#309 - Reprint of D231 The Secret Mission!

Emile has sent us the strips for D278, which is a reprint of D231, which originally ran from February 15, 1999 thru July 03, 1999.

Download the story from Emile's original link here.

Some interesting notes from Emile :

"While I was reading the story, my feeling was that the script was done in many parts. I read it once more and found 4 different parts. Probably because of Lee Falk's death earlier that year (less than 2 months before the start of the story). I can only think that Lee wrote the story start and Fred had to continue it. So he include a recap of an old Narda story, then come back to the original script and finished the story.

Of course, this is just an idea that come to my mind while I was reading this story. No inside knowledge.

The Narda’s adventure retold here comes from a Sunday Strip story. Read below.

Here are data about the story:

Mandrake the Magician
The Secret Mission
Script and Artwork:    Fred Fredericks
Reprints:    2016-07-25 to 2016-12-10
Runs    20 weeks (120 strips)

Original Data:
Kind:    Daily Strips
Story    231
Title:    The Secret Mission
Script and Artwork:    Fred Fredericks
Start:    1999-02-15
End:    2999-07-03
Runs    20 weeks (120 strips)

Shooting Script (my attempt to understand the script):
a. Introduction: enter the “8”    2016-07-25 to 2016-08-27
b. Narda recalls the past    2016-08-29 to 2016-10-15
c. Back to the Secret Mission    2016-10-17 to 2016-11-12
d. Rescuing Mandrake and friends    2016-11-14 to 2016-12-10

The recalled story comes from:

Kind:    Sunday Strips
Story    41
Title:    The Raft People
Script:    Lee Falk
Artwork:    Phil Davis
Start:    1948-11-21
End:    1949-01-23
Runs    10 weeks/strips

Enjoy,

Venkit

#308 - Reprint of D230 - The Fisherman

Emile has shared with us the reprint of D230 - The Fisherman. The original strip ran from December 14, 1998 through February 13, 1999. Balaji, Paulo and I had worked to get the original strips in Black and White posted in this blog a while ago. It also forms part of the post on Vishu day when I shared my collection of Mandrake strips.

This reprint in color ran from May 23, 2016 thru July 23, 2016. The first strip looked like this:

Download the comic strip from Emile's original link here and shower your thanks on him.

Enjoy,

Venkit

#307 - Reprint of Aliens (2016-02-22 to 2016-05-21).

Over the last few weeks we had quite a few Daily and Sunday strips coming to an end. So I had to delay posting this one though Emile had sent this across to me as soon as the strip ended.

Please download the story from Emile's original link and shower your thanks on him.


Well, there is some news that Mandrake the Magician may be coming to the big screen soon. Here are some links about that

http://www.vulture.com/2016/06/meet-future-film-character-mandrake-the-magician.html

http://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2016/06/08/481231518/sacha-baron-cohen-is-mandrake-the-magician-wait-who-now

http://www.superherohype.com/news/375967-sacha-baron-cohen-is-mandrake-the-magician

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/06/08/sacha-baron-cohen-will-become-a-superhero-in-mandrake-the-magician

#306 - Happy Vishu to everyone. Sharing my digital collection of Mandrake Comics Strips

I had been planning this post for a while, but unfortunately some others beat me to it. But it does not matter. I am not in this to compete against anyone.

April 14 has a lot of meaning for me. It is the New Year according to the Malayalam calendar being used in the state of Kerala. It was also on that day in 2012, that I started to post in this blog with Balaji's permission.

Today,on this auspicious day, I present my collection of Mandrake The Magician comic strips, both Daily and Sundays.

The first strip in the first Daily:

The last strip in the interrupted last Daily strip:

Download the Daily strips from here.


The first strip in the first Sunday strip:

The last strip of the last Sunday strip:

Download the Sunday strips here.

It would be a dereliction of my duties if I did not express my thanks to the following people who worked hard along with me to search and get all these strips. The names are in no particular order:

Balaji - who started this blog as a homage to Lee Falk and his amazing creation - Mandrake the Magician.
Ajay - who posted a quite a few of the Sunday strips in his blog.
Allen Lane - who provided me with a whole lot of Sunday strips including the one in which Narda becomes the most beautiful woman in the Galaxy.
Comic Crazee - who provided us with quite a few wonderful drawings and was the first person to provide us with all 3 stories of the Mandrake wedding.
Tom Williams - who provided me with the first seven strips in the Daily Strip saga.
Magnus Magnusson - who provided me with all those beautiful color Sunday strips.
Paulo Marques - who paid and gained access to strips starting from Daily Strip 203 to 220. Balaji and I joined him in downloading the daily newspaper (approx 60MB) and then worked on bringing out those strips in story form.
Myron & Richard Hy - who provided quite a few daily strips to this blog in 2007 & 2008.
Mapanare - a new friend who has been instrumental in providing me with many of the later year daily strips. He runs a prolific blog in Spanish where he concentrates more on ... (who else?).
Donald Ladhams - who despite his advancing age and ill-health traveled to the Library and sent me strips from the microfilm archives of one of Australia's leading dailies.
Emile - One of the greatest living authorities on both of Lee Falk's characters. He also has a wonderful database of Indrajal Comics. Emile has been instrumental in providing me with Phantom and Tarzan strips in addition to Mandrake.
Carlos - more famously known as Lothar, who is singlehandedly responsible for most of the daily strips. (and that too at exceptional quality!)

When I started posting, we did not have more than 60 of the Sunday strips online. In these 4 years, it has been my good fortune to work with a whole lot of friends and get all Sunday strips though in varying colors and resolution.

If I have by oversight missed anyone, I profusely apologize.

Enjoy.

Venkit

#305 - Reprint of D228 (Mandrake's Wedding at Xanadu)

Emile was kind enough to send me the strips for this story earlier, but unfortunately the computer on which I had all my downloads and all had some issues. Added to that I was also busy at work. So it took me a while to go through the stuff and post it.

Please download the story from Emile's original link here and shower your thanks on him. One thing I observed though - the reprint is not the complete original story. They cut it off immediately after the wedding and then started on the reprint of the next story.

Enjoy,

Venkit

#304 - Reprint of D227

Emile has provided us the strips of the just ended reprint of D227 Big Jake & Co . One tends to wonder at the artistic brilliance of the late Fredericks, when he could do wonders even at his advanced age.

Please download the story from Emile's original link here and shower your thanks on him.

Enjoy,

Venkit