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A Glance at the ...Harry Menace'Bardo' VersesFrozen!The Decline of t...The Ace in a Loo...Travelogues for ...
Mrinal Bose
Arts
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Return to Comics A trip to the "raddiwala" triggers a nostalgic look at comic characters like Phantom and Mandrake that have disappeared from bookshops recently. ............................ Shalabh Mohan
Does anyone get nostalgic about the comics of our youth? I am referring to Indrajal comics - of the '60', '70s and '80s - when competition to these were Tintin & Asterix
(too expensive), Chacha Choudhury (too downmarket!) and Amar Chitra Katha (who wants boring history lessons?). My favorites were Phantom (the ghost who walks),
Mandrake (the magician), Bahadur (the brave) etc. Only last week, I happened to pass by a raddiwala in the Juhu market who had a huge stockpile of 300 odd assorted
Indrajal comics. Attracted like a fire-fly to the fire, I dropped everything else and zeroed in on the pile. Lots of old comics, going at the rate of - hold your breath - Rs. 2.00
a piece (after bargaining dutifully), For the first time, I thought I had a great bargain - I could even have gone up to Rs 5.00 per piece. The Rs. 3.00 I credited to my consumer
surplus (as taught by my Economics teacher). I rifled through the collection, scientifically sorting the comic pile into Phantom, Mandrake and others. A lot of the comics
were in parts, i.e. each issue had only one part of the adventure / story. The ones in parts were kept separately, to be checked if all the parts in a particular story were
available or not. These were later sorted to sift out the complete adventures. All in all, the exercise took about 2 hours. In between there were other customers who were
trying to get to other magazines and novels, whom I quelled with a strong glare. The ones I couldn't quell with glares came in for some shoving and pushing from my side.
The final haul was 121 Phantom and 48 Mandrake comics. I had to leave behind some, because they were unfortunately incomplete. The money was paid out grudgingly,
as was my duty as a (apparently) disgruntled customer. I have been feasting on these comics since last Sunday, devouring them one by one.
Some of the comics date back to 1968/69, i.e. pre my birthday. The price of the comic was a princely 0.70 Rupee per issue and the subscription for the whole year (26 issues)
was a princely Rs.19!! (What kind of comic would you get in Rs.19 today?). After 1973, the price was raised to Rs.1 per issue, then to Rs.2 and then to Rs.3. When Indrajal
comics closed operations (I think it was 1986 / 87) the comics were going at Rs.3.
Brought back nostalgic memories - for those of you who are familiar with Phantom / Mandrake and others of their ilk, each comic superhero had individual traits - and also
a unique environment around him. For example, some of the phrases associated with Phantom are "(all old jungle sayings) ghost who walks, man who can never die, Phantom
has the strength of 10 lions, the voice of an angry Phantom freezes the blood (!), Phantom is rough on roughnecks" etc etc. There would be Hero (his white stallion) and Devil
(he's a wolf, not a dog). Then there would be the skull cave, the deep woods, the Bandar pygmies, the garden of Eden (where the big cats eat fish and Phantom goes skiing on
dolphins). The villains would fall into one of the following categories: Rogue Sultans from neighboring sultanates, poachers of wild life, rogue tribes attempting to make war
on the peaceful Wambesi and Llongo tribes, black sheep from these tribes who would go to town, and return for the riches of the jungle with white friends. Somehow, the
villains and the adventures didn't sound repetitive at all.
Print this page | Email to a friend | Viewers comments | Post comments My favorite always has been Mandrake (probably because he used to get involved in esoteric adventures, some of them inter-galactic (!), and also I thought the artwork of
Mandrake comics was the best of the lot.) Mandrake came with Lothar, Narda, Zed, Hojo (the secret chief of Inter-Intel, the entrance to which was an adventure in itself),
Theron etc. The villains in Mandrake's adventures were a mixed variety, which ranged from ordinary goons to Intergalactic villains to the dreaded 8! Gang, to the Cobra
(Mandrake's half brother, who was disfigured by Theron, the chief of the college of magic). Mandrake's favorite method of getting the better of villains would be to "freeze"
them, and while the villains would be suitably imagining themselves to be in sticky positions, Lothar would step in and finish off the gang. Feminine interest was provided
by Narda and Karma, who also got mixed up in Mandrake's adventures often.
Adding to the whole nostalgia bit are the sort of fillers, or one page comics / advertisements / competitions which appear towards the end of each issue, after the main adventure
is over. Henry, Baboa, Chalky, the little king, are the perennial favorites - most of these characters were the strong, silent types. The first prize in various kiddies' competition
used to be in the range of Rs.10-20! and various banks would put in their ads at regular intervals, exhorting the young ones to start saving with a princely sum of Rs.5!
Anyway, I think these comics were, and are, great fun. In today's politically correct world, Phantom and Mandrake's characters would be so grossly redefined that they would
be completely un-recognizable. The idea of a White masked man ruling over the semi savage blacks of Africa, with Muslim sultans as the villains indulging in slavery and drugs,
would be complete no-no. (Is that the reason why Phantom comics disappeared suddenly?). Similarly, Mandrake's adventures would be looked on as hallucinations of a
over-fertile mind, or a mind high on LSD. Good comics these days are few and far in between, and most of the time the heroes seem to be gray, brooding types
(Batman, X-men being classic examples). Somehow, today's slickly produced comics donot have the same effect.
Idea is to get them neatly sorted and bound, and store it for posterity so that future generations would know when the hero was white and villain was black and there was a clear
dividing line.
Meanwhile, will continue search for more Indrajal comics, specially the Phantom & Mandrake ones. People who have any information on where these comics can be got in
bulk may please put it on the site.
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