IJC_01_The_Phantom’s_Belt : The Phantom’s belt is the first ever comics published by Indrajal. It was released in March 1964. The following were part of Other comics section
- Know Your Friends : Stories of Indian war heroes who received medals such as “Param Veer Chakra” were mentioned.
- Our new age : General Knowledge
- Around the world with Kunju Pillay by Kavadi
In this story, Phantom is on a mission to take revenge and retrieve the belt of his father who was cheated and killed by an informer during his mission to destroy “Singa Pirates”.
IJC_02_Prince_Orq : Beyond the jungle, the highlands.. realm of princes who still live in medieval power and splendour. The most powerful and spolied among them Prince Orq. In this story prince orq tries to capture Phantom with his huge army, but Phantom gets the help from his eternal friends, The Pygmies! So the legend grows. How the Phantom destroyed an army!
IJC_03 The Challenge of the Cannibals : The third issue of Indrajal starts with our Kunju Pillai story. He reaches goa and explores the tourist attractions there. Kavadi the author/illustrator I believe have a unique style of drawing. It is beautiful and detailed.
In this issue, Dr Archer and his daughter June gets captured by the rope people during their exploration trip. As usual the drummers relay the news in the jungle. Interestingly this has been mentioned as, the jungle is a gossipy place. In later stories this action is mentioned as in good intention. To let good people, the Phantom and pygmies know about the incident so that they can help and save those in trouble. Here it is considered as gossip.
The Phantom comes to help, but gets captured by the rope people. Between, these rope people are cannibals!. The “Old Man” among the rope people identifies the Phantom. According to him The Phantom performed daring feats such as defeating an elephant, fighting a lion, defeating a giant man etc.. All these stories have been depicted in pictures. Phantom assumes that the “Old man” must have seen his grand father. He undergoes each of these tests and wins them with his wit and brains.
We can see many Phantom stories with similar idea, where he has to repeat the same feats as his forfathers to prove that he is the real Phantom! I have read another story of rope people where they have become friends with Phantom. Probably they are the same rope people as mentioned here, who are no longer cannibals under the influence of the Phantom!
IJC_04 The Phantom and the Imposter : The Phantom is the protector of the jungle. He also keeps peace and harmony in the jungle. Every year there will be a jungle tourney (tourney is a medieval fight tournament). The winner will get a chance to fight with the Phantom! Each year the Phantom will fight and defeat the winner. In this issue, one convict who escapes from the prison gets into the Phantom costume and reaches the tourney venue!
That year, Woban of Wambasi wins the tourney. Do we hear that name again in any other Phantom stories? He fights with the imposter Phantom and defeats him. And becomes the rule of the jungle 🙂 The real Phantom eventually comes and defeats both the imposter and Woban!
It is a beautiful little story and introduces the custom of tourney in deep woods.
This story is about a boy Conley and his pet lion Fluffy. They teach Fluffly to catch fish and live without hurting other animals.
But once Fluffy becomes a fully grown lion, the small town folks starts having issues and Conley runs away with Fluffy to deep woods. They along with his father gets trapped by the Llong witchmen under “Magic cicrle of fire”. So Llongo tribes in the deep woods are people who does witch crafts where as the Wambasi tribes are jungle warriors?