break. My bladder and myself are both relieved. [His translucency makes that obvious for everyone to see…]
    Now to get back to the competition, Ladies,Gentleman and Pogoms, may I welcome the winner of last year’s competition to put the deciding question to today’s contestants.

    I give you, the utterly detestable and perpetually toxified,

    The metronomes do their bit and work up a crescendo as bloggolb enters, customary joint in hand and licking his lips as if he has just enemated one of those famous Pissa Hut Pizzas. The fact that he has put on weight can probably be attributed to regular ingestion of the bottle of Whisda that we see sticking out of his buttonhole. In this era of parallel universes, accomodating buttonholes, like assholes, are in vogue.

    Bloggolb : Without wasting the time of our contestants and of the esteemed pubic…hic…sorry…public, let me get to the all-important question rightaway….hic [ Here he pauses, no, not to sing out the question like an archeopteryx in heat, but merely to take a swig from the all-important whisda bottle. Old timers chuckle at this distinctive bloggolbism while the rest of the world awaits with bated breath]

    Beatzo, Beatzo and Beatzo. Granted, that you do not like Pavitr Prabhakar and what Kang has done, but if Gotham comics gives you the carte blanche on creating the Indian version of spidey, what would you do differently? And why ?

    With breath as bated as before the delivery of the question, the multiverse and all its spotlights now turn on beatzo. In this moment of truth, in this moment when all limits of pissed-off-and-on-ness has been transgressed, can Beatzo deliver? We will be back in the concluding epissode of this bizarre drama that we call “In which Beatzo gives it those ones”.

    Dear Readers, You can now switch off your retinal nano-screens and open your eyes. And read the glossary in Part 3 if you want to.

    Reply

    • The Answer.

      At first there was Nothing.

      Then Something shouted “Lights!” and pissed Nothing off.

      Certain Universes hold this as the first instance of theMrissix PissedOff Contest.

      Just some useful information I thought I would share, and perfectly beside the point. The point, of course, is the question that was just put to me.

      I think, I ponder, and I come to a conclusion. There is an answer. It’s peeping into this frame of existence and readying itself to leap into This Now. But Now is not the time, and This is not the place. I sigh. And I reply –

      The Answer deserves a seperate post.

      And stop that infernal screaming, the lot of you!!!

      Reply

  16. Part-3: The Glossary

    Glossary:

    churfer : Beings who surf channels on the neuro-ether. From channel + surfer. See also neuro-ether

    daymare : Conventional nightmares, experienced during the days. Of course, there is no such thing as a night nowadays, what with the Sun changing into a cold white dwarf in the last century and the manufactured machinations of Hellos and Hullos the current artificial twin-sun cluster.

    dumb-hole : The acoustic equivalent of a black hole. That from which no sound can escape. Occurs when sound travels at the speed of light.

    eat : An extinct activity among higher life forms, now mainly seen in pagan human societies.

    enemate : ingesting nutrition and toxins through the anal passage. The previous, conventional ( and unconventional) anal usage also exists in parallel. Compare eat

    epissode : An episode of the Mrissix PissedOff Contest.

    heliconcorde : Cross between a helicopter and a concorde. Lowest form of transport available. Similar to the greyhound buses of yore.

    holodrome : It does not really exist, so don’t bother.

    mrissix : Mr + Miss + x . the x represents everyone who is neither a male nor a female.

    neuro-ether : the mother of all haddock ( as opposed to adhoc) networks, formed from Wireless Neural connections between individuals , carries everything from thoughts to Whisda nonads but mainly carries porn. Also known as the eroto-ether and the euphemestic steatomammonet.

    nonads : Nano-ads , made to fit on implanted retinal nano-screens.

    pogoms : Lower forms of life, including intelligent programs and humans. Possibly derived from pagans, programs or an unholy combination of both.

    whisda : A drink combining Scotch Whiskey and Soda. Some say also Mescalin.

    virgeography : Virtual Geography. The hottest academic field since fractal economics was debunked last year.

    Xamera : A camera capable of rendering every image with pornographic distortions. A registered Penisonic trademark

    Reply

  17. News Flash : Comic book publishers will pimp ideas for moolah < sarcasm implied >
    How is it worse than : Elseworlds, Imaginary worlds, The cure comics (yes, audience the thrash-metal-outfitted sounds-like-sting band), Batmite, Spiderman and Jayleno.

    Do I blame J.J.Kang ? No, if you have lived most of your life with a name like that, I can completely understand your tendencies to mangle a few names. No wonder he is a superstar artist, God – the great equalizer.

    Sunday serials involving kids with powers and you have a yogi somewhere bestowing boons on youngsters
    Err.. I think thats the stuff most people consider religion. Besides the neither-man-nor-beast can kill,
    neither-day-nor-night stuff I don’t recall that kinda stuff on t.v.Watchutalkingabt?

    Are we that starved of ideas?
    I have a feeling our superstar comes cheap, and its so much easier to change the goblin into a rakshasa:
    voila! Instant comic book success ! No?

    Reply

    • Besides the neither-man-nor-beast can kill, neither-day-nor-night stuff I don’t recall that kinda stuff on t.v.Watchutalkingabt?

      Well, things that come to mind are those Sunday evening serials, the name escapes me right now, about a kid who gets a magic jewel from a sadhu and he uses it to right various “evil” things. The show always ended with a closeup of the twinkly glass..er…jewel, and the kid caressing his hand over it. 45 freakin minutes and he remembers to use it at the very end. What a dumb idjit!

      Reply

  21. Beatzo,

    I didn’t read a word of the post, but that userpic’s really frightening.

    (I’m even scared to tell you this, for the fear that you’ll hiss…)

    Reply
  23. Anonymous says:

    Dont knock it till you try it..BOZO

    Well Beato or whatever your frigging name is,all i have to say to u is dont knock it till you try it!!!!.Indian comics as far as production is concerned is still in its infancy,…well barely.
    There would definitely be more original content out in the market containing indigenious concepts and yes most definitely an original Indian Superhero will be coming out next year.And the Indian Spidey is nothing but a marketing ploy to establish the artist and the company in the global comic market.And for your information even seasoned veterans in the american comic industry do not get a shot at a spidey title unless they really have earned it.And the Indian spidey transcreation is supervised by the bigwigs at marvel including Stan Lee.So I guess if your a comic artist and your first title is Spidey then man, Jeevan must have something in him…..And all that people like you can do is post your pathetic comments……BAKE LOGON KO GUSSA KYUN ATA HAI……TUM JAISE LOGON KE BATEIN SOONKAR..for one.

    Reply

    • Re: Dont knock it till you try it..BOZO

      Dear Indian-Spiderman Lover,

      Good to see that there’s someone who loves his comics, and defends his loved ones.

      Allow me a chance to massacre your ideas reply to your statements.

      Well Beato or whatever your frigging name is

      It’s Beatzo. You need to catch up with your z’s.

      Indian comics as far as production is concerned is still in its infancy,…well barely.

      The first thing you got right. Wholeheartedly agree.

      There would definitely be more original content out in the market containing indigenious concepts and yes most definitely an original Indian Superhero will be coming out next year.

      Har har har. Wake up, kid.

      Pavitr Prabhakar was intended to make his Indian debut on July 2, and his international debut a month later. This is November, four months have passed since the initial hype-ridden crapola that made me type the above bit of AIMP ( that’s Angst In My Pangst, for you who came in late, o nameless comic-lover) and there’s no sign of the comicbook. Rather ominous for an industry that’s supposed to come up with new concepts, as you say it, next year.

      And the Indian Spidey is nothing but a marketing ploy to establish the artist and the company in the global comic market.

      Agreed again. And this marketing ploy has done nothing but launch a plethora of outsourcing jokes.

      And for your information even seasoned veterans in the american comic industry do not get a shot at a spidey title unless they really have earned it.
      So I guess if your a comic artist and your first title is Spidey then man, Jeevan must have something in him…..
      Exactly. Seasoned veterans in the American comics industry. How many artists do you know exist in the Gotham comics stable? My guess would be – quite a few, all of them avid fans of comics and drawing a great deal of inspiration from American comics artists. And yes, Jeevan J Kang happens to be the best of the lot. But hello, touting him as a “Superstar Artist” ( the exact words on that, and subsequent press releases) is moronic.

      And the Indian spidey transcreation is supervised by the bigwigs at marvel including Stan Lee.
      KIndly get your facts straight. Stan Lee does not work at Marvel. He’s Chairman Emeritus of Marvel Entertainment, which is one way of saying that Marvel puts “Stan Lee Presents” before every title they publish, out of respect. He runs his own website and is currently involved with a number of non-comic-book enterprises.

      Also, do go and check out this link, which is a Newsarama post that previews the first seven pages of spidey India. If you actually think that this artwork is good, you have my best wishes, and I am sure the Indian Comics Industry will flourish in the future with Mr Jeevan J Kang at its forefront. For me, unfortunatly, computer colours on poor pencils is not “superstar” artwork.

      A parting note, if you will. The Japanese Manga industry, to the best of my knowledge, did not piggyback on Japanese renditions of American icons, even though manga began sometime in the fifties, just after its defeat in WWII. The Japanese capitalised on, and developed, their own artform, based on their own legends, history and culture. Methinks we need to learn from them.

      Cheerio,
      Beatzo

      Reply

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