#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 

#198. 7 or 9? Who cares? I've met them all!

This is my penultimate post before Balaji makes his 200th post. Well, in my home state of Kerala, they say that there are seven other people looking exactly similar to anyone in this earth. Hmmm. So there are 7 people looking exactly like me. Wonder if I will ever get to meet even one of them. In some other parts, the number goes up to 9.

I think Mandrake must be the one person who has had the occasion to meet most of his look-alikes. It gives rise to a trivia question - Can any one come up with how many of his duplicates, Mandrake has seen ? And since it is Mandrake, it goes without mentioning that he would have definitely come to their rescue. Of course the story that will come first to anyone's mind will be the story of the ownership of Xanadu.

https://rapidshare.com/files/2361227299/D213_TheDoppelganger__03-01-93_to_07-17-93_.cbr

http://www.mediafire.com/?86veccv30fchr32

I have to express my heartfelt thanks to Paulo, for his efforts in editing and even replacing some missing strips with those from DC, India.

Enjoy,

Venkitachalam

#197 - I have a dream ...

In my last post, I had a story from Falk-Fredericks combo about Narda's dream. How about a post about Mandrake's dream? I can take a bet about one thing - Mandrake is never going to dream of. NARDA!! When he has her alive and well beside him, why would he have to dream of her. So what does he dream? And, in the end,  was it all really a dream?

Thanks to Paulo for extracting the strips and putting them out as a .cbr file for us to enjoy.

There are a few more strips, which we will soon be fixing and posting for all to enjoy. Some of them might come after Balaji comes out with his 200th post. I will be hanging up my gloves after 2 more posts and wait for Balaji to do his 200th post.

http://www.mediafire.com/?e4j72o9d5ekfqid

https://rapidshare.com/files/793025648/D224_ScaryAliens__09-30-96_to_01-25-97_.cbr

Almost all of the stories that succeed this one are available in Lothar's blog.

Read and Enjoy,

Venkit

#196 - Narda also dreams? Huh, I thought she only appeared in our dreams!!

3 more posts and then comes the anticipated double century from Balaji. Since it is like a dream come true, what better post to make than the dream of one of the most beautiful female characters in the history of comic strips?

Thanks to Paulo, for extracting and editing this from the PDFs into the cbr format. This was one of the strips that was skipped earlier. I know that this was published by Diamond Comics in India in color.

I am working on getting some dailies from the seventies and eighties. All of them are from microfilms. One of them is the interesting story "The Thieves". Keep ruminating on what is so interesting about that story, while you enjoy Narda's dream. And to think that she was in the dreams of so many young boys of those times!!

https://rapidshare.com/files/2750697991/D212_Narda_sDream__12-07-92_to_02-27-93_.cbr

http://www.mediafire.com/?f142999uo61m64g

Enjoy,

Venkit

#195. It's not Balaji yet. It's just I, the Clay Camel!!

Five more to go for Balaji's double century post. What better story to post than a Clay Camel one, since I have transformed into Balaji for the last few weeks. It is a short and funny story.

It goes without saying all credits are owed richly to our friend Paulo for all the hard work in extraction and editing of this strip.

http://www.mediafire.com/?y3utt62zdjjo9in

https://rapidshare.com/files/2957697024/D222_ClayCamelAndTheGanglords__05-27-96_to_07-27-96_.cbr

Enjoy,

Venkitachalam Subramanian

(P.S. The stories preceding and succeeding this one are available in Lothar's blog. Don't forget to grab them if you don't have them)

#194 - Sikandar, Iskandar or Buffo - I just need to get her!!

There is an old saying in the language of Malayalam (the main language of my home state of Kerala, in the Southern part of India) - Kanakam Moolam Kaamini Moolam - which points out that great men have become little men (I can't use the word dwarf, because of PC), because of the unwarranted attraction to Kanakam (gold or wealth) or Kamini (woman).

In this story we have Buffo, who has a lot of Kanakam, falls for a Kamini by the name of Narda. And then we have his downfall, because he did not reckon with Narda's two meddlesome friends going by the names of Mandrake and Lothar.

Lee Falk seems to be bringing out bits and pieces of his own older stories involving not only Mandrake but also  his other creation, the Phantom.

Once again, Paulo deserves all credits and thanks for extracting the story and putting it into a .cbr format. He also deserves all the credit for having paid the full amount to get into the paid archives to get these stories.Balaji and  I just piled on to help him download the newspapers, as they were just too many. We had to download the complete daily newspaper and at times they were more than 50 MB in size for a day.

https://rapidshare.com/files/2036657239/D219_GeneralBuffoDruglord__03-27-95_to_10-28-95_.cbr

http://www.mediafire.com/?n8m133dqwyyv2k7


(We hit a snag and so there are a few gaps. We hope to overcome the difficulties soon and bring you the remaining stories as soon as possible.)

Enjoy,

Venkitachalam Subramanian