#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

#193. Diamonds are there just to be stolen?!

Six more to go before the double century. Once gain I had to skip a number. I am presenting D216 here about some diamond thieves.

We have seen and read about attempted robbery within the College of Magic. The one of the CUBE by Lucifer of course was the big one. Here an outsider gains entry into the College and gets away with robbery! Of course he and his gang have to encounter the meddlesome Mandrake and Lothar.

Thanks are again due to Paulo, who did the extraction and editing. I helped with a few missing strips.

Enjoy:

https://rapidshare.com/files/4193151021/D216_TheDiamondTrader__03-21-94_to_08-20-94_.cbr

http://www.mediafire.com/?ugf7ci7v2yh9vix

Venkitachalam

#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 )