#192. What can one say when the Creator fumbles?

Hello friends,

7 more to go before Balaji gets to the double century. While my aim was to post the Mandrake dailies in a chronological order, we hit a slight snag in that we have not been able to edit 212 & 213. In my last post of D211, we had seen how Falk joined two of Mandrake's greatest adversaries into just one.

In this story, he fumbles on the first ever meeting of Mandrake and Lothar. Fans who had grown with these characters had the story of Mad Dog Dill and the hunt for him which led to the first meeting of Mandrake and Lothar. In this story we have a new first meeting. I will leave it to Mr.Falk to tell you all about it.

http://www.mediafire.com/?wzvsa9dn26mq8oi

https://rapidshare.com/files/4137699126/D214_TheEarsOfTheEarth__07-19-93_to_11-27-93_.cbr

Thanks are again owed to Paulo for extracting these strips from full newspaper downloads of 30-50 MB per day. I helped with a few missing strips.

Daily Ink has just today started S013 The Theater Mysteries in color.It will be 10 more weeks before it completes. I am waiting to replace my B/W version with this colored one when it ends.

Enjoy,

Venkitachalam

(Still posting temporarily permanent or permanently temporary for Balaji till he returns to posting)

PS. While talking about the Creator's fumble, looks like I goofed up on my previous post where I posted the links for the complete S186 strip first posted in #190. Here is the correct link. Let me hope that I got it correct this time. Third time is a charm as they say. Sorry for the confusion and trouble.
http://www.mediafire.com/?jypcbao2x7bp7oy

#191. Two is better than one ! Or is it not?

We have always enjoyed reading the stories where Mandrake takes on vicious foes like the Octon, Saki, Lucifer and many others. And then in D211, we were told that the Octon and the Cobra were one and the same person. It did come as an anti-climax. Not that Lee Falk did not give us hints about the impending unification of these two arch enemies of Mandrake.

https://rapidshare.com/files/3008105462/D211_TheBookOfCriminals__04-20-92_to_12-05-92_.cbz

http://www.mediafire.com/?tiyam9l3r5go68d

Thanks are again owed to Paulo, who edited this strip (one of the few strips that ran for more than 32 weeks) and replaced some of the bad strips with colored ones from Diamond Comics. I recall that Ajay had posted the complete Diamond Comics version in his blog

Enjoy,

Venkitachalam

(By mistake, I had missed a panel from the S186 strip. I posted new links. So if you had downloaded previous links, please download the new ones from post #190. Thanks to Paulo for catching the missing strip. I am enclosing the correct links here too. Prabhat and some others mentioned that they were not able to download from post #190:
http://www.mediafire.com/?jypcbao2x7bp7oy )

#190 - Can I have some Tuttu Frutti ice cream?

We first came across this Tourist in the Daily strip D080, which ran from 01-03-55 thru 04-02-55. I don't know if this was published in any blog. But not to worry. I have been able to collect the whole strip and will soon be posting that, once I finish cropping and "cleaning" the strips.

Here I am presenting "The Return Of The Tourist", which was incidentally the penultimate (second to last) Sunday strip published.

Update: Our Friend Paulo noticed that there was a missing week in my previous upload. I have now put out the complete story. Please download from these new links.
http://www.mediafire.com/?jypcbao2x7bp7oy

Thanks are owed to Magnus Magnusson for the color strips. I was able to search out and get English strips to replace the non-English ones.

(For those of you who are wondering where you could get the last ever Sunday strip, that strip is available in Prabhat's blog in various sizes and colors. You could also download the B/W version here:
https://rapidshare.com/files/1455060309/S187_-_Shadows_on_Devil_Road_05-19-2002_to_12-29-2002.cbr
http://www.mediafire.com/?991andh2x39hhtg
This is one of those rare stories in which the Phantom joins Mandrake and Lothar in a real adventure, instead of just showing up at one another's wedding.)

Enjoy,

Venkitachalam

#189. Mirror Mirror on the dressing table!

I present here the third story in the Mirror series. The first story - D033_TheMirrorPeople_(10-09-1944_to_12-16-1944) - can be found in this blog itself, though not in a strip format. The second story - D126_ReturnOfTheMirrorPeople_(08-24-1964_to_01-02-1965) - can be found in Lothar's blog as his 100th  upload.

https://rapidshare.com/files/348536020/D210_TheMirrorMystery__11-18-91_to_04-18-92_.cbr

http://www.mediafire.com/?3os8p07l01ou4cc

Paulo needs to be thanked for the editing of this strip too. A few of the original strips were really bad and he used some DC strips to complete the story.

Enjoy.

Venkitachalam

#188 - Gigantic Insects and what not?

Lee Falk has written many stories involving scientists and gigantic animals running around. Here is one of them. The story happens when Mandrake and Lothar are on their way to Harrison University, to perform. There is mention of what happened to them on an earlier journey to that University.

Thanks to Paulo, who has been most instrumental in getting all these dailies for us. I am trying to post these in a chronological order. Of course I skipped the order just for D220, since it was a COBRA story.

https://rapidshare.com/files/277094277/D209_Dr.Loqo_sSecretFormula__07-22-91_to_11-16-91_.cbr

http://www.mediafire.com/?i4on21kgd72tkt3

Enjoy,

Venkitachalam

#187 - Dream come true?

Hello everyone,

Here is another Mandrake daily for you to enjoy. Could something you see in a dream turn out to be true? Well, read it to find out.

https://rapidshare.com/files/1215001121/D208_TheTerrorists__04-15-91_to_07-20-91_.cbr

http://www.mediafire.com/?tbzypgyrksk9dt4

P.S. Don't forget to enjoy Narda in and out of Mandrake's dream

Of course I committed a major booboo while posting this. How could I not have acknowledged the efforts of Paulo to extract the strips from about 60 MB of data downloaded for this strory alone and the even replaced some of the bad strips with colored ones from Diamond Comics? My apologies and thanks, Paulo.

Enjoy,

Venkitachalam

#186 - A Mandrake daily that has Clay Camel and 8 in it.

Hopefully, all of you enjoyed the two previous dailies posted. This post contains a Mandrake story that has the Clay Camel and 8.

Some of the strips including the opening strip were really bad. Paulo, our new friend (but a very old Mandrake fan) never ceases to amaze me with his resourcefulness. He replaced those bad strips with strips taken from Diamond Comics!!

Thanks are due to Paulo and Balaji.

Enjoy,
http://www.mediafire.com/?rkwet2c62fdquql

https://rapidshare.com/files/1044357589/D207_ReturnOfTheClayCamelAndOthers__11-19-90_to_04-13-91_.cbr


Venkitachalam

#185 - A Mandrake Daily as promised earlier

During the course of posting the daily D220 earlier, I had mentioned briefly about how Balaji, Paulo Marques and I had teamed together to download a few rare Mandrake dailies.

Here is one of the earliest dailies. This is D-206 (The Other Side Of Nowhere). This had come out in Diamond Comics in India in color. Here it is in the original newspaper format.

https://rapidshare.com/files/2998706691/D206_TheOtherSideOfNowhere__07-09-90_to_11-17-90_.cbr
http://www.mediafire.com/?4y8r8vdolo8o4hz

Expressing thanks to Paulo, Balaji and myself(ha.. ha..)  for this

Enjoy,

Venkitachalam