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Spider-Man is known today as one of the most light-hearted heroes in Marvel Comics, but Stan Lee’s original inspiration for the character was a dark, violent hero of yesteryear. His name was The Spider, and for a time, he was one of the most popular masked heroes in the country.

Before there were comic books, readers in the early twentieth century had to find other ways to entertain themselves on lazy Saturday afternoons. If you didn’t have the money for hardback novels or the slicks (read: professional magazines), then your best bet for quick, cheap entertainment lay with the pulps. So named for the paper made from the pulped wood they were printed on, pulp magazines proudly displayed lurid covers on newsstands everywhere, a gaudy and eye-catching promise of the blood’n’thunder action contained within. There were pulps published in a wide variety of genres, but publisher...

Film commentaryThe film, directed by Gautham Ramachandran, follows the story of Sai Pallavi as Gargi, a schoolteacher.Geetika MantriScreengrabThis piece is not a review and contains spoilers. If you haven't watched the film and don't like to read spoilers before watching, please don't read ahead. An endearing, wrinkled face and drooping shoulders on a small frame of a man, whose backstory has enough meat to make you want to root for him. Brahmananda has all the makings of a likeable, kindly old fellow. A father to two young daughters, one of them of school-going age, he works as a security guard at a residential building. It helps that his elder daughter – a schoolteacher named Gargi – is convinced that her father is being wrongly framed in a gang sexual assault of a nine-year-old child at the building, and is doing everything in her power to clear his name. Her agony, complete...