This website is no longer maintained. Please head to the new and improved website, The Phantom Trail, where the same information can be found, and much more!
Egmont Imagination India Ltd. (formerly known as Indian Express Egmont Publications Ltd.) took up the task of publishing Phantom comics in India as Diamond Comics began to cease the publication of their Phantom comics, which had been the staple diet of Indian Phantom lovers after Indrajal had stopped publication.
In June 2000, Egmont India released the #1 issue of its original monthly Phantom comic book series along with a Phantom Adventure Kit that contained two more comic books besides the #1 issue plus some goodies. For details about this promotional pack, click here.
Because of the two extra books contained in the promotional pack, there was some confusion in the numbering of the following issues. The second issue released as part of the original comic series was not contained in the pack and hence, was numbered #2 (Book No. 4) and similarly for #3 (Book No. 5). Subsequent issues were numbered normally as #4, #5 and so on.
Besides Phantom stories, the first 13 issues also contained Mandrake stories by Lee Falk & Phil Davis. However, these stories were discontinued later on to reduce the number of pages and hence, the price of the comic books. It seems that Egmont India was not doing good business with these comics, most probably, because of the high pricing (Rs. 30). Therefore, #14 onwards, the comics were reduced from about 50 pages to 30 pages and priced at Rs. 20.
But it is my surmise that things did not improve for Egmont India and hence, they finally decided to cease publication of this monthly comic series after #21 (May 2002).
Egmont Imagination India, however, still continues to bring out Phantom comic books from time to time but these are mostly reprints of the earlier stories, just in a different format or with a different cover.
Egmont India had experimented with this idea even while the regular comic book series was running. In November 2001, they released the Action Adventure Series, which was a collection of 8 books, each book containing two stories from the first sixteen stories released by Egmont. These were initially priced at Rs. 110 but later reduced down to Rs. 85. The quality of these books was excellent, both paper-wise and printing-wise.
One of the latest offerings by Egmont India is the Adventures of the Ghost Who Walks, a series of 15 volumes, all released simultaneously in July 2003. These also contain two stories each, most of them already published but 8 of them are not part of the original edition of the comic series. Interestingly, I could not find the price mentioned anywhere on the books; however, book sellers were selling them at Rs. 85.
A list of the stories published in the different Egmont India series is given below (ordered by release date):
Click on the issue numbers to view the cover scans of the same.
To view more details about the original comic book series, including the names of the Mandrake stories published, please click here.
My thanks to Bryan Shedden. I referenced his website for some of the information presented here.