Monday, October 14, 2013

Comic #108 - A Post-Indrajal Phantom Sunday(Capt. Amazon - Pirate Queen; 1989)

                                        HAPPY VIJAYADASHAMI TO ALL
 Enjoy a old Phantom strip(S134) in color and in Bengali. In this tale of 5th Phantom(aka Aranyadev), it has been shown how a gentle,beautiful lady transformed in a dreaded pirate queen - Captain Amazon! Later she became the wife of 5th Phantom!
 The most famous quote(of Juliet) probably was "Call us pirates! Then we'll be Pirates"!!

Between,the colored pages are from famous magazine Desh. This strip ran for 24 weeks but I have only 18 sundays till now,missing remaining 6..
 So I did two things,firstly used English b/w strips to fill the gap and then translated those in Bengali. Hopefully you will like the effort!(I have tried to bring the feel of Desh in those pages albeit the colors! as unfortunately I have the b/w English version only.)
 And for the Indrajal addicts, this is a special strip as with this one,the Post-Indrajal era was started off (the last sunday appeared in Indrajal was S133 "Death from the Sky"  in Vol.26 No.41). Had Indrajal survived for another extra month,we might had this very nice story in the pages of one of the most famous comic-magazines

 There were 45 Phantom sundailies(by Falk) from the Post-Ijc era but only very few were worth reading....this one was among those very few!
A translated page....b/w scan is from Frew 1465....

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Back-up Features AND Stories-in-Parts in the Indrajal Comics

                                       ------আজ মহাষ্ষঠী------

let's discuss the two most integral part of the Indrajal universe...
Back-up Features:
Part of the nostalgia value of these old comics is undoubtedly in those old advertisements and the backup strips/features! :D 
I grew up reading '80s Indrajal and only later introduced with the '70s & '60s(exactly in this order) issues.Now,besides the cover stories,the things I love were those various kind of ads,plus,who can forget those the back-up features like Ripley's belive it or not,Capree's animal infos,Ancient World History followed by comic-strips like Henry,Chimpoo,Babooa,Agent 003,Pasha the magicain to name a few and then the latest addition: Timpa(unlike other 1-page features,this was kind of additional long stories).

 However,different fans were introduced with the Indrajal Comics in the different eras,and hence have their selected liking!Personally,I loved Ripley's & Capree with Henry,Timpa etc.

 Among the ads,although I love all of them,still,my favorites are Gold-spot :P ;) & gems ads!
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Stories-in-Parts:
 In many occasions,cover stories were appeared in 2/3 parts(i.e. in successive issues) and sometimes having a 2nd story aswell. However,it was not happened in the early era,rather from the late '70s and the first issue was #263() - a Phantom story.Later we saw ToI practiced this thing(stories-in-parts) heavily from the '80s till '89.The last issue published in such format was V26 N22(Mandrake - Dreaded Island:2nd part).
 Indrajal fans ,specifically from '80s, were pretty habituated with these lines(used to appear in a small box @the end of every 1st/2nd part)"what will happen with Phantom/Mandrake/Flash?will they survive??to find out,read out next issue dated ...".:)
It IS fun 
when you are reading all those old issues together BUT I am bit unsure what was those fans' take who used to wait for weeks(i.e. then current readers) to have a complete read?? Personally,sometimes it was a good excitement for me,with that anticipation but when you missing some parts(many of us faced this),then it really bother you a lot.... :( 

So,what's your take on it?? do many fans like this format,or rather think it's bit annoying how ToI split a short story just to gain some more profit??(they used to published bit less-popular heroes like Rip,Drake etc,although many times we got Mandrake,FG stories too!!)


PS - I Have added a couple of Polls(top right) with multiple options.If I've missed something,please mention!
(This is a re-post of early 'Indrajal Forum' posts)