Last month Virgin Comics (VC) achieved great success for their Devi series in the Big Apple, they had to go through two reprints of the July debut edition. Devi was one of the four launched there – the others being Sadhu, Snake Womn and Ramayana 3392AD.
Yesterday the company launched these product in India out of Bangalore. The content will be provided by Shekhar Kapur, John Woo and Guy Ritchie among others. Devi has been conceptualized by Kapur, who along with his partners Deepak Chopra, and Richard Bronson plans to reverse the cultural colonization by the US since the middle of the last century with characters such as Superman, batman, and those from the Disney stable.
The official release say that Virgin Animation (VA) has been set up as a creative powerhouse to “reverse the funnel” by taking Asian content to the West and showcasing the vast array of indigenous talent in the sub-continent of writers as well as artists to the world. VA plans to debut multiple titles that tap the rich culture of story telling and mythic content of Indian folklore and presenting to the world and iconic Indian artistic style.
Kapur quotes a Price Waterhouse forecast which predicts that the total value of comic characters would reach US$ 1.3 trillion, of which a phenomenal 70% could be Asian. The US$100 Billion value of the Pokeman product is another factor that has attracted the creation of VC.