Sunday, June 19, 2011

Separated at birth: Bahadur and Bachchan

Bahadur (The Brave), the Indian comic book hero created by Aabid Surti in 1976 and published by Indrajal Comics for over a decade, has an uncanny resemblance to superstar Amitabh Bachchan, the angry young man of Hindi cinema. Bahadur came into comic book limelight around the same time that Bachchan began his ascent to the Bollywood throne. There may or may not be a connection but Bahadur's comics and Bachchan's cinema of the 70s and 80s were all about bringing dacoits and criminals to justice. For some years now Hollywood has been doing a spectacular job of transporting superheroes from comics to celluloid. I wonder why the Bombay film industry never cast Bachchan as Bahadur and made a film out of the guardian of the little town of Jaigarh. It would have been an instant box office hit, as all Bachchan films were in those days.

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