The Thirties were a time of great adventure and creativity in the history of the newspaper strip. While the first official adventure strip was the 1930 adaptation of Tarzan, most of the strips which followed introduced new heroes, including Flash Gordon, Secret Agent X-9, Jungle Jim and Prince Valiant. All of these features had different writers behind them, but Mandrake and The Phantom, who appeared in 1934 and 1936 respectively, were the brainchild of one man, Lee Falk, who has remained the creative force behind those two features for more than fifty years.
Mandrake premiered on June 11, 1934, but the master magician does not appear in the first strip. Mandrake proved to be an immediate hit. Beginning life as a daily strip it added a Sunday page soon after in February, 1935.
In the early years of the strip, the art by Phil Davis is very much in the Alex Raymond tradition, particularly when you hit the mid to late Thirties when Raymond's style had become accepted as the definitive art in newspaper strips. Even Hal Foster, who had carved out his own chapter in the history of comics with his work on Tarzan and Prince Valiant, very much admired the work of Raymond. The slick, Raymond approach with its smooth, feathery inking technique is particularly evident in Mandrake from 1936 on. Davis admitted to borrowing from Raymond's work and was once surprised to notice a Raymond panel swiped from Mandrake that Davis had originally swiped from Raymond !!
Phil Davis remained the artist on the feature until his death on December 16, 1964. Davis was then replaced by Fred Fredericks.
Like many other comic strip heroes, Mandrake has had his shot at the Hollywood big time. With Mandrake an unqualified success, Lee Falk turned his hand to creating another newspaper strip hero. A year and half later The Phantom debuted on February 17,1936.
We have so many questions got bubbled up in our mind since our golden childhood time - how Lee Falk created the characters, how did he come up with their names, how these characters got changed over time and so on.... Well, now here we have some definitive answers and clarifications to those questions, at least some of them !
The excerpts below have been taken from a long interview with Lee Falk, originally published in "King Comic Heroes" magazine by James Van Hise (A Pioneer Books special issue).
1. Origin of the name, 'Mandrake'
2. Origin of the name, 'Narda'
4. The Look of 'Mandrake'
Mandrake premiered on June 11, 1934, but the master magician does not appear in the first strip. Mandrake proved to be an immediate hit. Beginning life as a daily strip it added a Sunday page soon after in February, 1935.
In the early years of the strip, the art by Phil Davis is very much in the Alex Raymond tradition, particularly when you hit the mid to late Thirties when Raymond's style had become accepted as the definitive art in newspaper strips. Even Hal Foster, who had carved out his own chapter in the history of comics with his work on Tarzan and Prince Valiant, very much admired the work of Raymond. The slick, Raymond approach with its smooth, feathery inking technique is particularly evident in Mandrake from 1936 on. Davis admitted to borrowing from Raymond's work and was once surprised to notice a Raymond panel swiped from Mandrake that Davis had originally swiped from Raymond !!
Phil Davis remained the artist on the feature until his death on December 16, 1964. Davis was then replaced by Fred Fredericks.
Like many other comic strip heroes, Mandrake has had his shot at the Hollywood big time. With Mandrake an unqualified success, Lee Falk turned his hand to creating another newspaper strip hero. A year and half later The Phantom debuted on February 17,1936.
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The excerpts below have been taken from a long interview with Lee Falk, originally published in "King Comic Heroes" magazine by James Van Hise (A Pioneer Books special issue).
1. Origin of the name, 'Mandrake'
2. Origin of the name, 'Narda'
3. Origin of the name, 'Lothar'
4. The Look of 'Mandrake'
6. How 'Mandrake' was changed over time?
7. How 'Lothar' was changed over time?
8. 'Mandrake' vs 'Phantom'
Read here one of the vintage Mandrake adventures (incomplete !)...
Mandrake Reloaded
(Size: 7.8 MB)
অসাধারন পোস্ট ...এতো কিছু এক সাথে পাবো ভাবিনি ।
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হেঃ হেঃ - থ্যাঙ্কু, থ্যাঙ্কু for the encouragement !
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