188 Epiloguesupervillain and member of the Headmen in Marvel’s Defenders series in 1975
and subsequently reprises this role in several more volumes. However, he quickly
ceases to resemble any form that would identify him as a Yogi (in the traditional
Orientalist sense) or even human— although the fact that his main narrative arc
involves the transplantation of his head and/ or consciousness on/ into a variety of
different bodies may well point to the traditional yogic ability to possess the bod-
ies of others. If nothing else, the former Yogi is definitively no longer quite human.
The original Chandu also ultimately served as inspiration for Marvel’s Doctor
Strange, who first appeared in Strange Tales #110 (1963) billed as the “Master of
Black Magic.” The character of Doctor Stephen Strange was subsequently devel-
oped as a brilliant neurosurgeon who, after a tragic car accident shatters his hands,
journeys to the Himalayas to acquire superhuman abilities from a hermit known
only as the Ancient One.
Finally, there is the aforementioned example of the blue- hued Doctor
Manhattan, arguably the most “super” of the superheroes in Alan Moore’s
Watchmen (1986). As before, the genealog y misses a few links here, unless one
considers the fact that in the late 1960s Doctor Strange received a short- lived
makeover that turned him into a well- built blue humanoid.^23 While the Doctor
Manhattan character is never formally linked to anything other than science
(especially in his human form as Jon Osterman, the nuclear physicist), his blue
superhuman form draws on a variety of occult and Indian religious elements.
While not an explicit Yogi- figure, Doctor Manhattan illustrates the many levels
of cultural imbrication between the occult and the scientific. He is, of course,
named after the Manhattan Project, the ultimate product of which prompted
another nuclear physicist named J. Robert Oppenheimer to quote one of the
most famous Yogis of all when he said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer
of worlds.”
Returning to Choudhury, if the rationale behind his sometimes outlandish
claims is opaque to most practitioners of modern postural yoga, the narratives just
described are even further removed from anything they would identify with their
practice. Yet the historical connections are undeniable, and if one ever begins to
wonder why Bikram Choudhury often resembles a manic comic book villain, the
answers may lie precisely within this history.
By the time that World War II drew to a close, the Yogi had already begun
to morph. The lecture circuit that had once been littered with Indian expatriate
Yogis dried up as these individuals drew their careers to a natural close and no new
ones came to take their place. The immigration regulations imposed in the 1920s
yielded their intended outcome. As a result, yoga slowly began to fade into the
generic landscape of New Thought, and the Yogi gradually became a Westerner
who had traveled to India to acquire powers rather than the Indian himself.