Back when Nagraj and SCD were ruling the Indian comics industry with one legendary story after another, RC came up with a story so unique and hilarious, Nagraj aur Jaadugar Shaakura. Also check out Video Review of this comics.
The story begins when a rouge magician named Victar Shaakura is exiled from a faraway planet, and where does he land? No points for guessing. He immediately comes face to face with Superman (WHAT????) and captures the most powerful (Not in this comic, he isn’t!) being on Earth, with relative ease. And then comes that tiny weeny word balloon out of Superman, which in my humble opinion, is one of the most hilarious moments in my comic fandom of 18 years- “You won’t get away with this. There are heroes that will defeat you. Their names are Batman, Spiderman and…. NAGRAJ”.
Never gets old! Moving on….
Shaakura finds Batman and captures him, and travels to Paris where Spiderman is removing a bomb from the Eifell Tower. A few panels later, the evil dwarf has netted three of the most dominant superheroes on Earth.
Oh, but wait! Hasn’t he forgotten someone? You bet every copyright and trademark rule in the whole damn world, he has!
Shaakura invades a circus show where Nagraj is spending some quality time with his beloved Visarpee. Nagraj is shocked to see the 3 superheroes in captivity and addresses them as if he has worked with all three of them in the past as part of the Justice League and Avengers. Nagraj easily defeats Shaakura after a couple pages of combat.
But the magician has one more card up his sleeve- LOU FREAKING ALBANO!! As in the most famous wrestling manager of the early 80’s in the WWF!! But scratch that as he is merely a bodybuilder muscleman working in a circus here. Under Shaakura’s spell, he becomes an enormous hulk and is about to wreak havoc when Nagraj strikes again and quickly disposes off his nemesis without breaking a sweat.
Ah yes, there’s also a rare appearance by Baba Gorakhnath. Finally, all of them have a casual dinner which, I GUARAN-DAMN-TEE, was the inspiration for the post credits lunch scene in the movie, Avengers. Hey, it’s not always us who copy their content!
Cover art of this comic as always very Impressive, painted and illustrated by legendary Pratap Mulick.