First Ever Frew Phantom Comics in Full Colours

For a long time a much talked about issue among the phantom fans the world over has been why frew publication in australia is not priting phantom comics in colour format. A lot many readers are interested in seeing those stories in coloured format as they are some of the finest ever created if we are talking about works of writers and artists other than Lee Falk and his team.

Today I am going to post a story which was published in frew quite recently (only a year ago or so) but which actually is an old one from 1978 from scandenavia. A fine story it is but in all its printing history it was always printed in black and white only. It gives me immense pleasure to present this in colour now.

English Version of Mandrake Daily D065 - The Million Dollar Loaf

The English version of Mandrake Daily #D065 "The Million Dollar Loaf".

This has been a unique project for me. Translating from a language which is completely alien to me was interesting when I began but became a little tiring and time consuming as the work progessed and once the initial phase was over the speed became slow. Because I was taking help of mechanical translator like Google Tranlation, the conversion was not very smooth, as I mentioned in my last post, but somehow I was able to complete it.

Mandrake Daily Strip D065 - "The Million Dollar Loaf" in Hindi (लाख रुपये की डबलरोटी)

Presenting today Mandrake Daily Strip No. 65 - 'The Million Dollar Loaf' in Hindi. This strip was only available in French so far (as I know). I decided to translate it so that it can be read by readers of other languages.

Now, French is completely 'French' to me. How could it be possible? I knew nobody who could help me in translation of French. So thought, why not try with Google Translation service? First it appeared almost impossible task. To write all French dialogues (which didn't make any sense to me at all, as I do not know even the basics of this language) was a tough job. Secondly, google translation does not work as smoothly, as one would desire it to. The sentences I got back from machine were almost equally incomprehensible. Then I tried to convert them to both Hindi and English, and somehow it worked. Now I was able to infer something which made some sense. At some places I was also forced to use some common sense.

Mandrake Sunday Strip 072 - The Casino (year 1957) cleaned and coloured

First an announcement. I have joined twitter and my tweets are now available at twitter.com/phantom_head

And here comes a Mandrake Sunday strip illustrated by original artist Phil Davis. This is sunday strip No. 72 - "The Casino" from 1957. It's not a very long story but I found the story interesting enough to be taken for colouring.

I had downloaded the black and white strip pages from Lothar's blog, which is a fine blog dedicated to Mandrake strips. It seems that he had downloaded it from some newspaper archive and hence the quality of print was not good. A lot of black spots appeared on the pages which required treatment before the strip could aquire some presentable form. Out of eight pages, four were cleaned by somebody (most probably Lothar himself) when I downloaded it. But the remaining four were still in quite a bad condition.

Classic Phantom Daily Strip by Ray Moore and Lee Falk (D006 - Adventure in Algiers) in full colours.

Phantom punishing a young girl old school style

Presenting another classic phantom tale here in this post, one from the earliest adventures penned by Lee Falk and illustrated by the original Phantom artist Ray Moore. The story was published as far back as 1938.

For Indian readers this is unread in coloured form (for most even in any form) as it was not published in indrajal comics. In fact they never published any of the Moore's strips. It seems a curious case as to why they overlooked some of the best phantom stories while giving space for some non-Falkian stories from franchisees from american publishing houses e.g. charlton etc.

Pinki covers from diamond comics india

Exams are over, the new session on the verge of beginning. The two odd weeks in between are being utilised in watching cartoon channels all day long. It's time to indulge in TV shows which were put on hold due to exams. Extra efforts are required to clear the backlog.

I am talking about my kid's current daily routine. TV and computer have hogged all the available time from younger generation's daily life. The most severe beating has been received by the reading habits, I mean light readings.

As a parent, I feel worried about the condition. Watching too much of television is surely going to have a negative impact on the young mind. It's a proven fact that TV viewing beyond certain limit makes the mind dull and affects reasoning abilities.

Phantom Daily Strip #060 (coloured) - The Wisdom of Solomon

During its peak period, many newspapers world over were publishing Phantom's adventures in form of daily and sunday strips. Many magazines were also happy to find a space for this mysterious masked man on their precious pages. While many newspapers and most magazines carried coloured prints for sunday strips, the daily strips were still published in only black and white.

Indrajal comics in India published many daily strips in coloured format, but still there remain  many a daily strips which were never published in Indrajal ever. For this reason, these stories are still not known to Indian comic lovers.

I decided to colour one such daily strip from the McCoy-Falk combo. This is a real classic from 1956. It is D060 - The Wisdom of Solomon.

Phantom Sunday Strip #040 - The Gibs Brothers (In Full colours)

Been extremely busy for some time, hence no posts. Posting today a short (only 5 pages) but classic phantom sunday strip from Lee Falk and Wilson Mccoy. This is #S040 - The Gibs Brothers, first published in 1955.

Set in a food joint in the coastal town of Bengali, it is one of those early tales which helped set the image of phantom as a tough and fearless crime fighter who maintains a whole world of secrecy about his sudden appearance and equally mysterious disappearance into the obscure surroundings of the streets full of mist.

The same act, with slight modifications, has been repeated in a number of other adventures (for example, in the phantom sunday strip posted earlier - #S136). But the original is original and has a solid effect on the reader, something that is found missing in the later repetitions.

Preview of Mandrake Colored Strip (Currently Under Project)

Completed first 20 pages of the mandrake strip I talked about in my previous post. It is a classic Falk-Davis strip from 1939, 'D017 The Deep South'. Just posting a slide-show for preview purpose.

As suggested by friends, the entire strip will be available to download only when it is completed. You may want to take a look at the pages, so I am just giving a link for small (400 px wide) version.

Download first 20 pages

(400 px wide, just 1.4 MB)

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Original Black and White scans courtesy Balaji. See this post.