Sunday, 3 August 2014

The making of Bahadur - Tidbits from the Indrajal Universe

Hey hey hey Barbarians,
there are points in the timeline of every publication which becomes a defining moment for them, etching their contribution forever.
Issue #267 in Indrajal comics timeline was also such a defining moment in which the character of 'Bahadur' was introduced to the readers.

By far and large there were no colloquial or if i may say so an Indian hero before him in circulation. Bahadur rose quickly among readers and achieved a cult status.
Bahadur also connected a chord with Indians because of other social realities before us , It was a time of struggle between old ethos and new realities spilling the underbelly of discontent.
Bahadur represented a picture of a young Indian who was angry,discontented and wanted vengeance.Whether he gets engulfed in his own fire or he becomes the spark of change is what the book is all about.Released in 1976 just after the phenomenal success of 'Sholay' on the silver screen written by Abid surti and drawn by B.Govind. Both were hugely successful in depicting visuals akin to cinematic angles with a good pace in the story.
The story revolves around a village which is on the cross hairs of the dangerous dacoit gangs of Chambal*,and in the village lies the red bricks house of Bahadur,whose father was an aide of the dacoit gangs.However he gets killed by Inspector Vishal during a raid,left behind with young vengeance seeking Bahadur and his old mother.
In respective raids on the village the Red Bricks house never gets targeted as being identified by the gangs as an old ally.

This is also a reason why the villagers do not trust Bahadur. The indifference of the villagers combined with the constant reminder of losing his father makes him a bitter man.
Bahadur decides on killing inspector Vishal who is posted in another station of a different village,but fate had it's own plans Inspector Vishal seeks out Bahadur after getting a tip-off from the villagers.

He lands in Bahadur's house bound by the Indian ritual of "thou shall not kill thy guest" Bahadur is forced to listen to him.
Inspector Vishal bursts the bubble of Bahadur's father beings a la' robin-hood and takes him to seek the truth for himself.

Bahadur realizes his bitter ways and vows to amend the wrongs by forming a citizen security force but gets ignored due to the trust deficit between him and the villagers.
Meanwhile Shamsher singh raids the village and Bahadur's mother gets hit by Sahmasher singh's bullet and she confesses to the truth of Bahadur's father before dying,Bahadur vows to eradicate dacoits and their ilk.

A desperate encounter follows between Bahadur and Shamsher Singh's goons in which he outwits them and becomes a hero in the eyes of the villagers.He refrains from killing Shamsher Singh and hands them over to Inspector Vishal,Inspector Vishal helps Bahadur in getting the bounty of Shamsher Singh's capture with which Bahadur forms the Famous 'Citizens Security Force'and the rest as they say is History!

Saturday, 5 July 2014

Hojo's Secret - Tidbits from Indrajal Universe

Indrajal's spell lasted for a good 27 years on the Indian comic lovers.
The most unique thing about it is, Indians relate Comics to Indrajal!
During a short visit to my co-brother's place suddenly Indrajal came up in a mundane conversation and I was surprised to learn that
my co-brother had a lot of info on tidbits from Indrajal !
As I surf the net I realized there are actually thousands of blogs dedicated to the only phenomenon that happened to the Indian Comic industry.
However I hardly see any posts to the happenings or the defining moments in the Indrajal Universe.

Let your's truly elaborate,Well Phans(Phantom fans) know that the 21st Phantom is "Kit Walker"  but in which issues did these defining moments takes place in Indrajal universe around the popular characters?

These tiny "Tid-bits" will be regularly updated as a post in this line called "Tidbits from Indrajal Universe".

Let's start with a Tidbit for this post!

"Hojo" is an interesting character in Indrajal Universe.
Asian, fat, has strength to down even Lothar, is a 10th degree black belt,
knows 14 languages and can speak 10 more, Yet he works as a cook for Mandrake!

What's the catch for this extremely jovial learned guy to work as a cook?
The mystery gets solved in Indrajal's Issue 298 - The Master Criminal

It starts one fine day in Xanadu(the super fortified) residence of Mandrake,when Zed the col. of Inter-intelligence arrives at his residence for breakfast.
Zed 's innocent question crops up a lot of questions when he observes that the ever smiling master chef Hojo's breakfast was excellent however why such a learned person like him works as
a cook for Mandrake.


Mandrake explains that it was Hojo's wish and someone's recommendation (he couldn't remember who) however the pact was that mandrake will not ask questions on Hojo's personal life!
Things take an ugly turn when Mandrake and Lothar is summoned the very next day that Inter-intelligence(Interpol in Indrajal Universe) has been raided by 8(a criminal gang).
"8" was successful in planting a bomb which fortunately didn't go off and hence the mystery! The chief(a robot face to a human voice - no one knows who's the chief!) wants an explanation!


Meanwhile Zed comes out with a theory that only 4 people where privy about inter-intelligence (zed,mandrake and Lothar) and Hojo who went on a holiday just after their breakfast the day before and since they themselves r out of suspicion only Hojo remains.
Mandrake and Lother then sets out on a cat and mouse chase after Hojo,


leading them back to Inter-Intell's HQ

here in a 1 to 1 chat Hojo reveals hi true identity.
Behind the Robotic face and the robotic voice of the chief at inter-Intel sits Hojo! Who works as a cook at Mandrake's house to avoid any suspicion.

Guess who recommends Hojo as a cook at Mandrake's residence none other but Zed!

will be back with more soon!

Saturday, 31 May 2014

Return of 'The Phantom' !

The Indrajal era had come to an end by the 90's,however the popular characters of Phantom and Mandrake was seeing publication through Diamond comics (A new Delhi based Publisher).
These were stories for which rights had been acquired through King's syndicate features. Few from my Own collection-
Issue #8

Issue #13

Issue #14

Issue #31

Issue #32

Issue #39

Issue #40

Issue #41

Issue #45

Issue #47

Issue #54

Issue #65




Diamond Comics ceased the publication in 2000 and 'The Phantom' saw a re-incarnation with Egmont publications.(Indian express Egmont Publications Ltd.)

However the difference from previous publication history was they translated Scandinavian Phantom books to English.

Issue #1

Issue #6

Issue #9

Issue #13

Egmont's subsidiary euro books started publishing 'The Phantom' in India from the year 2000 onward.
Initially they started with a single 'The phantom' story with a backup mandrake story but soon,changed their format to 2 in 1 and later 3 -in-1 concepts.where 2 stories in one book and three stories in one book were introduced.




Both Diamond comics and Egmont have stopped publishing 'Phantom' comics but in between they come up with the reprints under different covers.

Scandinavia have had a rich diet of 'Phantom' since long, Uploading 2 books which my colleague gifted to me in Sweden from his own personal collection.(Thanks to David)





With the beautiful Christmas Pin-Up Adios from Your's truly!

Sunday, 18 May 2014

Disney's Comics , Zorro The Fox !

India saw a late resurgence of Disney's characters years after it was well established.
Chandamama children's trust or Chandamama publications is largely responsible for introducing whole heatedly to Indian readers. Chandamama had successfully been publishing  mythological magazines before and was well entrenched with readers, and decided to plunge in the lucrative comic industry in October 80.

There were some previous attempts in the 60's by Times Of India through Indrajal comics but lasted a few issues.
Chandamama set up the whole range of Disney characters in two separate lines.

A. Classics and comics which featured the popular Disney characters like Mickey Donald and also a regular feature dedicated to Zorro the fox.

Although Zorro was previously given an issue in 1967 by Indrajal comics #37 but was a one issue feature till Chandamama establishing a dedicated for Zorro starting from Issue #3 of Classics and comics.
Wonder World #3 reprints Dell #882 as re-represented by Alex Toth and made famous by Disney!
Wonder World issue #2

The Zorro Ad in issue #2

Wonder World issue #3 also the first issue of Zorro the Fox!

Wonder World issue #18


Wonder World issue #10



B. Book shelf series featuring complete story lines from Disney's movie lines.
The Book shelf series was intresting as it adopted movies Issue #1 Started with adoption of jungle book,which was a huge success.
From there on Book shelf series had very popular offerings like -
The black hole,Peter Pan,Return from witch mountain etc.

Book Shelf issue #1

Book Shelf issue #2

Book Shelf issue #8



Saturday, 5 April 2014

Spider-man in India

When the first Hollywood made Spider-man was released in May 2002 ,it broke all prior records in the box office of any Hollywood Movie in India and also establishing a fact that Spider-man in India is there to stay !
Does Spider-man have a history in India? Let's try to piece together this puzzle.
"Doordarshan" introduced India to Spider-man through it's hugely popular cartoon show airing on Saturday afternoons,but what about the original comic medium in which Spider-man was introduced to the world?
Every collector will agree that the most important comics in the life time of a character is it's first appearance and it's first issue of its own series.
In fact since Spider-man comics are the most collected comics around the world these books commands a record price over their heads.Going by that logic should this character débuts in a different market ,the characters origin are also published to make the new readers aware of the character's legacy which is independent of the time in which they were introduced in the new market.

India's comic culture and publication history being highly fragmented read as "multi-lingual" and been monopolized for a long time by only one player tracking the history of any character if put simply in words is an uphill task!

1.The first appearance of Spider-man in India is through Allied publishers Falcon comics which reprinted the Marvel Tales reprint of Amazing Fantasy #15 1984. After this they do not follow any numerical denomination like it's original series but in fact starts printing in self styled sequence.

From my own Collection-

Falcon Comics Spider-man Issue #1

Falcon Comics Spider-man Issue #2

Falcon Comics Spider-man Issue #3

Falcon Comics Spider-man Issue #4

2.I had my doubts over it, but research also brought me the fact that Spider-man 1 was printed in 1989 by a publisher called Modern classics,Modern classics was from the house of Chandamama and also had a line up of "Boyhood legends of Superman",but the Spider-man line fizzled out.
This print is also the only cover-to cover Indian reprint!



Collecting Spider-man #1 reprint from Modern Classics!

3.Spectrum Comics during 1986 the TOI group's new title printed a few Spider-man comics out of sequence and by 1987 they had also closed shops.






Collecting Spectrum's run of Spider-man

4.Diamond Comics a Delhi based publisher acquired the rights to publish Spider-man in 1994, These were digest format books using famous Amazing Spider-man books as covers.
 Diamond Comics Amazing Fantasy #15 reprint - 1st Print

Couldn't help noticing Spider-man's speech bubble which they dropped in their subsequent reprints!



Key Issue : Diamond Comics Spider-man #4 Reprints Marvel's The Amazing Spider-man #121 & #2 Reprints Marvel's ASM #122!

5.By far and large, Gotham Comics is the only publishing house which did justice to Spider-man in it's existence of less then a decade.They published most of the line-ups of Spider-man from Marvel Universe.They came in a collaboration with Stan-lee and Marvel to launch Spider-man India (with Pavitra Parulkar from Mumbai) which is a coupé in itself!
They also published Ultimate Spider-man line-up,Marvel adventures and Spider-man Manga series. Gotham is truly the golden period of Comics in India.












Collecting Gotham's line-up of various Spider-man Avatars like Ultimate Spider-man,Spider-man India,Spider-man Manga,Team Up!

6.Marvel Comics(marvel adventures) - Marvel finally took the plunge in the Indian market, sometime in 2010 and introduced Marvel adventures Spider-man series lasting for 30 odd issues. This was also Marvel's only direct foray!

Issue #1 of Marvel Adventures Spider-Man



Over the years not many publisher took the Indian market seriously, however the love of Bug eyed boy still lives on in India, as the old "Doordarshan" lit the fire way back and you are in it's web!