Indian Spider-Man co-creator on bringing desi flavour to the iconic Marvel hero

Updated On: 01 August, 2023 12:38 PM IST | Mumbai | Nascimento Pinto

Sharad Devarajan, along with Suresh Seetharaman and Jeevan J. Kang, reimagined Spiderman as Pavitr Prabhakar growing up in Mumbai, swinging from rickshaws and celebrating Diwali, marking a unique chapter in the Marvel universe

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In 2003, Sharad Devarajan, Suresh Seetharaman and Jeevan J. Kang co-created the character and its original comic series, Spider-Man: India, which made its debut in 2004. Photo Courtesy: Sharad Devarajan

For comic book lovers and superhero movie buffs, it would be impossible to imagine a life without deep-diving into the life of Spiderman. In the last two decades, the popular Marvel character has been more popularly immortalised by Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, Tom Holland and the voice of Shameik Moore. The character has found its way into the homes of people around the world including India, ever since its comic book debut in 1962, owing to the popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) on screen.

Interestingly, when the Marvel character was becoming popular in India, there was another version of him that came to life in the country, as three graphic artists brought their desi flavour to recreate Spiderman. In 2003, Sharad Devarajan, Suresh Seetharaman and Jeevan J. Kang co-created the character and its original comic series, Spider-Man: India, which made its debut in 2004. Almost 20 years later, the Indian Spider-Man made an appearance in a movie.

Every year since 2014, August 1 is celebrated as Spider-Man Day to commemorate the iconic superhero. While his original birthday is said to be on August 10 and has even been mentioned in the most recent films, fans are divided. However, many have achieved a consensus to celebrate Spider-Man Day not only on the first day but throughout the month.

In time with the release of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in June, which featured the Indian Spider-Man Pavitr Prabhakar, voiced by Indian-American actor Karan Soni, mid-day.com spoke to Devarajan, the co-creator of the Indian Spider-Man about the character. He also spoke about the inspiration, influence, and meeting Stan Lee since then.

Here are the edited excerpts:

Spiderman is a popular character that most of us have grown up with. What made you think of an Indian version?
Before forming Liquid Comics and Graphic India, I started my first company Gotham Comics (named after Gotham City) with my co-founder, Suresh Seetharaman and took on the regional publishing licenses for Marvel Comics. With that, I launched the first locally priced mass-market comic editions of these iconic characters in local languages for India introducing thousands of people in the country to the amazing potential of comic book storytelling.

The idea for doing an Indian version of Spider-Man was a concept I created in 2003 along with my co-creators, Suresh Seetharaman and the amazingly talented artist Jeevan J. Kang. Together, we came up with the story idea and Jeevan worked on some original concept illustrations that we shared with Marvel as part of a pitch to create one of the world’s first reinventions of Spider-Man into a new culture and country – An “Indian Spider-Man”. Fortunately, the leaders of Marvel’s creative team at the time, Avi Arad, Dan Buckley and others, saw the value and creativity in exploring this and allowing us to make it a reality. While there has since been a multiverse of great Spider-Man reimaginings done recently, back then reimagining an icon such as Spider-Man was still a very rare occurrence and may have been a first of its kind in the comic industry. It is one thing to translate existing US comics, but this was the first trans-creation, where we reinvented the origin of a property like Spider-Man, so that he is an Indian boy growing up in Mumbai and dealing with local problems and challenges.

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