As promised, I am back with the reviews of the remaining 6 stories of Dara-Indrajals published in 1989-90 period. In the earlier post, I have described the introductory comic(The Enemy Agent:Vol.25 No.43) with the adventure it followed!
Now, the next release was The Hundred Islands (Vol.26 No.16) where Dara had to solve a ghastly sabotage plan!! An out-and-out thriller, in my opinion. :-)
Then came the most famous adventure of this Indian Bond series - The Drug Barons (Vol.26 No.26). It's about a secret cultivation of Poppy trees in Terai region and murder of an IW detective, Atul!! He was found dead, apparently killed by the tigers...but was it really?? Thus, Dara had to take the charge of this maddening mystery and then...it's better to not reveal anymore & keep the thrill for those fans who yet to read this tale! ;-) Here, again the art-work, besides the thrilling story, was amazing! Specially those pictures depicting deep woods, where "even at noon, sun's rays cant penetrate", were really perfect!
Now, the next release was The Hundred Islands (Vol.26 No.16) where Dara had to solve a ghastly sabotage plan!! An out-and-out thriller, in my opinion. :-)
Then came the most famous adventure of this Indian Bond series - The Drug Barons (Vol.26 No.26). It's about a secret cultivation of Poppy trees in Terai region and murder of an IW detective, Atul!! He was found dead, apparently killed by the tigers...but was it really?? Thus, Dara had to take the charge of this maddening mystery and then...it's better to not reveal anymore & keep the thrill for those fans who yet to read this tale! ;-) Here, again the art-work, besides the thrilling story, was amazing! Specially those pictures depicting deep woods, where "even at noon, sun's rays cant penetrate", were really perfect!Next issue was The Veiled Secret (Vol.26 No.34). It's my least favorite tale of this series...a conspiracy story which was not that appealing..anyway, still worth checking out!
Rather, it's The Lurking Conspirators (Vol.26No.40), which was a real thriller involving the international terrorists and.. their leader was an NRI beauty, Ms.Ann! :oThen Dara appeared in Sparks of Treason (Vol.27 No. 3; 1990) released in the final year of Indrajal Comics, dealt with the Kashmiri terrorists. Overall, it was a nice tale, still bit simpler(and the obvious reason was to avoid any political controversy!)
Now, finally came the LAST issue of this series, as well as the LAST Indrajal Comics - The Jaws of Treachery (Vol.27 No.8;16-30 April,1990). I always become nostalgic whenever thinking about this particular issue! No,it's NOT about the storyline, although a kidnapping tale of the foreign officials in a secret fort in the desert and how Dara managed to rescue them is a complete thriller, this issue is special for me 'cos this was my last 'then current' Indrajal purchase - bought within a week of the release on 23 April,1990! In the next month, our Magazine-seller guy came with this bad news that ToI had cancelled Indrajal Comics. :(
Anyway,so that's it!! There are only 8 Dara-Indrajals in total. This was a brief series that successfully left it's positive impact on the '80s Indrajal readers!! :-)
PS - A nice blog-post on Dara is available in Comic-Diwane.
Anyway,so that's it!! There are only 8 Dara-Indrajals in total. This was a brief series that successfully left it's positive impact on the '80s Indrajal readers!! :-)
PS - A nice blog-post on Dara is available in Comic-Diwane.
5 comments:
between jagjit and kamini uppal, i have to say kamini uppal is a better writer. and this is something coming from a die hard Bahadur fan. the best thing would have been to team up Bahadur and Dara. that's one comic book I would write myself, if I could ever get the copyrights to the characters
Amar surur diker Ijc bolte Vol.26,Vol.25 r Vol.27 er issue guloi mone pore,tarpor chilo #300-420 rangeer Indrajal...orthat 1989-1992 er modhey sob hoy....r Dara chilo Indrajal-er last introduced hero,on the end of '88...Tai Dara amar priyo chilo(not to compare wid the 'Fantastic 4' though!)..ekta Darar story khub chomke diyechilo reader-der,seta holo Drug Obhijaan(V26 N26)...infact,coincidentally last Indrajal-tao Dara-r story chilo..
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Between Jagjit n Kamini Uppal(i donno if they were connected!),while Kamini babu did some fresh spy-based stories,and Pradeep Sathe's superb illustration gave the series a smart and slick look,saying this,the scripts were pretty straight as Dara was a one-man army,so there was very less character-development! But in the Bahadur series,there was CSF,there were handful other important characters other than Bahadur and then,as these were social-based stories,so in each story there were plenty new characters(one-off)!
[By the way,Bahadur was originally by Abid Surti,who wrote first 12 stories...but i grew up reading J.Uppal's stories..]
as far as i know, i read somewhere that kamini uppal is the wife of jagjit uppal. (I read it from a source I cannot verify). Bahadur's early stories of the Surti age and the earlier Uppal age were really great, no doubt about that. but later the stories started getting very formulaic and empty. the worst among them, I feel is The Whispering Shadows and that another one where they went to Goa.
Maybe Dara too would have progressed to the same state if it had continued, but maybe the fact that only 8 of them ever came out (I have 3, btw. the first, the last and 100 dwiper desh) kept the perspective fresh. and no doubt it was slick.
Your this clue led me search more and I got this(http://www.jagjituppal.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31:jagjit-a-kaminis-love-story&catid=3:articles&Itemid=5) which I belive more probable are the same person,and they are spouse indeed!But i am not sure...
About your observation between Bahadur's earlier stories and later stories,that is my feeling too,as I belive that happened due to two reason : first,lack of plot and second,as Indrajal was shifted from fortnightly to weekly,from 24 issues/yr to 52 issues/yr,the writer was under extra pressure to deliver more stories for the banner,and hence the fall of quality(though stories were readable at worst).Saying this,I donno if you have noticed,that the stories appeared from mid'88 to end of '89(precisely Vol.25 No.33 to Vol.26 No.38) were much better than the earlier ones.Specially the titles like 'Prowling wolves/Nekrer gorjon','Mrityur sathe panja/death duel' and 'Raktakto obhijan/Bank hesit' are just top notched!
And as I said before,try Dara's 4th adventure,Drug Obhijaan and the 2nd adventure,Bharate khunir dol...pretty sharp plots...
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