Thursday 28 June 2018

A Homage to the Magic of Indrajal - Some Indrajal Covers for stories that never ran on Indrajal

Post-Indrajal Covers – A tribute to Indrajal Comics

As a homage to the magic of Indrajal Comics, I made some "Indrajal Covers" for stories that never ran on Indrajal, that is, for stories that came after Indrajal Comics stopped publishing. I once got a thought that what if Indrajal still existed and published comic strip stories today, just like they did in those days? If they did, what would've they looked like?

Those of you born during 1960's to early 1990's who used to read comics would definitely remember Indrajal comics, which featured adventures the fan favourite Phantom, along with Mandrake, Flash Gordon, Buzz Sawyer, Rip Kirby and others.

But first, before we go to the Post-Indrajal Covers I made, a little nostalgia about Indrajal Comics and its covers.

About Indrajal Comics

Launched in March 1964 by Times of India publication, owned by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd., Indrajal Comics went on to become a popular comic book brand till the early 1990's. Starting with the adventures of The Phantom for its first 32 issues, the comics also began featuring other King Features characters like Mandrake, Flash Gordon, Kerry Drake, Buz Sawyer, Rip Kirby, Mike Nomad, Garth, Phil Corrigan, etc. Indrajal Comics were also published in several Indian languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, and Marathi.

Original Indrajal Phantom feature covers.

Most of these comics were essentially newspaper comic strips from the USA, which were collectively published as individual stories with given titles. However, it also featured the adventures of Bahadur, and later on, Dara, both "made in India" heroes. Bahadur, meaning "the brave man", was created by Abid Surti, and Jagjit Uppal took over later. Govind Brahmania drew the artwork for Bahadur, including the covers. Govind Brahmania also occasionally drew covers for Phantom, Mandrake and other foreign features, which resemble his drawing style seen in Bahadur.

Original Indrajal Mandrake feature covers.

The Phantom and Mandrake by Lee Falk were the most published titles, along with Bahadur, a purely Indian comic book hero. The Phantom was so popular that some stories were republished over the years with different given titles. Some Mandrake strips were republished with different titles too. Indrajal Comics also featured about four issues of Bruce Lee comics, which were probably originally Bruce Lee comic strips.

However, Indrajal Comics never featured all the comic strip stories from the US comic strips. The Phantom predominantly featured most of the comics drawn by Sy Barry, and the older one drawn by Wilson Mc. Coy or Ray Moore weren't featured as much, probably as they were not as popular because they were more simplistic artwork compared to Sy Barry's. In case of Mandrake, those drawn by Fred Fredericks, and in case of Flash Gordon, those drawn by Dan Barry, were predominantly featured on Indrajal Comics.

Apart from King Features syndicated comic strips, some Phantom titles from Charlton Comics were also published.

The foreign comics on Indrajal, such as Phantom, Mandrake, etc., were considerably edited from their originally published strips, for example, the fictional country of Bangalla in the Phantom was changed to Dangalla, and any reference to Bengali which referenced Bangalla was changed to Denkali. This was obviously done to avoid confusion between the fictional Bangalla and the Bengal in the Indian subcontinent.

Indrajal Comics Cover Styles

Now, coming to the Indrajal comics covers, they essentially had three styles.

The first, with a small Indrajal magic lamp logo on the top-left, with a full-page cover art. Okay, the real first style had a small logo of a child and a magic lamp on the top-left box, and later it was only a magic lamp, which is now well known as the Indrajal lamp. So, I'll just include them both as the First type.

The second was a thick horizontal section with a portrait of the main protagonist, or hero, in a coloured circle at the top-left, and the title Indrajal Comics beside it.

The third, and the last cover design had a larger horizontal section, in black or white, with Indrajal and the hero's portrait smaller, but COMICS written in huge letters. It was as if they were shouting at you, "COMICS". The third one was the worst, in my opinion. Indrajal Comics didn't live long after that, but not necessarily due to the bad cover art.

The earliest of the covers were drawn and painted by different artists. Later on too, they were drawn by great artists like Shehab (for example, see Infuriated Ghost, above). Some of the cover artwork weren't so good. Later on, cover art also included original artwork from the strip itself, apart from the ones drawn by artists (for example, see Iron-Willed Saviour Part -II above).

The Indrajal covers typically depicted intriguing scenes from the main title story within. Artists like Shehab and Shekhar drew excellent covers for foreign features like Phantom, Mandrake, Flash Gordon, and others. The scenes which went on the covers were typically chosen to be intriguing so that they evoked interest and curiosity in the readers. May it be a scene in which the hero of the story in peril, or some action scene, or some other scene of significance, Indrajal did a great job with their covers.

I have tried to keep up the same essence while making my Post-Indrajal covers (see below), by trying to choose an intriguing scene to be the cover, even though I have used the later style of Indrajal which used actual artwork from the comic as the cover. The Indrajal cover examples seen above for "The Iron-Willed Saviour Part II" and "The Phantom's Paradise" are examples of such covers where original comic drawings were taken from the strip and re-arranged to make an intriguing cover.

Indrajal Covers for stories that never ran on Indrajal — Post-Indrajal Covers

My Homage to Indrajal Comics

Okay, now to get to the point, I made some "Indrajal Covers", which are inspired from the covers of Indrajal comics, for some stories of Phantom, Mandrake and even Spider-Man, even though the web-slinger was never featured on Indrajal Comics. I'm going to call them "Post-Indrajal Covers"!

Some years ago, I made these covers for some stories which were not featured on Indrajal Comics. Most of them are from the comic strip storylines which ran after Indrajal Comics was no more, some as recent as 2013 or 2014.

I wanted to see, If Indrajal still existed and published comic strip stories like they did in those days, what would've they looked like? Well, maybe they'd look like some of these below.

Oh, and I also gave them some titles in the way Indrajal used to give them. Have a look :

  • Original artwork : Sunday Phantom story "Mandrake's Bon Voyage" (Original run from 21-April-2013 to 24-November-2013), written by Tony De Paul and drawn by Terry Beatty. (You can read this story on the official site - thephantomcomics.com)
  • Indrajal logo & title from one of the old Indrajal Comics. (Volume number & date are just randomly entered.)
  • Rearranged, retouched, enhanced, given a new title, and turned into a "Indrajal Cover" or, a Post-Indrajal Cover, by me.

This cover is based on the original style of Indrajal Comics, with a small Indrajal lamp logo and the issue number on the top left. This cover was made by me using the original artwork from the Sunday Phantom story "Mandrake's Bon Voyage" (Original run from 21-April-2013 to 24-November-2013), written by Tony De Paul and drawn by Terry Beatty. So, no, I did not draw this, or any of the other covers I made, but made it with the help of Photoshop, using the artwork in the original respective storylines.

However, I had to retouch the original art, which was originally in small panels, and were blurry when enlarged for a large cover. So, yes, it was quite an effort with redrawing lines, shades and re-colouring any blurred colours. In short, it was e-painting with a mouse.

And yes, I renamed the story title as The Masqerade Cruise, as a homage to the typical story titles that Indrajal used to give. ;o) Also, I just entered some random volume number, issue number and date on them.

  • Original artwork : Sunday Phantom story "Mandrake's Bon Voyage" (Original run from 21-April-2013 to 24-November-2013), written by Tony De Paul and drawn by Terry Beatty.
  • Indrajal logo & title from one of the old Indrajal Comics. (Volume number & date are just randomly entered.)
  • Rearranged, retouched, enhanced, given a new title, and turned into a "Indrajal Cover" or, a Post-Indrajal Cover, by me.

This is a cover with the later style of Indrajal Comics, with a coloured horizontal bar on the top, with a picture of the main protagonist, or "hero" is a coloured circle, to the left, beside the large Indrajal Comics title. The Indrajal lamp is to the right, in this cover style.

I made these covers, and then some more, sometime about when this original story ended its weekly run, sometime around November 2013 to April 2014, just for some fun, but posting it on the blog now.

Did you like the Post-Indrajal Cover? There are more covers I've made this way, and I'll post them soon. Let me know if you liked them. Follow this blog to stay updated!




Please Note: Indrajal Comics was a comic book series launched and owned by The Times of India Publication, who own all the rights to their respective titles, logos and other assets related to their comic book series. Phantom, Mandrake, and other comic strips are written and drawn by their respective authors and artists. Phantom and Mandrake are owned by King Features Syndicate, Inc, who own all images from their respective comic strips; and all the rights associated with those comic strips remain with their respective creators.

The Post-Indrajal Comic Covers in this above post are only Fan-Art created by me for the sole purpose of paying homage to the great Indrajal Comics which used to be a very popular comic book series in India.


Comments

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6 Comments

  1. I loved the cover designed for The Masquerade Cruise. Even the title you gave (renaming the original title is very Indrajalish sounding. I have read this story and frankly would have loved to see this story with this title being published through Indrajal.

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    1. Thank you. Glad to meet a fellow Indrajal fan!

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  2. Nice effort. A nostalgic article for Indrajal lovers. And the title of the imagined comic is brilliant. Just a small quibble, no mention in the article of the greatest Indrajal covers which were by B. Govind. And tbe fact that several Gold Key comics have been reprinted by Indrajal hadnot been mentioned. Small points though in a fine effort. Hope to see more.

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    1. Hi, thank you for the feedback.

      By the way, I have already mentioned about the contributions of Govind Brahmania (who is also known as B. Govind), who was the author of Bahadur, in the above article. And yes, I've missed out mentioning Gold Key Comics which were reprinted by Indrajal. Thank you for pointing it out.

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  3. Reading was fun. But that's how one develops a reading habit

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  4. Please check this out : Free app to read Indrajal comics - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.grasspalm.gpcomics&hl=en

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Relevant, respectful comments and feedback are welcome. Please read the Comment Policy before commenting.