Comic #98 : RK-D155 : A RIP KIRBY Daily from 1989

Enjoy the next RK daily,and 2nd from the Post-Indrajal period.One unique thing about these strips is the variety of locations that one will see with allmost every new adventures.Like in RK-D153("Foiled Coup";Ijc title), the adventure happened at a small hill-forest region,the next strip,D154, was quite city-based while in the D155, the adventure took place in the deep forest of Amazon!And all of these varieties were nicely illustrated by John Prentice who, apart from scripting the adventures from the mid '80s, was the sole artist of RK strips since 1956.
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• A Brief History of RIP KIRBY in the Indrajal Comics(1982-1989):

There were a total of 35 daily RK strips published in the Indrajal Comics from 1982 to 1989.The first & the last Ijc issues were No.399/সংখ্যা ৩৭৬(The Wax Trap) & Vol.26 No.29(The Foiled Coup),respectively.The strips were ranged from RK-D119(6-11-79 to 8-18-79) to RK-D153(7-18-88 to 11-5-88). Among these 35 strips, only 15 were published as cover stories while the rest appeared as inside or 2nd stories(published in parts) with the different heroes.
For your information, after ToI cancelled RK strips, another 44 dailies were published in the Post-Ijc era(RK-D154 to RK-D197 ; Nov'88 to June'99).
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[Post Script - A good news for the RK fans. Dr.Ramesh has posted 2 more Post-Ijc strips in his blog: RK-D160 & RK-D161. All credit goes to him as these are at better condition,directly scanned from the newspaper cutting! :)]

• RK-D155 (2-6-89 to 4-29-89) :

A quite different plot than the usual RK adventures.Ever seen any sci-fi element in this detective's adventures?? I haven't until this strip and so enjoyed the story quite well. In a brief,you will find Rip & Desmond in the land of ATLANTIS!(allthough it seems that Rip was familiar with these Atlantis people and had an adventure there much ago!)

DOWNLOAD RK-D155

DOWNLOAD the PDF FILES of RK-D155 from the PTN Archive

Comic #96 & 97 : Two He-Man Comics in BENGALI

  For the first time you can read He-Man comics in this blog .These were published by Diamond Comics in the early '90s in a pocket-book format,priced 3.00 INR each. Never thought that I will post these forgotten comics but after seeing Dr.Ramesh's last post on this series(in Hindi) decided to go for it!
 The whole universe of He-Man,his tiger Battle Cat,Teela,Man-at-arm & others with the arch enemy Skeleton was quite fascinating!
DC published a total of 16 issues,2 stories in each issue, in the 3 languages(Bengali,Hindi & English).But only the first 12 issues were numbered(H-1 to H-12) for some unknown reason. Later some more He-Man stories were published as back-up in the DC-Phantom Digests and Comics World but for me,these 16 issues were the best he-Man stories I ever read,both story & art-wise.The printing quality was fine aswell.
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 Now,some of you might remember that hard-plastic toys of the superheroes were quite a craze among the teens  in the '90s and there was a full-set of allmost all characters of the 'Master-of-the-Universe' series aswell.With each toy,which was quite expensive,they used to give a He-Man comic as free!I got a copy(#11 from DC series,allthough that issue had only one story: Temple of Darkness!) as you can see the ads & the cover below:

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In this post you will get 2 adventures: Teelar Golpo(Tale of Teela) from issue #1 & Skeletorer Mayajal(The ordeal of Man-E-Faces!) from issue #6.

DOWNLOAD Teelar Golpo

DOWNLOAD Skeletorer Mayajal

Comic #95 : RK-D154 : A Post-Indrajal Rip Kirby Daily

 SUBHO BIJOYA(শুভ বিজয়া) & HAPPY DUSSHERA to the ALL friends & visitors!! :)
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  This strip was the 1st Rip Kirby daily after the cancellation of RK licence by ToI. The last Indrajal-Rip story was "The Foiled Coup(V26 N29; July 1989)"  based on RK-D153(newspaper title is unknown,ran from 1988-07-18 to 1988-11-05).
  In my early years,I was never a big fan of this cool detective but over time I did like some stories and the ones by RK's last writer, John Prentice(1986-1999), were my favorites among the all RK stories published in the Indrajal Comics between 1982-1989.So I was kinda in a hunt for the RK strips published in the late '80s to '90s. Courtesy of delboj who gave the link of PTN Archive,I have extracted the pdf files from there and followed by a jpeg conversion,the strip is here![Well,from that site one can extract the whole comic-page/day only that used to carry several other strips incld. Rex Morgan,Blondie,Beetle Bailey,Hagar the horrible etc. as you can see in the following page.]

  The scan quality is mediocre but PTNA is the only known source of Rip Kirby's last decades worth.Also,I have no idea if there was any magazine that carried RK '90s strip in English.Well,as I had mentioned before,a Bengali newspaper ABP used to carry RK daily strips in Bengali till the end(1999) but neither they have any on-line archive prior 2001 nor they are interested(I have sent numerous number of mails for the permission,with a payment,but till date I yet to receive a reply!).






  Now,before going for the actual strip let's have a peek,for nostalgia sake, at the initial & end dates of "The Foiled Coup" in the original strip-format & in the Indrajal's format! :)

• RK-D 154 : Title is Unknown : Ran from 1988-11-07 to 1989-02-04 ( Story revolves around the beautiful Pearl Shelby,the senator's daughter, and her mysteriously disappeared finance which needed Kirby's intervention that leads a good suspense & drama-filled adventure.While one will find Pearl in a quite important & central role,Desmond was missed indeed - appeared only in a few panels!!)

DOWNLOAD RK-D154

DOWNLOAD Original PDF Files of RK-D154

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Also,check the 1st strip of the next daily: RK-D155, dated 2-6-1989:

The Score IS 8-0

After the last super-eight game of the current T20 WC, it's the latest score-line of India-Pakistan World Cup matches,both ODI & T20 together!! :) About the yesterday's match,it was a team effort no doubt but the special kudos for Virat Kohali and of course the fighter,Yuvraj Singh!
And this record has been attained over the last 20 years(1992-2012) while the matches were played in various part of the world incld. Australia,India,England etc.

Two Unknown Indian Publishers

TODAY India Celebrates 66^th Independence Day.:)) 
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In my recent(& very rare) visit to old-book shops, I got  a couple of issues of some unknown Bengali publishers : Avik Chitrakatha & Tin-Murtir Ovijan. Do anybody ever read these series?? So these are new additions in the Indian Comic Publisher's list. I also wonder whether these were published in English as well! The titles of AC & TMO were "Baghrya Devata O Tarzan(means Tiger-god & Tarzan)"  and "Bandhya Deeper Rahashay(means Mystery of the barren island)", respectively.

  

         
  One thing that I find odd, but yet to confirm my doubt, is that in AC you will read a Tarzan story but there is a strange similarity of this Tarzan(art & plot-wise) with another hero, Conan the barbarian! Here you can check some scans of this issue(for Conan's comic, check Mr.Ramesh's blog) and if any of you know better, please inform!