206 - The Cloud City (03-07-43_to_11-07-43

I am presenting here a better version of one of the 2 most elusive Classic Lee Falk Mandrake Sundays. I had earlier presented a version I had got from some microfilm copies. Next week I will be back with the other one.

In fact I have to thank Magnus Magnusson for the color strip in this bunch. The rest of his strips were in Swedish. It goaded me to embark on a search for the other strips. I was successful and here is the story completely available for you to enjoy in English. It is just fate that I have not been able to find the B&W strip to replace the color strip. The last page is almost like the last page of the first Mandrake daily strip. The last panel in the page could be the first panel in the next story.

No more talk.

Downloaded Rapidshare link

Download MediaFire link

Enjoy,

Venkitachalam

#205 - Celebration of Paulo's contribution

I had posted all of Paulo's contributions, to our search for all Mandrake strips, in this blog over the last one year.

While a whole lot of you had downloaded them, some have written to me that they had not been able to download the strips. So as a matter of courtesy to all those who had not been able to download them, I am dedicating this post to all of Paulo's contributions.

The saga started with S022 - Pacifica.

Then came a slew of Daily strips from 203 culminating in 226. And here they all are in ascending order :

D203 - The Gift from 8
D206- The Other Side of Nowhere
D207 - Return of the Clay Camel...and Others
D208 - The Terrorists
D209 - Dr. Loqo's Secret Formula
D210 - The Mirror Mystery
D211 - The Book of Criminals
D212 - Narda's Dream
D213 - The Doppelganger
D214 - The Ears of the Earth
D215 - Mandrake's Sunday Walk
D216 - The Diamond Trader
D217 - The Secret Place
D218 - The Monster Thief
D219 - General Buffo - Druglord
D220 - Pursuit of the Cobra
D222 - Clay Camel and the Ganglords
D224 - Scary Aliens
D225 - Mandrake's Wedding at Cockaigne
D226 - Mandrake's Wedding at the College of Magic

Enjoy all these gems in one place and shower all your thanks on Paulo.
All strips after D226 can be enjoyed in Lothar's great Mandrake blog.

Will start with a new bunch of strips starting next week.

Till then,
Venkit

#204 - D218_TheMonsterThief_(01-09-95_to_03-25-95).cbr

We have seen a few stories from Lee Falk involving Mandrake that involve the ego of the villain and how that leads to the capture of the villain. This is a similar story that involves a villain called Foxy. You might be reminded of yet another old and great villain who also carried a 4 letter name.

Read on and express your thanks to Paulo.

Download Mediafire link here

Download Rapidshare Link here

Enjoy,

Venkit

#203 - D217_TheSecretPlace_(08-22-94_to_01-07-95).cbr

Almost a prophetic version of what dilemma the UN Security Council is today  facing related to the nuclear dreams of some nations. Of course, it goes without saying that the real UN does not have the services of Mandrake.

This is again a contribution of Paulo. All credits and thanks are due to him

Download the story here and enjoy.

Venkitachalam

202 - S016_TheFlamePearls-III_TheThreeCows_(08-18-40_to_10-06-40)

You will recall that a year ago Balaji had posted a mega post, in which all the 8 stories of the Flame Pearl series was posted. The stories had been collected from various sources and so you had color strips, B/W strips, clear strips and faded strips.

The first two stories in color have been posted by Lothar in his magnificent Mandrake archives blog. I am posting the third story here in color. Lothar has a Hi-Res B/W version of this strip in his blog.

For those of you who are familiar with Big Little Books (BLB), the full Flame Pearls story appeared in one of those books. The picture in the cover came from one of the panels in this story.

Download the story here and enjoy

Venkitachalam

#201 - The Gift from 8 - Mandrake Daily strip no 203

I have waxed eloquently, so many times about Paulo's gifts of so many Mandrake strips for our enjoyment. The whole saga started with this particular daily strip. Unfortunately, we could not get the whole story from the paid archives and there were many holes. One of my very good friends from Australia came to my rescue and we were able to get the story completed. Mandrake fans in India had been able to read an edited version of this story (that too in color) in various publications of Diamond Comics. One version had been published by Dr.Ramesh Bagwani in his blog.

Enough talk. Now on to the story. What does Mandrake do when he receives a gift of 8 little boxes at 8 minutes to 8 on August 8 from  Ocho jewellery?

Click to download story

Thanks to Paulo and my Australian friend Don Ladham for putting together this story. My part in this was just culling the Mandrake story from the PDFs and then putting it into a CBR file.

Enjoy

Venkit

#200 - Happy Valentine's Day!!! Mandrake Weds Narda The Complete Wedding Dailies!

A very Happy Valentine's Day to you all and if you are reading this after the day's passed, I wish you all a great 2013 ahead!

Would like to celebrate today by providing you three dailies that cover the complete Mandrake and Narda wedding in one stretch. These 3 dailies were compiled together with the valuable help of Venkitachalam Subramanian, Paulo and Lothar who have been gracious to share their collections.

Many thanks to Lothar for being so dedicated in his efforts to bring us all so many Mandrake stories. That is indeed a great dream of mine to one day have all the dailies and sundays stories in my collection. I think it is just a matter of time. Given Lothar's dedication, it is going to be achieved.

I have been away for a long time and have a lot of catching up to do. While I have been away, our dearest friend Venkit has been diligently trying to collect as many strips of Mandrake he can and is keeping this blog alive for all Mandrake fans across the world. That is an incredible effort and I really don't know how to thank him for all the strips he is able to collect and share with us.


We don't come across such dedicated fans and it is a privilege for me to know him. Thanks a lot again.

Here are the Dailies:

225	Mandrake's Wedding at Cockaigne	27 Jan 1997	2 Aug 1997	27
226	Mandrake's Wedding at the College of Magic	4 Aug 1997	24 Jan 1998	25

228

Mandrake's Wedding at Xanadu

6 Apr 1998

12 Sep 1998

23

Enjoy the Mega Post!
Had been waiting for a great occasion to post all these together as one post so readers could access them in one page.

http://www.mediafire.com/?jpkbupw50ulrvvj - D225

http://www.mediafire.com/?7ny1166sucfs54x - D226

http://www.mediafire.com/?tr94xv658b3erkr - D228

#199 - Walking away from posting for a short period till after post #200

Well, this will be my last post on this blog till after Balaji comes out with his 200th post.

If one gets the feeling that some of Mandrake's classic stories got tweaked and repeated, well this is an example that emphasizes that feeling. These kind of stories had been written many a time with Mandrake, Lothar and even the Phantom as the protagonist. The hero goes for a walk, encounters bad guys, saves damsels, children and senior citizens from danger and comes back home in an absolute nonchalant manner, with not even a spec of dust on their clothes. The best adventure I could have during a walk, is trip and fall and save myself from any dangerous injury and come home with some bruises!!

BTW, Lothar has a date with Karen in this story. Who the heck is she?

http://www.mediafire.com/?7d5423ykimw8bfs

https://rapidshare.com/files/2356612378/D215_Mandrake_sSundayWalk__11-29-93_to_03-19-94_.cbr

Thanks are again due to Paulo.


Enjoy,


Venkitachalam