A Homage to Indrajal - Covers 4 and 5 - Secret of the Cave Island - A Frew/Fantomen Phantom tale

Post-Indrajal Covers – A tribute to Indrajal Comics

I don't think Indrajal Comics had ever featured a Frew or Team Fantomen tale. But what if it did? I've made hypothetical Indrajal covers for a Frew/Fantomen story called "Secret of the Cave Island". Also, I've made two covers as "Part 1" and "Part 2" for this Phantom, as good ol' Indrajal Comics used to usually publish Phantom stories.

Here's the 4th and 5th Post-Indrajal covers I made, this time with a Frew/Fantomen story titled "Secret of the Cave Island".

Secret of the Cave Island Part-1 : hypothetical Indrajal cover

Secret of the Cave Island Part-2 : hypothetical Indrajal cover

• Original artwork : Frew Story (No. 1538) "Secret of the Cave Island" (Fantomen : 21/1978), written by Norman Worker and artwork by Georges Bess.
• Indrajal logo & title from one of the old Indrajal Comics. (Volume number & date are just randomly entered.)
• Based on the colouring work by The Phantom Head. (A coloured version that I found on a fan blog called The Phantom Head).
• Rearranged, retouched, partially redrawn, partially recoloured, enhanced, and turned into an "Indrajal Cover" or, a Post-Indrajal Cover, by me.

What's this all about

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? 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.

Although this Fantomen/Frew story came during Indrajal's peak run, I don't think it was ever featured on Indrajal Comics itself.

A little about this story

Before a brief look into the story, let me mention that many stories on Team Fantomen (a Swedish publication) and Frew (An Australian publication) were usually written by authors other than Lee Falk, and those stories did not exactly follow the Falk canons. This story of "Secret of the Cave Island" has some places like the Boomsby prison of Bangalla, a place which never existed in Lee Falk's original newspaper comic strips. I haven't read much of Fantomen or Frew, as Indrajal Comics mostly featured only Lee Falk's original newspaper comic strips, and only on rare occasions, featured some non-Falk stories from other publications.

However, Tony De Paul, the author who currently writes the Phantom newspaper comic strip, includes such non-Falk canon places and elements such as Boomsby Prison, for example. I haven't read much of Phantom comics after Lee Falk was no more, and I'll just say I don't like Tony's work of deviating heavily from Falk's canons and including elements from parallel publications like Frew and Fantomen.

That said, here's a small synopsis of the story "Secret of the Cave Island" :
The Phantom goes in search of an escaped prisoner from Boomsby, who claims to be the descendant of a notorious 17th century pirate called Captain Hawk. The Phantom (our Phantom, the 21st), learns from the chronicles of the 6th Phantom that he fought this pirate and his group long with the men of Jungle Patrol. The 6th Phantom further mentions that he was injured badly in this battle and the pirate and his crew had escaped, never to be heard of again. A hurricane that ravished the Bengali coast is believed to have destroyed the fleeing pirate ship.

And obviously, there's a lost treasure involved in all this racket and the title of this story "Secret of the Cave Island" obviously give us the clue where the treasure is and where everyone including the protagonists, antagonists and some supporting cast, is headed to. So, the rest of the story is like how our Phantom goes after this descendant of this pirate, who's an escaped prisoner, and brings 'em to justice and completes an incomplete job of his ancestor. Not much of a story, but some nice artwork by Georges Bess.

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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 or comic books are written and drawn by their respective authors and artists. Phantom and Mandrake are owned by King Features Syndicate, Inc, who own all content from their respective comic strips; and all the rights associated with those comics remain with their respective creators and publications.

The above hypothetical 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.