Go East Spiderman!

How cool is this? Best-selling self-help guru Deepak Chopra is getting into comic books. He has started a company called Gotham Studios Asia, which according to the New York Times (reg. required) "is a joint venture between the media company Intent, run by Mr. Chopra with Shekhar Kapur, the director of movies like "Bandit Queen" and "Elizabeth," and Gotham Entertainment Group, South Asia's biggest licensee for international comic magazines such as Marvel Enterprises, the publisher of "Spider-Man" and "X-Men" as well as DC Comics and Warner Brothers Worldwide Publishing."

Chopra plans to infuse eastern spirituality and mysticism into stories like Spiderman. So for example "in the Indian version, Spider-Man gains his powers from a mysterious yogi, not from a radioactive spider. Spider-Man's enemy, the Green Goblin, is the reincarnation of an ancient Indian demon called a rakshasa."

The potential market is huge: By 2015, India will have 550 million people under the age of 20. Today's Indian youth have been "exposed to global trends through TV and the Internet and are not spending-averse as the previous generation."

Chopra thinks the success of Japanese anime in the West is a template for his company to follow:

"The superheroes of tomorrow will be cross-cultural and will transcend nationalistic boundaries," said Mr. Chopra, the chairman of the new company.

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