It used to be so hard to afford a comic given that pocket money/allowance which we got was in limited quantity and was never enough to buy as many as we could. Eventually, we would borrow/exchange from friends and build our collection of comics.
I remember at one time I had about 200 comics mostly Phantom & Mandrake, but in the process of moving houses, changing schools, my collection vanished and now have a few left. I got hooked on to reading online comics with the one and only blog that offered it, you guessed it, The Comic Project, it was so much fun trying to be the first one to comment and a healthy discussion of current events, comic storyline, sports, etc. I came across Misraji ("The Pioneer Ajay Mishra") in reading his scans and wanted to get in touch with him someday. Eventually we crossed our paths and I am forever greatful for all his efforts in making them available to people like me who had no Indrajals while in the US. Then came the ICC blog which was a daily ritual to visit during lunch time to get more of Indrajals. At that point I saw there was no site dedicated for Mandrake Comic strips and hence started this project. I have been very lucky to come across several contributors and friends with similiar interests and it has taken a long time to build a community that is actively involved in pursuit of acquiring as many dailies and sundays we can find. Mandrake comic strips have not been as popular and readily available as compared to the Phantom because of the fan base and more publishers willing to publish those strips.
I then started hunting what I could find and even started buying on EBay, again was lucky to get a considerable set of books, some of which I have scanned and posted. In the process of building this fan community I came across a few contributors who came forward to provide me scans for this project, whom I would not have come across if this blog did not exist. The end result is we have all been enjoying reading various sundays & dailies stories & Indrajals. I have also gotten in contact with new friends who have a similar liking. It's been an enjoyable ride until now.
Now comes Invisible Thief AKA Peeyoush Mishra who intends to put only the download links of any comics he finds from the different blogs hosting Indrajal comics and strips into his blog attempting to create a mirror because he is too lazy to go to each blog and read about a comic or strip and then download it from that blog. To me, it means he does not value the efforts taken by the owner of the comic or strip to scan each page, perform some cleanup to make it more readable/enjoyable, upload files and finally provide a download link. It is like taking the icing out of the cake. I have emailed him and left comments on his "blog" and have no respnses.
So, to conclude, am not going to provide any download links on the blog as it does not justify the time and true efforts of the contributors and myself from now on. I can be reached by email you all know and is listed on the blog. Please contact me and I will provide you depending on whether I can trust you to not deliver the link to the Invisible Thief. I knew this would happen sooner or later as there are these folks who just want to download the strip and move on without any consideration to thank and appreciate the efforts taken by the scanner and the blogger.
