Sunday, February 26, 2012

The Smurfs

 For those who came in late....Smurfs are a group of small blue fictional creatures, created and first introduced as a series of comic strips by the Belgian cartoonist Peyo(pen name of Pierre Culliford) on October 23, 1958. A characteristic of the Smurf language is the frequent use of the word "smurf" and its derivatives in a variety of meanings. The Smurfs replace enough nouns and verbs in everyday speech with "smurf" as to make their conversations barely understandable: "We're going smurfing on the River Smurf today." When used as a verb, the word "Smurf" typically means "to make", "to be", "to like" or "to do".


 I was introduced with this funny series in Anupam's blog in 2007 where he posted the scans of '70s 3-issue mini-series by Marvel and loved this series at very first instance(also there was a blogger named 'Grouchy Smurf' who gave us a preliminary idea of this series). But there was no more new story available on-line or physically, until last week when I accidentally discovered this series, now under a new publisher Papercutz, on flipkart.com/homeshop.com etc. These books are available in full-color @decent price and the printing quality is top-class on glossy pages.I hope our one of the old bloggers & visitors, Grouchy Smurf aka Pattu,will love to hear this(if he hasn't already bought the titles) as he was one who told us about these funny smurfs! :-)




Currently following 9 titles are availble:
  • The Smurfs and the Magic Flute
  • The Purple Smurfs 
  • Smurfette
  • The Smurfs and The Egg
  • The Smurfs King
  • The Smurfs and the Howlibird 
  • Astrosmurf
  • The Smurf Apprentice 
  • Gargamel and the Smurfs
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Some covers....



Thursday, February 23, 2012

Comic #79 : Mandrake Sunday : The Bee Thief (S170; Italain)

Do any fan have this strip in English??Till date,I have only managed to get this Italian version of this '93 sunday courtesy one & only Magnus.There are few more strips we have from '90s in mixed Eng+Italian version.Between,can you find out the similarity of the basic plot with some classic Mandrake daily,eventually that was published in Indrajal?? :)

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Also check out these 2 vertical sunday pages from a couple of Post-Falk sundays,The Bullies(S178) & The Invisible Person(S179).Do these ring any bell?? It certainly will,if you are a seasoned Mandrake fan! ;o) 



Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Comic #77 & 78 : Mandrake Sundays : Lothar's Workout(S141) & The Rat Men(S145)

Enjoy two colored MTM sundays from the '79 and '80,respectively.These were earlier published in the Indrajal Comics aswell. Lothar's Workout was appeared as 2nd story in Ijc No.331(Lothar the Mighty)/সংখ্যা ৩০৯(শক্তিমান লোথার) and The Rat Men was the title story of Ijc No.422(Mandrake's Godchild)/সংখ্যা ৩৯৯(আকাশপারের মৃত্যুদূত).
This time you can read the original unedited colored strips courtsey dear Magnus & Dan.


  • Lothar's Workout(S141):



  •  The Rat Men(S145):

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Mac Raboy's Flash Gordon Sunday Collection (1948-67)

 It's a 4-volume series,each with 4-5 years worth of Mac Raboy's unedited b/w Flash Gordon sunday strips from 1948 to 1967.Yesterday I bought the 3rd volume('58-'62) through the on-line homeshop site(http://www.homeshop18.com/) and have to admit that,this is a very nice compilation of old sundays!
 The sundays were ranged from S033("On the Doom Comet") upto S105("The Moon Launcher").

PS - Allthough flipkart.com is another good source of these books,but the price there is way too high compare to the homeshop18.com(prices are 996 & 789,respectively,for the 3rd volume!!). 

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Comic #76 : Speedy(S175) - A Rare Mandrake Sunday from '90s!

First of all,a belated happy new year to all of our visitors! In the first post of this year,let's enjoy this 'rare' MTM sunday strip from '90s! Now,why I'm calling a '90s strips - which is much newer than those '50s/'60s classic - a rare??Because,for some strange reason,MTM sundays & dailies from '90s are much tough to locate than those '60s or earlier!!A possible reason I guess,as lesser number of papers were carrying MTM strips in that period,as well as,hardly any publisher printed these strips made these much lesser accessible to fans!Even Frew opt for '30s classics in their short-stint with Mandrake in the '90s!But that is my guess only,may be there are other valid reasons as well.

Anyway,this time read the 3rd last official Falk sunday - Speedy(S175) - courtesy our extensive collector & avid fan Magnus & Dan.As you will notice,this 33-week strip have 3 different formats,as attached below(square,normal rectangle & vertical),that only indicates how difficult it was for Magnus to get a complete 6-week strip from various sources!
SO,ALL CREDITS GOES TO HIM! :))





DOWLOAD S175