ComicConquest

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!

Sunday, 5 January 2014

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!

Monday, 30 December 2013

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!

Friday, 27 December 2013

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