Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Comic #55 : Mandrake Sunday: S138(Mandrake and Ali-Petro)

Another fun-filled MTM Sundays from late '70s appeared in Indrajal Comics as 'Curse of Gold'(Eng #340) & 'Sorner Ovishaap'(Ben #318).Now,if fans read the Ijc version,they will see an European rich man(Count Ali-Petro) while in the original strip,he was an Arabian sheik(Sheik Ali-Petro)!!! So this is another case of strange censorship,and while the reason was undoubtedly political ,but hey,things are not so simple!! Because this 'Curse of gold' published in the Dec,1979 while just after 3-4 years,another comic(based on another Arabian sheik) was published in the Indrajal's Aug,1983 issue,titled 'The Avaricious Prince' (V20 N32; S148 - Prince Nasdaq) where that sheik was more nasty,yet NO censorship was done either on his costume or name!! Well,as you know,sometimes ToI's treatments with strips were  very strange!

Now,enjoy this strip & have some glimpses on some pages of the Indrajal's version..
About this story,personally,I loved that part of the "Midas touch" and the final quote from Mandrake:"gold can't buy everything..sometimes,not even water"!!




3 comments:

PBC said...

Thanks for another Sunday strip!

Agree with you about strange editing. Many stories are edited & some are adopted versions.

However, many panels of IJC are covering larger background than original strips. It's another beauty of IJC after it's unique colouring.

HojO said...

@PBC:you are Welcome.

many panels of IJC are covering larger background than original strips. It's another beauty of IJC.

Earlier,say till 2008 or so,I also had this conception that Ijc published more 'unedited' version but later realised that truth is completely different!

I wonder if you will consider that "act" of ToI(larger background) as a nice thing after knowing the truth i.e. those were simply 'elongated/redrawn' panels(of Original strips' panels) by the local artists in order to "fit" in their page-format!And most of the time,they ended up messing with the original drawing!:((
One need to carefully compare a Indrajal-page with it's Strips' counter-part to see what ToI's editor(s) messed up(however,they got away with Mccoy's arts,as those were rather simplistic,but Barry & Fredrick's detalied & sophisticated works were sometimes heavily suffered/ruined due to this!)

Venkitachalam Subramanian said...

Thanks for this Sunday strip