A Brief History: DC's Comic World is an unique giant-sized(bigger than Indrajal/Frew) monthly magazine that used to filled with numerous international & national comic characters.Beside comics,there was a great mix of GK stuffs and other features like GBR,sports,astrology etc.This series is under publication since 1998.The first 2-3 years worth were much superior than the recent issues(these have NO KFS characters since many years). Also the earliest issues were 100-120 pagers.
Many of the early issues had Phantom,Mandrake & Flash Gordon strips in the alternative way with other 15-20 characters per issue.CW was an instant hit among the comic-lovers and had quite a similarity with Comic Revue magazine from US. :-)
The list major comic characters is as follows:
International: Phantom,Mandrake,Flash Gordon,Modesty Blaize,Archie,Tom & Jerry,Henry,Blondie,Beetle bailey,Denes,Batman,Tarzan,He-man,Hagar the horrible,Jr.Rotar etc with numerous one-off short stories(plots were varied from romantic to those evil-spirit tales!!).
Indian:Cartoonist Pran's all characters(from the most popular Chacha Chaudhary,Pinki,Billo to Micoo,Raman etc),Jatak takes,King Vikram &Betal,Panchtantra and numerous other titles.
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They also tried to launch a separate "Teen's World"(at the reverse-back of each book) in the 2nd/3rd year of publication.That part mostly dedicated for movie reviews,current fashions and other teen stuffs! :-)
Despite majority of the CW's early issues had famous strips like Phantom,Mandrake & Flash Gordon,only few occasions one would see these characters on the covers(strange,ain't?)!Here's few of those covers with some Teen's World pages!
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Many of the early issues had Phantom,Mandrake & Flash Gordon strips in the alternative way with other 15-20 characters per issue.CW was an instant hit among the comic-lovers and had quite a similarity with Comic Revue magazine from US. :-)
The list major comic characters is as follows:
International: Phantom,Mandrake,Flash Gordon,Modesty Blaize,Archie,Tom & Jerry,Henry,Blondie,Beetle bailey,Denes,Batman,Tarzan,He-man,Hagar the horrible,Jr.Rotar etc with numerous one-off short stories(plots were varied from romantic to those evil-spirit tales!!).
Indian:Cartoonist Pran's all characters(from the most popular Chacha Chaudhary,Pinki,Billo to Micoo,Raman etc),Jatak takes,King Vikram &Betal,Panchtantra and numerous other titles.
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They also tried to launch a separate "Teen's World"(at the reverse-back of each book) in the 2nd/3rd year of publication.That part mostly dedicated for movie reviews,current fashions and other teen stuffs! :-)
Despite majority of the CW's early issues had famous strips like Phantom,Mandrake & Flash Gordon,only few occasions one would see these characters on the covers(strange,ain't?)!Here's few of those covers with some Teen's World pages!
2 comments:
Lovely post!
I also thought of comic world… too :D.
Yeah, you are right, only magazine filled with countless heroes. Taste of variety.
Comes with so many free stuffs, like poster and tattoos… still I’ve few of those books in its plastic packet (CW comes with sealed plastic packet…remember?).
I enjoy those Indian comics of Pran, and also dislike that funny Bengali translation. I never like ‘ঠায়’ for fire sound (sometimes ‘ব্র্যাম্ ব্র্যাম্’) and ‘আ ঈ ঈ s s ‘ for who injured. And ‘বু হু হু s s’ for crying…?
Otherwise they were great with various characters.
Thanks for these covers.
Yes,from their 3rd/4th year of publication,CW was giving free books(compilation of unsold issues) of their own various Indian titles and for that,they used those sealed plastic packet!Unfortunately I got mostly those I already had :( but hey,there were few those I was missing for long!!:))I actually loved those Phantom stickers as very nice to pest on some binded books of Phantom/Indrajal etc.Strangely,NEVER received any Mandrake!
The MAJOR PLUS POINT OF DC-Phantom/Mandrake was that stories were unedited and MANY stories were from Post-Indrajal era!:))
But,talking about translation,I have lot to say! :))
#1 - DC was lowest among the 'three publishers' I've seen.Indrajal & ABP were best and more/less @same standard but DC's Bengali/Hindi were just pretty ordinary.This IS the reason why I prefer to buy their English versions(along with Bengali)to have aproper reading(DC never published MTM in Bnegali,for good,eh?;))
#2 - Sooo many time they simply kept those 'English words' when their knowledge ran out(they were so suckers that can't even consult a dictionary)!! :(
The most funny was when they retained "Misty Mountain" in the Bengali version and wrote it as "মিস্টি মাউন্টেন" (with hessy inking) that one will allmost read as "মিষ্টি মাউন্টেন" meaning "Sweet Mountain" or "মিষ্টির পাহাড়"!! :P
It's painful specifically as Indrajal did a superb job there,with "Kuheli Parvatmala"!!There are plenty of such examples.
#3 - There were time when they even used some words those better for Hindi version like "ijjjat" instead of "samman","barbad" for "shesh","saaf" for "parishkar" AND SO ON.
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Other than these,they delivered some goodies that otherwise one wouldn't find anywhere! :)
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