It is now the only publication of "jungle" adventures, since the competing publications (Peratzakis' Tarzan) could not stand and closed. Its circulation is absolutely satisfactory. A rather incomprehensible announcement appeared in the pages of issue 31 of the first period announcing the publication of a top magazine twice a week. It is not known if this was done at least once, as the release dates show a weekly release. The reading, however, was reduced in favour of other readings, which were not written by Routsos the great.
It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post. However, readers were asked to pre-register (without, however, prepaying) to calculate the circulation. It seems that not many people subscribed. The "rival" company of Georgiadis - Anemodoura has been publishing "Superman" since the middle of 1951, a weekly issue of science fiction adventures.
The magazine, written by Thanos Astritis (Anemodoura) and illustrated by V. Aptosoglou, offered its readers dynamic adventures of a group of superheroes made in Greece. The team is led by the alien Jim Clark, a world-renowned journalist for a major New York newspaper, which was the alter ego of Superman. The hero was endowed with tremendous strength, supernatural endurance, and in addition flew with frightening speed. All this, of course, refers directly to the internationally known Superman of the American comic book of the same title, but ostensibly this hero was a pure cloning of the then lesser-known American comic book Captain Marvel.
The hero's companions and competitors were: El Greco, a Greek who lived and worked in America, a scientist with a rare brain, and who married his daughter Astrapis. There was also his son Keravnos. His grandchildren, Yperellinas and Simon, were later added to the group. (This clearly shows the contrast with Superman who is always alone, as well as the resemblance to Captain Marvel who also has a family). There were of course the jokes of the company, with the first and best super dwarf Kontostoupis.
So the readers read science fiction stories in which the Superman and his company faced terrible and formidable enemies of humanity, of earthly or extraterrestrial origin, who all wanted to enslave or destroy our suffering planet. The Superman went out to the stands every Tuesday, as did Gaur-Tarzan. Of course, he could not become a seriously dangerous competitor, but he had his own fanatical audience. Many children of the time tried to read both magazines, which they often did, mainly through borrowing.
Post-war Greece was so poor that the 2,000 drachmas (ie 2 drachmas) that each issue cost was a prohibitive amount. Most parents could not afford to buy two magazines instead of one. Routsos, however, was watching everything that was happening around him. Being able to perform equally well in many fields of writing, in order to further shield his defence, he enriched his material with science fiction adventures, always in combination with the permanent and definitely more intimate jungle stories.
In this way his readers could satisfy any additional interests they had by reading only one magazine, his own. This prevented all those who might have thought of "converting" by joining the other camp. So, with the appearance of the crazy criminal scientists Krab and Krause and mainly with the invention of Lightning and the Storm (children of Gaur and Tarzan respectively) who were also wise long-range scientists (worthy opponents of "El Greco's" ), began to offer its readers stories of great interest to them. So while the "war" was going on, this battle was won.
The next "attack" of the Anemodouras - Georgiadis on Routsos took place on Thursday, July 3, 1952, when a new magazine with jungle adventures was published called "Targa, the fearless Greek boy".
The hero here too was of course (what else?) Of Greek origin. He was about 20 years old. With his companion, the beautiful and very shapely Maloa and his funny assistant Atsidas, they fought everything that every similar self-respecting hero fights: The enemies of all kinds and forms and the servants of evil, wherever it comes from.. And among so many other terrible people, he was confronted by a group of Nazi Germans operating in the jungle and led by the cruel, ruthless criminal Zanour. And as the subsequent publishing developments showed, Anemodouras has since been preparing the ground for the upcoming Little Hero that was released later. This is also indicated by the fact that in a fascinating approx, Targa managed to prevent the Nazis from firing rockets from their secret airport into the jungle and destroying London, Paris and Athens. How did he do it?
He stole a German tank and while driving it (!) He killed the Germans, and at the same time destroyed the airport. (An adventure of a completely similar action was written several years later by Anemodouras for the Little Hero in the same exotic places, where he also exterminated the Germans and destroyed their hidden airport, etc.). A jungle comic called Targa was released in France in 1947, which had absolutely nothing to do with the Greek intellectual child of Anemodouras. This comic had published 39 issues. In Greece, of course, it was completely unknown and few people learned anything about it.
Anemodouras seems to have been inspired by this magazine with the title of his own. Routsos The Great, however, in the context of the controversy between them claimed that the name Targa came from the union of the first two syllables of his own heroes: Tar (zan) Ga (ur), while with the same logic was found the origin of the name of the criminal Zanour, which came from the union of the second syllables of the names of the same heroes (Tar) Zan - (Ga) Ur! Random? It was never confirmed. Who knows now? Targa made only 22 issues.
Gaur-Tarzan continued the publication of the 2nd period until issue 52. Published and pre-announced issues of the second period. From 53 onwards, let the reader exercise his imagination for the content of the issue. 104 of the 112 issues of the third period that were published in the last issue .. It may be the only time that a list of issues of Routsos includes fewer issues than have been published. Usually the opposite happened.
Then he stopped, but this is not due solely to the reduction of its traffic, but also to other, many and various reasons. So where the plate was tilted in favor of Routsos, only Anemodouras remained on the horizon, who finally triumphed after the release of The Little Hero in early 1953.
From Guely:
Okay, nobody seems to know her. It was the name of a Tarzan comic that appeared in the 1960s in Colombia or Chile, edited respectively by Edicol and Zig-Zag. It was about the adventures of a "white" girl of uncertain origin in the Brazilian jungle and, later in the story, in India. Their base of operations was a mysterious mountain called La Silla del Diablo. Two jaguars, Usha and Saak, always accompanied her. She was rescued as a child by a "white wizard" named Loloto. Some sacred birds (tururúes) served as messengers between her and her subjects, among which the two survivors of a massacre named Okete and Cafunga stood out. She, her two warriors, her two jaguars, and a platonic Anglo-Hindu companion, Victor Nagaland, were the first to unite Brazil and India in a small raft. Her nemesis in the Hindu adventure period is the mysterious Dr. Diablo. I write this review by heart and I must confess that I have not leafed through a copy of Mawa since the mid-1990s, when I was in Peru for the last time. my collection is there and I hope someday to be able to rescue it. Although my brother has told me that he does not place it among the five hundred books that I left behind. Perhaps he has lost her forever. The magazine I started putting it together back in 1973 and I confess not to have obtained but a quarantine of copies of the perhaps one hundred and so much published. I will not deny that I dream of having the complete collection before me one day and thus be able to unravel the secrets of the Queen of the Devil's Chair (Shaitan ka Singashan). The dozens of Arabic words that I know allow me to affirm that the devil is Shaitan in the Arabic language.
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