#Comic No.76 & 77:The Ancient Cave Of Splendour:Part 1 & 2

UPDATE:A new comic has been posted at ACKNOWLEDGE...check it and happy reading..

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This time both parts are presented together without any nagging wait for the concluding part.Both comics are again a contribution from our familiar contributor Achala and this time she is also sharing her story of addiction with comics which we all love to read as we tend to identify it with our similar experiences.So here goes her story along with thanks and all credit....

My love affair with books started even before I could read, and Indrajal comics (IC) had a big role to play. I used to flip through them, looking at the pictures, while my aunt read nearby (I suspect she used to put them in my hands so that I wouldn't disturb her :)). I eventually read them a few years later, and was totally caught up in the stories. I can't remember for sure, but I think my favorites were Rip Kirby (always been a big fan of detective stories), Mandrake (coz of all the magic), Buz Sawyer (nice stories), Phantom and Bahadur, more or less in that order. I had a few issues with two-part stories and I used to get irritated that I can't find out the beginning and ending of those stories (I was never satisfied with those little 'story-so-fars' that come in part 2's). I had this wish - to read as many IC as possible, maybe even all that was published. In those days, it was hard to get hold of more, because publication had stopped by then, and I didn't know anyone e! lse who used to read them. I moved on from comics, to children's literature, to fiction, to classics, and finally to non-fiction. So the wish remained unfulfilled, and was gradually forgotten.

Until recently... In December (2007), I got my hands on a stack of IC from relatives who were giving away stuff they didn't want to take along to their new house. I hadn't heard about the existence of these comics before so I went apprehensively to collect them, with visions of books in tatters, infested with silverfish and dog-ears. I was right about the tatters and dog-ears, and there was one silverfish. Overall, they were in better shape than I thought. The best part was, except for a handful, they were issues I'd never read before. :) :)

The first thing I did with the bundle was sort it out. The break-up: 25 intact, 35 without covers but otherwise intact, the rest too tattered to be considered. Quite a good haul. :) Then I read them. Obsessively. For two days, I read comics instead of doing the crossword {previously unheard of. I have to do the c/w daily :)} or reading newspapers {that's also a daily routine}. And after that, I still wanted more. I can't understand the pull these comics exercise on me. The plots are wafer-thin, the dialogues corny (at times), the situations in the realm between improbable and impossible, yet I continue to read. I suppose, in a way, the books are like pieces to a giant jigsaw puzzle. In a series that spanned almost three decades (1964-1990), the authors had to keep creating new characters for variety, and a history for those characters. Having read only a fraction of the books in print, I have a lot of questions, and the answers are somewhere among the unread ones. In the larger scheme of things, these questions and their answers are of no consequence, but I'm still curious. :)

Having seen recent attempts to revive Chandamama, Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha - other childhood favorites, I wondered if there would be online versions of IC. I searched... and found. :) {Till here is what I wrote two months ago. Now I'll add what happened later}

First to be discovered was TCP, from there, I went blog-hopping until I found them all (you all, who are reading this. In case I haven't already said this, I'll say it now - Thank you!). Then, the downloading started. Along with the comics, I also got new information - how many comics there are in total, how many per hero, and so on. I think I now have almost everything that's been posted so far, so there's only one thing left to do - contribute. :) Scanning's been a little slow lately, but I'll pick up the slack soon. Any tips on compression will be most welcome. :)

Well, that's my story. In case you've read till here, wow!, very few people make it through my seemingly never-ending narratives. Congratulate yourselves. :D I have a request to make to all contributors. Please scan the entire comic (Col. Worubu is not the only one who likes ads. :)). Often when I download two/three part comics, I'm disappointed to find the second story missing. Please don't ignore Buz and Rip. :(






















Download Part 1
Download Part 2