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.

Completed (Phantom Sunday Strip #136 Full)

Hi friends!

Today I am feeling extremely happy and proud to present the complete Phantom Sunday strip #136, The Return of the Thuggees, in colour, for my esteemed readers and loving friends. It took much more time than I had initially expected, but at least I have able to produce it within this calendar year.

I thank all the visitors and downloaders of previous segments of the strip. Special thanks are due to all those who spared their time not only to write a comment and provided feedback, but also came up with valuable suggestions, which I undertook while moving on to next sections. All these wonderful people have kept the flame of desire burning constantly within me and have encouraged me to produce more, even though it was not easy for a novice like me to enter the field of comics colouring. Considering my (bad) nature of getting bored easily with new experiments and a tendency to leave it unfinished, personally I feel it is not a small achievement to finish a large comic comprising of none less than 65 pages for an amateur like me.

The opportunity has provided me some valuable experience in digital graphics art as I spent a lot of time with Photoshop. Most part of the strip was done with PS 6. It was after I purchased a new PC in October that I switched to PS CS4. Last quarter of the strip is being done with the newer version.

Heading towards completion (next set of pages from phantom #S136)

Click on the above pic to see a much larger view

One of the more challenging tasks in coloring a comic book is to keep the consistency and continuity with the coloring patterns of those characters and places which occur intermittently. If some character reappears into picture after a few pages, then it is important to check what color that character was wearing when it last came along or what is the general presentation routine for some particualr topographical unit.

The process demands its share of patience and becomes time consuming for someone who believes in perfection of the work. That slows down the overall processes a bit. I have tried to device some techniques/tricks to overcome the hurdle by  creating few image files with major characters in them. Everytime some particular character is required, these files are taken for reference. All regular characters are there, Phantom, Diana, Rex, Guran, Mozz and Devil of course. The super stallion Hero has been very supportive by not giving trouble for his coloring, being as white as milk.

Phantom Sunday Strip #136 - More Coloured Pages

It is really a long strip, and I am slightly getting bored now with the repetitive job of coloring the same characters and same scenarios. Looking for something new. Still wonder, was it a mistake to select this long story as my first shot in coloring.

Was only able to produce 5 pages this time. Wanted to make it 10 but it is taking more time now and I don't want to keep this unposted for long. So here is whatever I could. Only 10 more remains after this.

TPH #069: Phantom Daily Strip (D-208 "The Hit Men")

Continuing the series on Phantom Daily Strips. Here comes another one, D-208, "The Hit Men".

Story

Cici, a young and innocent teenager, accidentally becomes an eye-witness to  a murder order by a highly placed underworld agent. She is encouraged by  her mother to stand by the truth and to testify in the court against the  evils. Courageously she follows the advice and becomes star witness in  the case.

Her testimony in the case could prove fatal for a number of high  positions. So, A plan is carefully laid to get rid of her, but her death  should not arise any doubts, so an accident is planned. She, along with  few of her friends, is sent to Bangalla jungle in the name of a high  adventure trip where two professional killers are in wait for her.