Thursday, June 30, 2011

Comic #62 : Indrajal Comics(Bengali) :Vol.27 No.5(Bahadur) - Sapurer Toup(সাপুড়ের টোপ)

A new Indrajal comic for today.First Bengali(& 6th overall) Indrajal comics in this blog.As the title suggests,this issue is from the final year of Indrajal publication(1990) and the final Bahadur adventure,aswell.You will see Bela in a very special(& glamorous,may I say?) role.Also, I have loved the ending! :)
Posting for all Bengali fans & specially those who used to ask me for posting(Ijc) at first place.As I've started off,so you can expect a few more.
Enjoy!

Bela is in a rather unusual role(as the naag-kanya!!)
The ending of the story,as well as,the series!Hopefully,you won't miss the romantic finish! :)

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Comic #61 : Mandrake Sunday :The Summit Conference(S086)

Update(6/29): Higher resolution colored Swedish sunday pages have been added in the place of earlier published low-res ones,with addition of 2 more new pages.
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A new strip from Phil Davis era.This is one of those many English strips contributed by Dan & Magnus,so thanks to both of them!:-) [And if it has appeared in Bala's blog,then consider this a re-post!]
Now, a couple of things..
Few months back I've received some colored Swedish sunday strips of early Fredricks era from Magnus.(Some of them are already published by Lothar in b/w English).As a sucker of any nice colored comic-strips,I've tried to replace the speech-balloons with the English texts,so we can read colored strips in English!
Some samples(condition of these Swedish pages were not that good with tear etc,so I've fixed those pages a bit!).

  
  

 As we know,for the old b/w Mandrake strips, AWW(Australian Women's Weekly) is a very good source but they had cropped/enlarged the strip-panels a lot to fit in their format and that made the panels a bit weird! I've already discussed this with Lothar(to confirm my doubt).He has posted the cleaned but untouched AWW version,and I've the unedited non-English versions to compare with! So I am trying to restore the original shapes from those.
For now,see some of the samples....have added both of the re-stored(left) and AWW's versions(right). Any suggestion/feed-back will be appreciated.




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Now,enjoy the Sunday..

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Beautiful Janice from "The Mystery of the Island..

..of Dogs"!!
 Yes, I'm talking about that '60s Phantom classic - an intriguing plot about a devilish & dreaded plan by an enemy country(probably Russia) when their army general(and his thousand soldiers) formed a secret missile base at that deserted "island of dogs" - their hide-out - owned by an ol' major Helm!
 I'm not going in details of the plot, rather concentrating on a major character of this adventure, who played an integral role quite by accident - Janice Helm - the beautiful & seductive grand-daughter of that major Helm!
Over the years quite a lot of beautiful ladies have had desired the Phantom as their mate, at some point of their lives. And there was no short of varieties as from the sky-band chief Sala to Marshall sisters, from those highland princesses & queens to numerous lost/kidnapped girls - all of them were in this special league. They were quite beautiful & desirable in their own right, still none of them had this spark & beauty combined in one place, like this one Ms. Helm! Majority of those ladies were either "damsels in distress" or "self-obsessed egoists" than anything else but Janice was an exception.

Today I'm going to post some of those special moments from this adventure -with supporting panels - so we can have a closer look on Janice(and her reaction) in the different situations!

[Note: : #1 - This classic was published in India only by Diamond Comics(as ToI had skipped this at Indrajal) twice in their Phantom digests(#8 & #70) #2 -  I have added panels from both of the Bengali & English versions together(after bit editing), so all Phans can enjoy these!]
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Lets meet lonely Janice, when she was getting bored as there was NO unmarried attractive man to accompany her!!

But at least, she could dream(about some unknown mysterious & exciting man) even if that sounds silly to herself!! (By then, she had very little idea on how her dream was in the verge of fulfillment - in a quite different and unnerving way though!)

"When you are writing a phony letter, do better than that"
 - this was one of the few lessons those kidnappers have learnt on that evening when they wrongly spelled Janice(as 'Janis') and wrote a letter that supposed to be from her grandpa, signed by 'Major Helm'! You just can't fool a beauty who got a brain too!
Moreover, she was hardly afraid of these con men, rather threatened them with "get lost before I yell for police".

So this brave girl herself can fight-back but you don't have to do much when the Phantom was around. When you heard something like "That lady said..let go, don't move...anybody" - came from a deep, cold voice - then either you have to obey it or face the consequences..like those kidnappers did! Another lesson they have learnt.

"I'd enough of this...Get out!!"
- she was too anxious to realise that her dream man was right in front of her. So Janice screamed only to realise(or taken aback?) that this man doesn't take, but only give, orders! Few moments later, now she had some sort of 'emotional transformation' & apparently won't mind if this mysterious, exciting & wonderful 'burgler' robs that place. By then, he has already robbed her beautiful heart, quite unknowingly for himself though!
 
Now, Janice is telling her side of story & shared some information on her 'disappeared' grandpa...

She tried her luck in little bit of flirting with "They were driven mad by my rare beauty" (on why those kidnappers came) but all were went in vain!

Meantime, enter of the patrolman Riggs, one of those numerous dopey men that Janice used to meet all the time. It's like, years ago she had replaced her dolls with these men and can control them in her own will! But we can't blame Riggs, can we?? He was only a commoner while she was the rarer!
 
"He said I'd never see him again...that's what HE thinks"  - She was determined to see "her man" once again, by hooks or crooks..

 "I'm 21,he's 400. When I'm 30 he'll be 409"
- It seems that age was NO bar for her(she was ready to marry a 400-year old man) as long as he was unmarried!! Hmm...Janice was a lady with some rare spirits! She was ready to face everything for him..

...even to take some risks that one patrolman would hesitate!! Moreover, she had knowingly took that risk, to visit the dog-island at midnight, just to be with her "dream man" - the Phantom!
(Earlier, she used to like those dopey guys, but no more!)

"Can we..help you??"
- Just after their arrival on that mysterious dog-island, for the first time Janice had realised that how much danger she was in!! What she thought would be a rather fun-trip, turned out to be a quite different ball-game as they were 'welcomed' by some ruthless killers with guns in their hand..and they meant business!!

Janice, who thought her dream man would be delighted for her surprise-visit, had a rude shock with "you are a foolish girl, lucky to not have your pretty head blown off"!! She couldn't have realised that her dream man was on a mission(of death) and NOT on a date!

"Awful"  - that said everything! This mission was too much for everyone, included that ruthless general and so for her beautiful soul...

"In a war, one is ready to die"
and that was unfortunately true for everybody including our beautiful Janice! When Phantom said it, she couldn't believe her ears though - "Does he mean it??"

"Like a thousand 4th-of-Julys" - amidst all of these dangers, she had her sense-of-humour intact!

"If I hadn't come with a boat, you would have been in a spot!"
- How much Phantom had scold Janice for her wild visit, at the end she indeed made the job much easier for him and there's no denial!

"A man who blows up islands and scares away a thousand men..more than a little me can handle.I'll settle for a dopey guy like that(Riggs)...I'm smarter than he is."
- Finally, even being an irresistible seductress by herself, she was well aware of her own strengths & more importantly, the limitations - something that made her even more 'unique' among the league of beautiful-ladies-who-once-desired-Phantom as unlike others, she had enough brain to support her own beauty!
Janice showed that she was neither any doll(who always needed a man in her side for protection) nor any madcap(like Miriam) who would plot to get her man by any means. She would rather use her grey matters a bit!
Phantom might have forgot her, but can we??

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Flash Gordon Sunday-Strips from Diamond's Comic World Magazine

Diamond Comics(DC) had published some Flash Gordon strips in their famous CW magazine and all of these were from Post-D.Barry('51-'91) era.These strips were appeared in CW,right from the #1 issue.However,those strip-dates were sometimes edited but thankfully they kept some of those boxes(with the year of publication).
Don't know if any more other strips ever appeared in that magazine but these three are all I have seen till now(and all from '96).
  • S190 - "Nightfall on Mongo" (4/28/96 to 8/25/96)
  • S191 - "The Way it Began" (9/1/96 to 9/29/96)
  • S192 - "The Return of Ming" (10/6/96 to 12/22/96)




Saturday, June 18, 2011

Diamond's Comic World Magazine AND the Teen's World

A Brief History: DC's Comic World is an unique giant-sized(bigger than Indrajal/Frew) monthly magazine that used to filled with numerous international & national comic characters.Beside comics,there was a great mix of GK stuffs and other features like GBR,sports,astrology etc.This series is under publication since 1998.The first 2-3 years worth were much superior than the recent issues(these have NO KFS characters since many years). Also the earliest issues were 100-120 pagers.
Many of the early issues had Phantom,Mandrake & Flash Gordon strips in the alternative way with other 15-20 characters per issue.CW was an instant hit among the comic-lovers and had quite a similarity with Comic Revue magazine from US. :-)

The list major comic characters is as follows:
International: Phantom,Mandrake,Flash Gordon,Modesty Blaize,Archie,Tom & Jerry,Henry,Blondie,Beetle bailey,Denes,Batman,Tarzan,He-man,Hagar the horrible,Jr.Rotar etc with numerous one-off short stories(plots were varied from romantic to those evil-spirit tales!!).
Indian:Cartoonist Pran's all characters(from the most popular Chacha Chaudhary,Pinki,Billo to Micoo,Raman etc),Jatak takes,King Vikram &Betal,Panchtantra and numerous other titles.
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They also tried to launch a separate "Teen's World"(at the reverse-back of each book) in the 2nd/3rd year of publication.That part mostly dedicated for movie reviews,current fashions and other teen stuffs! :-)

Despite majority of the CW's early issues had famous strips like Phantom,Mandrake & Flash Gordon,only few occasions one would see these characters on the covers(strange,ain't?)!Here's few of those covers with some Teen's World pages!











Thursday, June 16, 2011

BENGALI Phantom Sunday-Strip Pages(Batch 3)

UPDATE: Friends,first check some special links from the Phantom_WIKI where we are working in the Indian_Phantom section!! Any help will be appreciated!

General Indian Section: http://www.schapter.org/wiki/The_Phantom_publications_in_India

BENGALI Newspaper & maagzine Section:


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This is the final batch of the অরণ্যদেব aka Phantom-Sundays published in the Indrajal Comics.From the next post,you will see some of the Post-Indrajal strips..
Today following Sunday pages have been attached:
Indrajal Sundays( #3):
  • S128 - Queen Amaza's Mate 
  • S129 - The Fighting Twins
  • S131 - The Bride of Xali
  • S132-  Exodus of the Little People
  • S133 - Death from the Sky
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Now,before going to the actual strip pages,let's have some look at these old,vintage ads/articles used appear in the '80s Desh(the magazine where these strips were published,as I've mentioned before).Buddies,do these trigger some old nostalgic memories?? :))






Now the Sunday pages....
(Carefully look @the 2nd & 3rd panels of the following page.Indrajal skipped these(in V25 N18-19:Raiders from Amaland) where it has been mentioned Hero as well as (for the first time)Devil's origin!While Hero was introduced in a old daily strip(by Falk himself),for Devil,that concept was originally from an Egmont classic : Devil's Story aka 'Deviler Golpo' - published by Dev Sahitya Kutir in their short-yet-successful Aranyadev series on 2003!)