TPH #053 Saanpon Ki Devi (part 1) - Phantom (Indrajal Comics V25N27)

In those days when Lee Falk's Original Sunday and Daily Strips were regularly publishing in different publications, some of the most exciting things to look for in the news paper and magazines were these fine pieces of artwork alongwith the intriguing suspense of the storyline. Illustrated by legends like Sy Barry and Fred Fredricks, each new day usually began with a look at that particular day's daily strip.The excitement of the rolling stroy was great.

It gives me an idea. Usually I soon get bored with the routine excercise of posting comics in the similar manner again and agin, So as an attempt at finding some more pleasure myself, am starting a new experiment. Each day, I'll post one page of this excellent phantom story from indrajal comics, till all the pages are posted, and then will provide a download link.

The above said way of posting is only for this comic, Indrajal Comics V25N27 (and its sequel V25N28 of course) and other regular posts will continue to be posted simultaneously in the usual way. That means I'll be posting other comics alongwith this one at little intervals.

Page 2

Tomorrow: Toma, Guran's son and Rex's best friend, in danger. Phantom to the rescue.

This is a fine story from 1988, a time when publishers were finding it increasingly difficult to sustain the popularity and demand of indrajal comics in india. It was a sad phase during which they made several attempts to keep the flame burning. Many different strategies were adopted to engage readers, iincludin various surveys conducted in the indrajal itself about the viewers choice of heroes, more indian characters or foreign etc. But unfortunately nothing could save the publishing house from shutting down and thus a sweet era of indrajal came to a cruel end.

Thanks to all those friends, who gave their valuable feed-back on the topic of last post, i.e., regarding the scan size of the images. Chandan, Saif, Deb, O,I.C. (Frank), Mozz, Ajit, Dr. Ravi Gokhle, dara and anonymous. Most agree that a small file size is preferable over a huge one but in such a way that doesn't harm the quality of the scans. I am in total conformity with Frank's opinion when he says: "Two versions can be provided, a low quality (size ~ 5-10 mb) version and a high quality (saved at best possible quality as can be done) can be provided. remember never compromise quality for quantity for such rare gems which may never see a rescan..." May be this is the best solution. Meanwhile enjoy, or rather start enjoying the latest phantom issue on blog.

What page size you prefer to read a comic? Please register your opinion.

Concerning the resolution of the scanned images, an interesting anonymous comment I received on the last post. It goes like this:

Anonymous said...

The greater the original image is, the better I can get it to read / print due to computer technics (dithering / smothing, etc.) A friend of mine says: "there is no need of 10 MPixels digital photo camera, 2MB are enough" ! I do not think so, I explain to him and let him do what he feels is good for him. Cheers.

August 30, 2008 10:32 PM

Now, it's an old debate. What should be the ideal page size of a scan to be read without disturbing comfort level? Most of the indrajal comics posted on blogs are typically of a size smaller than 800 pixels wide, and no one had any problem reading them so far. Most of Mr. Ajay Mishra's work fall in this category. CW is also posting his scans in the same range. In fact he has set the height of the imges at 1024 pixels which makes the width falling somewhere in between 760-770 px.

Over three years ago, when TCP started posting indrajals, most computer screens were having 800x600 resolution set, but during this period many of them have migrated to 1024x768 px or even higher. The new comers are also having a higher resolution on their PCs. The sitemeter stats shows that majority is using 1024px resolution today. That makes the old pages to appear quite small on screen.

Obviously this is the time to increase the size of the page so that the comics can be enjoyed to the fullest. But what should be the ideal size then? For last many issues I am posting 1024px wide pages. Most of the comics contributed by Anurag to the indrajal community are even larger than this. While it is good to have big pages but that poses another big problem: a huge file size of around 20 MB per comic.

Today most of the visitors are on broad-band, so we can imagine that they would not have any issue with a large file size. But I still believe 20 MB is a bit too much for a 32 page comic. It is like a luxury that everybody cannot be expected to afford. Aren't we limiting the expansion of the community by providing such big files when under 10 MBs can be achieved rather easily? I happen to think so.

One very important aspect of all this discussion is to remind the bloggers of the target audience. I do believe, to attract new generation towards sweet comic culture the things must be made as simple as possible for them. Isn't that the expressed goal of most of our fellow comic bloggers?

Think it over friends. It's ok with established comics lovers. They would be going for even 50 MB file but can you really expect someone who has not tasted the thrills of Indrajalian era to download and read that big a comic? Then how are we going to increase our user base?

And now for our anonymous friend. Dear anon, You may be quite an expert with the graphical software (smoothing/dithering etc), but for majority of the visitors a good trade-off between page size and file size is also important. A 10 MP camera is always better than a 2 MP camera "IF" you don't have any budgetary constraints to take care of.

Have your say on the issue friends.

I wanted to announce a new experiment in comic posting in this post. But the current post has already become too lengthy. Will give the details in my next post. Don't forget to check it. Cheers.