Sunday, February 20, 2011

Publication History of Phantom,Mandrake & Rip Kirby Daily Strips in the BENGALI Newspaper

When it comes to comics,Bengali readers have a rich history of both vintage western strips/books as well as own Indian heroes.Now,talking about the most popular western heroes ,specifically those who appeared in the Indrajal universe,the two obvious names are Phantom & Mandrake.In West Bengal,these two Falk-heroes were introduced by the Indian's one of the longest running paper,Ananda Bazar Patrika(ABP).Now in the Bengali version,while they kept the original name of the magician(they called him Jadukar Mandrake),our beloved ghost is known as Aranyadev(means Lord of the Jungle). There's another interesting Indrajal character that ABP introduced was Rip Kirby(aka Goyenda Rip).

I'm in a process to build an index which strips were appeared in ABP and for that I need only the first ever strips they published as whatever they published(or still publishing) are in pretty order of the original sequence.After a brief research,what I learnt that,Daily strips of Phantom(Aranyadev) are under publication since '50s but there's no particular information regarding Mandrake or Rip Kirby.Only thing I can confirm that,since '90s along with Phantom,I was reading Daily strips of Rip and after the end of RK series on 1999,Mandrake Dailies were added in that place(At that time,Mandrake's Sunday strips were published in the special sunday-page called 'Rabibasorio',which I'll come-up with in the next post).
But,which strips were published along with Phantom in the period of '50s to '80s?? Any idea??
If we summaries,it's like as follows:
(For readers' information,ABP publication date always 8-9 months behind of the original KFS date eg. todays'(2-21-2011) published strip is actually from 5-15-2010 and so on.)
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  • Phantom Dailies(by ABP):
Year of Publication & Title of the First Strip: Probably in the '50s but title or any exact infos are unknown.
Year of Publication & Title of the Last Strip: Presently active i.e. Feb/2011 & Terror Cells in New York(D229)
  • Mandrake Dailies(by ABP):
(First of all,there's some confusion on whether MTM dailies were earlier published,before Rip Kirby)
Year of Publication & Title of the First Strip: Latest batch: March/2000 & Perilous Crossover(D237)
Year of Publication & Title of the Last Strip: Latest Batch: Presently active i.e. Feb/2011 & The Return of Doctor Hi-5(D259)

  • Rip Kirby Dailies(by ABP):

Year of Publication & Title of the First Strip: Completely unknown (but obviously from '80s if not earlier!)
Year of Publication & Title of the Last Strip: Feb/2000 & title is unknown.
(However,one can look at the LAST week's worth of Kirby Dailies, from 21-26 June/1999 which were subsequently published in ABP after 8-9 months from the original date.)
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Hopefully some older readers of ABP are reading this article and can come-up with the much needed infos either here or at the phorum article (I've sent few mails to ABP regarding informationsABP persons directly in order to access the old archive).

Now I'm attaching few scans of ABP's current strips.They are publishing colored strips since 2009.(B/W strips I've posted are from 2003 as I luckily got few old papers in my library.)

































2 comments:

PBC said...

Although I don't read Bengali, would like adding in my e-collection. Are these available with download links or in torrents?

HojO said...

Dailies of both P/M(from 2002) are available from DEVIL's blog who compiled from the on-line archive of ABP who allows only from 2002!!
I'm trying to get their older archives,sent many mails but yet to receive any reply!! :( But,I'll continue to tap,let's see if find any source who will allow me to take the SCANS of old strips from the old archives!!