Shaktimaan is back! How the Indian superman came of age!
When I was a boy, at the cusp of the new millennium, superheroes were still very much a subculture. There was no internet yet, and the only place to buy comics in Bombay was to go lurking about the roadside book-wallahs near Flora Fountain, searching for tattered volumes of old Golden Age titles. Occasionally, lending libraries like Metsons and Shemaroo managed to get their hands on disjointed issues of the X-Men and the Justice League and the Legion of Super-Heroes which you could borrow briefly if you were a member, for three bucks a pop. It was here that I first encountered Superman and Batman, Spider-Man and the Hulk. This was the Post-Crisis Era, the age of the Brave and the Bold, before reboots and cross-overs became the fashion. Batman had only just begun to retreat into darkness, and Superman was still the eternal boy scout, fighting for truth and justice against Luthor and Braniac and the very silly Mister Mxyzptlk. Guy Gardner was the Green Lantern of Earth, an