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!

The Mythical Spectrum - Spectrum Comics

Hey Hey Hey Barbarians!
In my quest to introduce my readers with nostalgic comics and re-introduce them to "Reading is Fun!",I will take a "Post" break from my ongoing series of "The Reprints"!
Pray Why?
Yours truly got hold of a rare catch of the very short run "Spectrum Comics"!These books had such a small print run that even Yours Truly did not had one!
Spectrum Comics - was started in 1986 by Times of India which was also into publishing "Indrajal Comics" which was running successfully for 20 years by then.
They Editor in it's introductory message wrote that how Indrajal comics had broken the myth that reading comics was bad for Kids and now they are going ahead with their plans of introducing new heroes and newer adventures.

The book also boasts the Debut of "Modesty Blaise" there were a couple of Tamil publishers but none in English.Same can be said of Arak. Flash and Jonah Hex although Yours truly have not seen a single copy of those books yet.
The books were actually smaller compared to the standard size comics and had glossy color pages with painted covers.The color quality was a lot wanting maybe because of production costs and Spectrum's small print run!
Somewhere in 88 they had decided to wind up and that has caused a real scarcity.
Uploading the covers from my collection - Collecting #1,2,4,5,6,24,25,26,27,28

The Editors Note in #1

Spectrum #1 - Also Modesty Blaise's debut!

 Juliet Jones was a 1953 strip !Got critical acclaim for it's panels

 Spectrum #4 Back Cover

 Incidentally I also have the Swedish Version of this story in Agent -X9

 New back cover from #24

So they had Modesty Blaise,Arak- The Son of Thunder,Spider man, Dennis the Menace,Jonah Hex and Flash.Even today on the internet there are hardly any pages online on Spectrum!

Let Old Crom not grumble that I did not present ye all Barbarians a New Year's Gift!

The Reprints - DC London Edition Magazine

Hey Hey Hey Barbarians! Lasti-sh we checked with Marvel's reprint with Panini,but can DC remain far behind?
Dc started Superman and Batman reprints monthly in the UK using London Editions Magazines under license.
When Egmont bought Fleetway Publications from IPC in 1991, London Editions was merged with it,
with the combined company known as Fleetway Editions. They also had a line up of DC heroes in various varying publications like
Zones, DC Action, Heroes and Shockwave.In 1996 this became Egmont Fleetway,
and post 2000 Fleetway's name vanished from the titles, and Egmont Publishing took over printing the company's comics

uploading some covers from my own collection..

Will return with more soon..By Crom!

The Reprints - Marvel Pocket Books

Hey hey hey Barbarians ! Hope old Crom treated ye'all well this Christmas!
Yours truly had a big catch of large out of print this Christmas which will be presented over time!
But for now with all the niceties kept in the cupboard let's delve deep into the serious business of reprints.

Most of us in this galaxy of comics some time or the other have come across books which have the same cover and content and yet,
the value for them remains missing.In fact reprints are a great way of introducing new people to old pantheons in an inexpensive way.

About 9 years back I use to frequent allies of Mumbai to "landmark" almost every week-end,during one such outing i came across
Marvel pocketbooks by Panini.These were not the UK published b/w pocketbooks published in late eighties.
This series of ongoing reprints hasn't got much attention - I didn't find any mention of any official site.
Published by Panini, who hold the Marvel license through Panini UK, and have produced a series of "Marvel Pocket Books"
reprinting Marvel issues from all eras in a color, digest format.In fact they used digitally enhanced colors, with glossy pages.

Recently i don't see them anymore in the book stores , uploading from my collection

 Fantastic Four: Doomsday 

 Reprints  Fantastic Four #52-60

 Fantastic Four: Where Stalks The Sandman 

 Reprints  Fantastic Four #61-67 & Annual #4

 Hulk: The Coming Of Hulk

 Reprints The Incredible Hulk #1-6

 The Invincible Iron Man: The Tragedy and the Triumph 

 Reprints  Tales Of Suspense 91-99, Iron Man/Submariner 1 & Iron Man 1-4

 The End of the Green Goblin

Reprints Amazing Spider-Man #39-46, though Annual #3 has been left out

 To Kill A Spider-Man

Reprints Amazing Spider-Man #53-61

 Silver Surfer: Origins

 Reprints Silver Surfer #1-5

X-Men: Magneto Triumphant The Uncanny

Reprints X-Men # 104-117

 Will come back with more soon, By Crom!

In A Galaxy Far Far Away...

Hey Hey Hey Barbarians!

Long time no see,Yeah your's truly was caught between festivals.Well we look forward to something in our monotonous lives, In b/w these festivals your's truly was also busy in collecting and sourcing some rare books,during such a conversation one of my contacts in the west asked me about Indian comics and it struck me that I haven't written anything on newer genres of Indian comics.

During this age where most of the things are going social a hard copy is increasingly getting obsolete,same goes for the Indian market,production houses
are increasingly finding it difficult to sustain cost with rising input costs and dwindling markets.
yours truly picks some of the happenings from the Indian comic scene.

1. Ravanayan     -     Holy Cow Entertainment
   Artists           -    vivek goyal
   Story             -    vivek goyal/Vijayendra Mohanty
  
   Summary      -    The world only sees the triumph of good over evil,Ramayana is a story laying down the modalities of Indian civilization, more than 7000 years ago,Ramayan depicts actions and consequences but when The protagonist is bound to this cosmic world with his duties can it be that his arch nemesis is not? Ravanayan explores The duties and actions of Ravana the vanquished and the dharma he viewed with his own lenses.

   Review - It's not a new concept but yes getting it in comic format is new.The Cover pages are well done,especially the depiction of the popular 10 heads/faces of Ravana on issue #1 cover.The Fight with the gods cover on Issue #4 is very good as well and worth mentioning. Coming to interiors, panels have been removed by sketches as splash pages with brown background,my opinion would be actually to go for detailed pencil sketches with grey inking.Overall a good read.    

2. Aghori    -    Holy Cow Entertainment
   Artist        -       Vivek Goyal
   Story        -        Ram V
  
   Summary    -    "For Matured Readers" Present day Vira the Aghori has a violent past and he is in serch of answers which had turned his life into a living hell. He took an unothodrox education to seek the answers and become an Aghori What are these questions what does the Aghori do?
  
   Review - A very well written book with dark content and good artwork and intuguing story.The cover and the back cover is both awesome.Real good work in making.

3. Ware- house    -    Holy Cow Entertainment
   Artist                -    Vivek Goyal
   Story                -    Akshay/Soumya/Shweta
   Summary         -    Horror Fiction
   Review            -  This reminds me of "tales of mystery" from EC horror flicks the artwork which made those books much sought after unfortunately is lacking here.
   But all the 3 stories are good and actually gives a sense of belonging to the book.

4. Aveon9    -    Rovolt Entertainment
   Artist        -    Abhishek Malsuni
   Story         -    Shamik Dasgupta

   Summary    -    Sci-fi adventure inspired by Indian mystical classics.
   Review       -    what happens when StarWars meets Chandrakanta? An imaginary world of Starwars - Long long ago in a galaxy far far away. with editor as Ron Marz who is like the who's who of comic industry production, presentation and art can only go to newer heights. I will appreciate the Art the colors and the presentation, not since now defunct Virgin (Devi,Sadhu,Ramayan 3392 AD) have i seen so much professionalism in creating a book in Indian Market.Having said that I would like to see a better story where readers would wait for the next episode to hit the stands.

    
5. Damned    -    Chariot Comics
   Story          -    Aniruddho Chakraborty
   Artist          -    Tarun/Rohit
  
   Summary    -    In a Future not far from today exists shapeshifters,immortals,socerers and the likes.When a top Industrialists gets kidnapped,A sorcerer mercenary named Anga is hired whose motivation is unknown.
  
   Review     -      Interesting Artwork which is heavily inspired by modern art canvases with big splashes,In fact the size of the book is bigger
   than contemporary comic books.The overall layout is dark and reflects the dark mood of the Damned.Cover art uses different shades of Brown. Interiors have a lot of action I didn't like the page layout as it is difficult to understand the paneling with cross panel expressions.

Although I'm tempted to add Daksh and Odiyan from Level 10 but to do justice it will have to be in a new post!Till then Barbarians ..
happy hunting, n'uff said!