Why doesn’t India have its own Marvel or DC type of superheroes?” If I had a rupee for every time I was asked this question, I would have become a millionaire today. Year after year, comic con after comic con, people still feel perplexed over this fact. And my answer to them has always been the same, with a little shrug of my shoulder accompanied with a smug expression,“But of course we have had a great legacy of superheroes…you probably have missed it!”

Let me state the obvious ones. The old joke goes, if America has Superman, India has had ‘Hanu-Man’. All the superpowers we marvel at when we watch the firangi heroes on screen, have already been seen in India from the ancient times, via the epics. Power of flight, super strength, size and shape shifting abilities, immortality, mind reading, teleportation, it has all been done. But there’s more to Indian superherodom.

Dara Singh, the late legendary Indian wrestler and actor has given us some classic ‘superhero’ type of films in his prime. The premise usually was same, but seeing him in action and saving the day (and the damsels in distress) was a different high for the audiences. I have this conversation with my father quite often. He describes the thrill they experienced while watching Dara Singh single-handedly take on powerful villains and their henchmen in the movies. I myself remember seeing an old Kishore Kumar movie called Mr X in Bombay (1964) in which the lead actor plays an invisible hero. He may not be a ‘superhero’ in it, but still the idea of an invisible Kishore Kumar saving the day, and with a name like Mr X made the movie stand out. Over the years there have been experiments in cinema on similar lines, but who can skip mentioning perhaps the single most influential superhero India has ever got on the big screen? I’m referring to Mr India! This movie hasn’t aged, and barring some song and dance sequences and a bit of overacting here and there, the concept is still fresh and relevant. 

We have an invisible character, but this time he is fighting a villain so legendary, he has become a genre in his own right. Mogambo khush hua!! Amrish Puri owned this like a boss! You had the perfect definition of the superhero genre right there. Secret identity, check. Secret codename for the hero, check. Mission, check. A very powerful, overtly evil villain dressed in loud clothing and with a famous tagline. 

And, then there is Big B. Not many would know, but Amitabh Bachchan has starred in at least three movies where he kind of fits in as a superhero or vigilante, depending on how you see it. The 1991 disaster Ajooba saw Amitabh as a costumed hero in a fictional magical land right out of the Arabian Nights, fighting an evil wizard (Amrish Puri again). The movie didn’t do well, but was a great effort in those times to give us some sort of new direction of content. 

Then there was the 1989 film, Toofan starring Amitabh as the titular vigilante, armed with a crossbow. And who can forget his most popular vigilante character in and as Shahenshah (1988)? I remember watching this as a kid, on VHS on loop. I just couldn’t get enough of Amitabh deflecting bullets with his silver mail chain sleeve. A corrupt funny cop by day, and a gloomy vigilante superhero by night, this character came with his own theme/title song. To me, Shahenshah was a legit super-vigilante movie. 

Amitabh is probably the only actor who has spanned his presence from the silver screen to the comic book pages too. Few would know that the Big B starred in his own comic book series, as a superhero named Supremo. The actor is shown as himself in it, and has a superhero alter ego, complete with his own costume and a dog, fighting crime. I do own some very old issues of these comics that I found at an old library recently. 

Over the years, there have been several movies that have given us super-characters, as recent as the Krishhhh (how many H’s again?), the Flying Jatts, Bhavesh Joshis and more. Considering he plays a rather super-dude in all his films, superstar Rajinikanth gave us the awesome robot Chitti (Robot and Robot 2.0). 

In the world of Indian superhero comics, we have had characters such as Nagraj, Super commando Dhruv, for long now! And one visit to a Comic Con today will give you a glimpse of many more such characters and character universes in the making. 

Sure, we may not have the movies of MCU and DCEU scales being made in Bollywood as of now, but this in no way takes away the fact that India has had a solid history of super-characters, albeit with a desi twist. And that’s not such a bad thing, is it? After all, Mogambo was quite happy! 

(The writer is a comic creator, illustrator and animator)