I was hoping for one of two things from Spider-Man: India: Either it would be a fascinating and different interpretation of Spider-Man, transplanted into another culture, or it would be hilariously cheesy. As it turns out, it's neither, really. Spider-Man: India is an interesting taste of Indian culture, but it's just the barest taste, and is mostly the classic Spider-Man story with a couple of cosmetic aspects changed. It may well hit its main audience, the Indian market, squarely on, although given the relatively minor changes, I'm not sure if that's true either. For this longtime Spider-Man fan looking for something a little different, it's an overly familiar read, with solid execution but nothing that stands out and makes it really remarkable.
One thing I do have to give up to Kang and his collaborators, Spider-Man: India has old school pacing in all the right ways. They introduce the main character, his nemesis, the origins and even the character's all-important motivation ("great power, great responsibility"... you know the drill by now) in this issue. You could quibble that he doesn't introduce the name for Norman Osborn's analogue, but in general, all the info is there. It's not the tight pacing that Stan Lee had on the first ever story in Amazing Fantasy, but it's a pretty well-paced little tale, and I think that Kang did a really nice job of blending the realities of new comics, like double-page splashes and deeper characterization, with the old school style of getting all the information into an issue.
However, while I admire the pacing, the actual story doesn't really do anything to excite me. Kang has offered up a few tweaks in the nature of the characters' origins (magic instead of science), but other than that relatively cosmetic change, there's really nothing to differentiate Pavitr Prabhakar and the demonized Green Goblin from Peter Parker and Norman Osborn. It's still essentially a bullied teen with kindly uncle versus evil industrialist, and the clothes and locale are all just trappings. There's a delicate line to walk in these translations, as you don't want to go too far afield or you wind up losing all the charm of the original character, but I really wish that Kang had made a little bit more in the way of substantive changes to the origin and the characters.
I do appreciate the look of Spider-Man: India, although I must admit that even that is surprisingly familiar. Kang's art style is reminiscent of longtime Spider-Girl artist Pat Oliffe if he were given sharp, ultramodern computer coloring. Fortunately, I always thought Oliffe was a really good choice for the Spider-Man universe, and Kang's sleek, realistic style is also a nice match for the character. Certainly the elements of the locale, from the temples to the rickshaws to the fashions, make the Indian setting clear. In addition, Kang has some real visual flair, and his redesign of the Green Goblin is notably different from the original, but still very true to the general design of the character. I'd go so far as to say it's a truer redesign of the character than the one that was done for the Ultimate line, at any rate, as the character still evokes a feeling of more intelligent evil rather than looking like a brutish "Hulk" knockoff. There's a similar simple but effective design tweak for Spider-Man's costume, although I have to admit I got a bit of a chuckle out of the almost elfin spider-web covered boots.
In the end, Spider-Man: India isn't really aimed at me, the longtime comic-book fan. The main audience is to be found in India, where this project tries to bring an international superhero back down to a different locale while not losing the charm that made him famous in the first place. The craft here is solid enough, but it's not different enough to really say anything new about the character, and it's role as an origin comic for a new version of the hero means that it's going to hew a little too closely to the stories that American readers already know about their version of the superhero. 6/10
