Saturday, August 11, 2007

Aleena - ' The Glamorous Enchantress'

There is a change of topic....after a couple of lengthy posts on Phantom (though it's just beginning!) i thought it'll be a good idea to shift the discussion to Mandrake -the magician.
And the first character hit my mind was Aleena...yes,i'm talking about Aleena - the enchantress,who rarely appeared in this magician's life but whenever she came ,it was a tough deal for Mandrake as she ,like Mandrake,also an ex-student of College Of Magic situated in some mysterious cave of Himalaya.
Apparently,she had a crush on Mandrake since their student-life .Even once she protested Derek's (evil-twin of Mandrake) mis-behaviour towards Mandrake and as a result got slapped by this furious fella,that leads a fight between twins until Theron intervened.Think this incident indicates there was no initial bad-feelings between them until Aleena became a scholar and introduced with the urban,rich society. From then her sky-high ambition leads her doing misuse of the all those mighty hypnotic powers she learned in that place,including frequent change of her husbands. Yes,she is the Liz Taylor of comics strips who married 6 times and still in search for new partner! Only difference (with her real-life counterpart) is ,after marry, using her remarkable power she forced each of those husbands turned to be her slaves!

There are only 4 Indrajals in which this glamorous enchantress (yes,she is hot n glamorous ,a rare example of blonds ;-0) appeared,though first one was 'Aleena the enchantress' (No.397 & 398;1982 ),it was not the original first story of this series....that was published lately as 'Spell of enchantress'(Vol.24 No.52;1987) where she forced Mandrake to bring her the 'crystal cube'- an amazing thing supposed to be gifted by aliens to the College of Magic .Aleena almost managed to grab that priceless species,before Lothar and Hojo were saved Mandrake from her mighty hypnotic spell(it's one of those rarest rare moments where this legendary magician himself was under the hypnotic spell!).It has been learned in this thriller that Narda/Karma yet to see her . Then in the next story (No.397 & 398) where she again backed to woo Mandrake and then tried to kill Narda after Mandrake rejected her proposal...at the end,Mandrake's hypnotic gesture apparently made her a witch (grrr....) that scared away all of her slaved-husbands!!
[above u can see few moments from these strips]
Later, for the LAST time she returned in the 'Captive enchantress' (Vol.25 No.4;1988) where she was trapped by some deadly smugglers ....she then tried to call Mandrake using telepathy .Initially Mandrake thought that call as her another evil attempt to create trouble,but with Narda's insistence (ooops!women are truly mysterious,my friends....) Mandrake saved her from the deadly clutches of those smugglers.In the very end,Aleena thanked Narda for the help ...... with one question in her mind "What does he see in her? (Narda)"? and Narda wondered as well " What did he ever see in her "?...she was actually confused about whether Aleena still loves Mandrake or not!. ....but it's answer is obvious :Y-E-S!
What u think,friends??
Also,it was most probably the LAST strip where this enchantress returned,wish we would see more strips of her!
P.S.- would be happy if someone proves me wrong,that's she was appeared in another story...but then,is it really??

4 comments:

pattu said...

A suggestion if I might. Please add the link for 'Aleena the enchantress' part 1 and 2 that has appeared in (TCP?) so that it might help anyone who has read about her for long (or not at all - unlikely).

Thanks
pattu

Comic World said...

Yeah..i also think that none such strip featuring Aleena was published later...Anyway we all will love to see more of Aleena in future.

HojO said...

#pattu:hey!it was in my plan indeed!....actually i wrote most of the part few days ago ,then it was in draft & meantime i forgot it...:-(
I'll provide all 3 Links from TCP ..u may know,only ONE Aleena strip yet to appear on net...'Captive enchantress'

Keep coming frnd :-)))

HojO said...

#cw:thnx for confirming it :-)
Let's hope,Fredricks will return this 'glamorous enchantress'!