Marvel Lets Japan Recreate Its Heroes
Marvel Comics announced a deal with
Essentially, the heroes will experience new origins taking into account Japanese culture and society. Their problems, foibles ands villains will all reflect the country of origin, using “something that is part of the fabric of society” according to Jungo Maruta, the president and chief executive of Madhouse. He told the New York Times, “Marvel gives creators freedom to fly.”
The first characters to undergo transformation will be Iron Man and Wolverine in thirty-minute anime intended for Japanese television in 2010. “Although they say, ‘I want Japanese anime,’ it’s not what they actually want. They want a hybrid between Japanese and Western animation,” Alex Yeh, the chief operating officer of the studio, told the Times.
“Marvel has continuously looked to push the boundaries with the Marvel Universe and seek new mediums for our characters. Madhouse is helping us expand the Marvel brand with a truly global vision tailored to themes and artistic styles popular in Japan, creating a uniquely localized and cross-cultural adaptation of the Marvel Universe,” said Simon Philips, President, International & Worldwide Head of Animation, Wireless & Gaming for Marvel Entertainment in a release.
Marvel previously attempted this concept with an India-inspired Spider-Man which was a commercial and critical flop from Gotham Entertainment Group in 2004.
Madhouse was founded in 1972 and is seen as a creative powerhouse in
fter teasing us with just four close-ups of selected cast members of next May’s new Star Trek film,
’ $461,000,000 and become the second highest grossing film in American box office history. 
The notion of retelling history with a twist has become a very popular sub-section of fiction, heavily mined by Harry Harrison and by Philip Roth. In comic books, Marvel’s What If? title and DC’s Elseworlds imprint also explored possible scenarios. But no one has ever looked at how a single element could propel comic book history in an entirely new direction.
Joe Lansdale is a prolific author of horror stories, both short and novel-length, including Drive In and Bubba Ho-Tep.
With the summer super-hero blockbusters come the inevitable novelizations. It used to be almost every movie from every genre would receive the prose treatment but with time, that has been winnowed dramatically. These days it appears just the genre films get the attention and not even all those receive a book. 
Hitting shelves around the country is Star Trek: A Singular Destiny by Keith R.A. DeCandido, the first novel in the Star Trek universe after the status quo was shaken up in the just-complete Star Trek: Destiny trilogy by David Mack. When we 
It used to be, the most successful comic book heroes would eventually wind up in prose. These days, with superheroes fully integrated into mainstream America, it’s no surprise that several novelists have taken their own, unique looks at the genre. Already this year we’ve had the well received Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman and Perry Moore’s Hero. It’s no surprise, then, that the romance genre would also introduce their own take on the subject.
