Indrajal Comics #10
, 1964
Times of India
Cover: Govind Brahmaniya
Script: Lee Falk
Pencils/Inks: Wilson McCoy
A few months ago, I reached out to a fellow blogger, Mr. Walker (not to be confused with our Jungle Patrol member Mister Walker) about trading scans of American Phantoms for one of his scans of an Indrajal Phantom. Well, Mr. Walker graciously offered to send me a scan without asking anything in return. In the meantime, behind the scenes, Mr. Walker and others were busy creating the Indrajal superblog Indrajal Online. To help cross- promote the new Indrajal blog and to create an interesting side-by side posting, I am posting Indrajal #10 here in English and I am also posting Indrajal #10 in Hindi at Indrajal Online.
For those of you unfamiliar with Indrajal Comics,
Indrajal Comics was a series launched by the publisher of The Times of India, Bennet, Coleman & Co in March 1964. The first 32 issues contained Lee Falk's The Phantom stories, but thereafter, the title alternated between various King Features characters, including Lee Falk's Mandrake, Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon, Rip Kirby and Phil Corrigan, Roy Crane's Buz Sawyer, Allen Saunders' Mike Nomad and Kerry Drake and Steve Dowling's Garth. Later it also published Bahadur, an Indian comic hero created by Aabid Surti.
Unlike Australia's FREW or Sweden's Semic, Indrajal published their Newspaper reprints in color. And what color! The vibrant color palette featured in these comics is unique to Indian comics and is often breathtaking.
The covers for the early issues were provided by Govind Brahmaniya.
So, enjoy "The Phantom's Ring" by Lee Falk, drawn by Wilson McCoy, complete with the original back-up features and advertisements.
And thanks again to Mr. Walker who scanned this and to Prabhat Kumar Singh (aka PBC) who did initial cleanup on the scans and sent me the files.
