You Deserve This Crown, Tantri...

Thrice have we visited with Birbal. But, if modern politics shows us anything it's that we're more likely to find evil clowns running the show. So let's look at another figure from Indian comics who's less Birbal and more Black Adder - a court adviser named Tantri The Mantri. Mantri means a Sage (one who thinks and says, from the Sanskrit), for those of you who might be wondering.

Tantri The Mantri was a long running feature in Tinkle, the comic magazine for children at which we've glanced previously. The earliest strip i've seen is from around #50, but i'll have to do some deep digging to try to find when he debuted. I've yet to find a good database that covers comics published in India. For example, the Grand Comics Database has indexed 11 out of 530 issues.

Today we'll look a little later in the run. These strips were scattered between #209 to #289...

I'll go hunting for that first one i saw with the mechanical flying elephant for next time...

page art by Ajit Vasaikar, Asit, Shayam Desai, and Seema Mande for Tinkle #s 209, 254, 275, 283 & 289 (1990, 1992, 1993, 1994)