Cross-over content...Bollywood rising

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.”

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. 

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.”

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.

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.”