MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN : A DOSSIER.

MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN

A prodigy in fantasy.

Dedicated to the memory of Lee Falk, Phil Davis

and Fred Fredericks.

Like the character of "The Spectre" ,

Mandrake

has almost the same powers like God ,

he can do whatever impossible fact,

such jumping over a

guard rail with his car.

Lee FALK had the dexterity to not abusing of those

powers

of Mandrake or else the tale would have turned a

never ending list of miracles performed by Mandrake,

aka a new sort of a Bible.

So Lee Falk reduced the participation of Mandrake into

the plot to the minimal . Mandrake only uses

his powers at the very last minute to resolve each

cliffhanger... like a real Deus ex machina.

What really interested Lee Falk was to show strange and

mind defying situations to the readers.

Probably he took inspiration from the classic books by

Lynn Thorndike "Motifs of folk literature", where

Thorndike explains how in different MYTHS AND TALES

from different cultures of the

world, the hero can perform impossible facts as he

were a god : the hero can stop the sun in the sky,

the hero can turn back the time, the hero can fly or

can walk over the sea or can turn invisible...

MANDRAKE can clean a room by

ordering the cleaning machines to work by themselves

Mandrake can order the household appliances to clean the room by
themselves.
Mandrake cannot stand tyranny and humilliates prince Paulo.
Mandrake, once again, messing around a war between two
leaders or two planets.
Time travel to the days of the first European explorers of
Florida.

The weapons take life by themselves.

A classic sunday page of the Phil Davis third period.

Inspired by one of Lee Falk's travels,

perhaps to the

Bahamas,

Mandrake explores an unknown inland.

The police asks for the help of Mandrake

under the mistrust of the robbed owner of the building

who calls Mandrake A FAKE , and Mandrake reacts

capsizing the room .

The origin of Mandrake : he is the son of a magician, he is

trained for years at the Tibet in all kind of magic arts,

specially brain control, for its use only to do the good.

In the desert, Mandrake messing again, as it is his wont,

into an affair which is not " his business".

The weapon turns sand in the hands of the desert pirate

and the other pirate realizes soon that this is a

"sorcerer's trick".
A copy of oneself appears at the other side of the
mirror and jumps out...

A giantic game with balls is stopped by another

giantic hand of Mandrake ...
Meeting Neanderthals in a time travel ...
A witch is frightened as she believes

that she is chewed by a dragon.

The Cobra , the perfect villain for Mandrake as he got

his very same powers but the Cobra uses them for evil
purposes

such turning puppets under his command to some

politicians and

generals to begin a war.

Mandrake, like Circe with Ulisses' men , turns some Muslims

into pigs, the most hated animal for them.

In the city of the murderers, its chief wants to invade

other countries with his army of two million murderers.

Mandrake turns invisible his friend so he can help him.

Travel by the Florida keys ,
and time travel again to the days of the Caribbean pirates.
Time travel to the Aztecs days.
Zeus and the other Greek gods are just ET tourists on planet
Earth.
In this world of the X dimension,

the metal men eat petrol and fear rust as their only
disease,

and all the things made with metal are alive.

A fine Sunday page of Phil Davis second period,

around 1936 when the influence of Alex Raymond

was very strong in all the comic strip artists.

Turning women into sirens and making disappear a boat.
No plan is impossible for Mandrake,

such trapping men with a net tossed from a plane.

More adventures inspired by Lee Falk's travels by the Bahamas and
the Pacific .

The Jupiter menace of germ bombs ,

Lee Falk, as in other tales by him , leaves the question without

answer, just guessing some theory.

In the Pacific island , everybody warns him: "leave meanwhile you

can".
A sample of Phil Davis first period .
Often , Lee Falk follows the traditional chidren tales
with its giants and witches.
A storm takes live by itself

and pursues the ship even to a secure harbor

inside an unknown island.

Now Mandrake messing into family's affairs,

the daughter of the captain is a prisoner of his

father .
Flesh men against cristal men,

perhaps inspired by Cervantes' tale : "El

licenciado Vidriera".
The first period of Phil Davis when he took as a model
for Mandrake the French American actor Adolphe Menjou.
The thought of the villain is projected

into a screen as if it were a moving picture.

Lee Falk, the master taleteller

The life of Lee Falk, who had Jewish origin

( his real name was Leon Harrison Epstein
Gross )

is the life which all the writers of the world

would desire to live themselves.
He managed to make money with his
characters of "Phantom" and "Mandrake"
and thanks to it, he could afford to travel by
many countries,
paying his bills at the hotels

where he wrote most of the scripts for his

characters.
He had the privilege of watching many
different countries in their own sauce ,

and many different guys , many different

political regimes and many different turmoils
and struggles.
From all that pool of direct experiences, Lee
Falk drew the inspiration for many plots ,
many secondary caracters, many colourful
ambiances
and many situations which would emerge
later at his scripts.

All the writers since Homer , including Tolstoi

or Hemingway would have dreamed to carry
such existence,

it is the dream for every writer,

to be financially secure to be able to travel
around the world
and to get inspiration from meeting many
different people and local experiences.
A wonderful life for a writer.

Thence the writer becomes a sort of a God

writer.
The world is for him a never ending source
of characters and plots waiting for him to be
incorporated into some tale.

For many years,

Lee Falk travels around all the world and
writes at the hotels.

Besides this, Lee Falk has a good knowledge

of the classics, from Lucian of Samosate to
Shakespeare,
the Chinese, Arabian and Indian folktales,
the mythology of most cultures
and the great novelist such Dumas, Walter
Scott, Sabatini or Verne .
Lee Falk drew a lot of plots and inspiration
from his lectures on the most important
writers of the history,
although he was smart enough to disguise
accurately his plots and characters

to turn difficult to trace the origin of most of

his stories for Mandrake and The Phantom,
even when we know that the source of them
are the Greek myths and the classical
writers .
Lee Falk had the privilege and the
opportunity to write the usual cheap pulp
stories US style
( literature for morons, according to Dan
Barry, the brother of Sy Barry who drew for
years "The Phantom")
but with enough talent to introduce on those
pulp, cheap, serial tales,
a lot of concepts coming from the classical
literature,
and at the same time enjoying the art of
writing
by travelling around the world allowing that
the ambiance of each country inspire him
steadly.
A wonderful life for a writer.

Not satisfied with all those achievements, Lee

Falk included too a lot of sense of humour
and some political and ethical meanings in
his Phantom and Mandrake tales.
Mandrake is very influenced by all the
Science Fiction writers since Lucian to
Cyranus of Bergerac and Voltaire,
and Lee Falk enjoys to explore how could be
other beings from other planets,
with a sense of humour and with a lot of
satire, as it was usual too in Voltaire.
In accordance with the other SF writers of the
XXth century, he explores everything with
some mistery and which is fashionable each
decade in science and philosophy:
flying saucers, extraterrestrials, other
utopian political regimes , other kind of
human beings, telepathy, animals with
intelligence, time travels, ET as cannibals or
thieves
and all the other topics of the SF genre.
But Lee Falk was different from other SF
writers in his penchant for satire and by his
skepticism on human nature,
as he was always comparing the human
beings with the nature of the ET.

Lee Falk's skepticism is usual among the SF

writers, just remember Lucian and Voltaire.
By their skepticism they wanted to keep a
healthy frame of mind in front of the over
pride of men as the most excelse creatures
and of the Universe.
Most classical writers imagined the ET as
mirrors where to look the humans to realize
our flaws and our vanities.
Many classical writers had explored the
possibility of other kind of living beings, to
prepare themselves to the shock of meeting
such ET,
to critizice the preposterous behaviours of
many human beings as compared with the
ET's,
or to explore other forms of life and political
organizations,
Eventually all this could turn us dizzy, as it
happens often to Mandrake,
despite the fact that he is a trained magician
who knows how it works the human brain and
the human knowledge,
but even being this way,
Mandrake cannot avoid to feel himself lost
and dull ,
each time he meets some new creatures or
planets.
One of the best tales of Falk was published in
1960 and tells about four planets at war since
ever,

each planet populated by a different ,

strange race ,
and each race not standing each other.
The period which goes from 1958 to 1962 is
probably the golden age of Mandrake .

The French publisher of " Le journal of

Mickey" probably thought the same when he
decided to publish in France the tales of that
period,
by 1972 in his "The journal of Mickey".

So Lee Falk enjoyed a big life,

first, because he earned money enough

with his scripts to finance his travels around
the world and his sojournings at hotels ,
second , because he could afford to get easy
inspiration for his tales,

from the reality he was watching at each

country by his travels,

third , because he took the usual U. S.

cheap pulp and serial tales
and he mixed them with a lot of plots and
characters issued from the mithology
and the history of literature
( aptly disguised so they couldn't be
recognized easily ) ,

fourth, because he added to all that a lot of

sense of humour,

of satire and skepticism

( as it is usual among the SF writers)
meanwhile he explored many different ideas
on how could be the ET,
the future life,
other political regimes and
whatever fantasy which could come along to
him
concerning science , politics and
philosophy ,
whatever idea which his brain could
imagine
to explain all the misteries of this universe.

The fantasy of Lee Falk was extraordinary ,

he is the author of hundreds of scripts,
most of them very imaginative
( although others are just usual escapism and
entertainment)
and he never went dry of ideas from 1935 to
1995 ,
producing scripts and more scripts year after
year.
No other man keeps such record.

The work of Lee Falk is an extraordinary

exercise of fantasy for its own sake,
with the brain loosened free to imagine
whatever thing which could cross it,
no matter if that idea could seem
unbelievable, impossible or crazy.

Lee Falk explores all kind of fantastic

explanations

for all kind of phenomena

and takes advantage of the fact that he is not

doing science but pulp fiction,
to take a lot of liberties in his proposals and
his theories

on many strange things which happens in this

universe ,
liberties which a scientist is not free to take,
due to the scientific method.

In this sense, the tales of Lee Flak can be

most inspiring for scientists, as the mind of
Lee Falk can fly free more easily

that the mind of a scientist

to propose new theories or explanations.

Just mention the tale of around 1960 where

Mandrake meets Zeus
who turns to be an ET in vacation on planet
Earth ,
and this Zeus in his spare time enjoys to
suggest people like Columbus or Newton or
Einstein some interesting ideas meanwhile
they are sleeping ...
 Plato said the same in his dialogue "Ion"
about from where comes the inspiration to
the poets.

"Mandrake" shows, for about 50 years of

constant publication,

a never ending exhibition of pure fantasy .

If this were not enough, Lee Falk took

advantage of the character of Mandrake to
explore all the world of the unknown :
sorcery, white and black magic, mesmerism,
suggestion...
as Mandrake's powers make believe the
villains
that they shinkle or that their weapons melt
or that they hover over the floor.
A lot of hard work for the artists working for
Lee Falk,
specially Phil Davis who had to put in
pictures all what Lee Falk was able to
imagine,
from strange ET to planets of nightmare,
as well as all kind of situations where the
villains , by a wave of Mandrake's hand,
suddenly became a heap of bones without
skin
or they lost their body.

Phil Davis is the responsible of putting on

paper all those never before pictured
situations,
provoked by the powers of Mandrake.

Phil Davis' art can be classified in three

periods.
The first one goes from 1935 to around 1940
and Phil Davis' style is simple, almost cartoon
like, very schematic.

Along the 40's Phil Davis falls into the

influence of Alex Raymond and his "Flash
Gordon ", in its epoch of the forests of
Arboria and the wich queen of the "Flash
Gordon " strips of 1934 - 35 ,

a very artistic style indeed , with the help of

his assistant Ray Moore.
Later, from the late 40's to his death in 1965,
Phil Davis adopted another style, quite static,
with the characters stiff as statues,
but still an aesthetic style , of pleasant
scherzos where the drawing serves the plot
without pretending to shine.
Phil Davis devoted in that period his best
efforts to get the right depiction of the strange
creatures imagined by Lee Falk,
which was a much difficult task by itself and
not praised yet as it should.

With Fred Fredericks, a military trained in

Fine Arts thanks to an Army Scholarship,
Mandrake and Narda turn more " modern"
and Fredericks devotes many hours to draw
really well the strip in his first years,
but he degenerates slowly with the years with
an increasingly easier drawing.
The tales of Mandrake with Fredericks are
less interesting and more childish,

but with occasional sparks of genious, from

time to time.
Mandrake was always described by Lee Falk
as a stiff man, very elegant but detached, not
vulgar at all,
a student of the human nature

and the perplexities of the human brain ,

a traveller around the planet and the

universe

who gets involved once and once again into

some trouble ,
first as a neutral observer, later as an active
fighter.

Mandrake turns many times so confused

with the strange people he meets ,
as much as the other people turn confused
in front of Mandrake's spells.
For some French researchers, Mandrake's
philosophy is dark, pessimistic,
as most of the things which Mandrake
discovers around the Universe

are unbelievable or impossible or dazzle our

mind.
For us , the philosophy of Mandrake is , over
all, the philosophy of a skeptic,

but with a very stark sense of the good,

as Mandrake is always thriving to hamper

the evil to happen meanwhile he protects the
good.

The Phantom is , for Lee Falk, far less

complicated than Mandrake.

The Phantom is an usual boy but with a very

athletic phisique.
He has a lot of sense of humour and he
represents the usual American hero,
an overendowed American who uses his
strenght to help people,
to punish the villains
and to protect the weak.
There are no much politics in The Phantom,
he is just a believer in democracy and peace
and he hates tyranny,
and there is no more thought in him.

This hero loves right things , right life, right

behaviour , right values,
much in tune with the values of the
conservative.

He has the power , by his athletic phisique,

to imposse his tastes in lifestyle,
to other people who would prefer quite to
steal or to kill.
There is no other meaning in The Phantom,

and his readers for 50 years love to see him

fighting the villains ,
with his impressive body ,
as his readers feel too the sense of power
The Phantom feels inside himself
, for most of his readers would like to punish
the villains
the same way the Phantom does,
without the bureaucracy of a trial, a judge
and a Justice Court, just trusting oneselves in
our pure concept of the good. Lee Falk never
thinks that The Phantom could be wrong or
unjust or corrupt in some way, for Lee Falk
his Phantom is always good wihout the
slighest change in his principles.
Ethics tell us the opposite, that no man is,
along his life, absolutely unerring in his
decisions and veredicts,
all men are subject to corruption and
mistakes, except The Phantom...

It is impossible according to the laws of the

Ethics
which say that all men can turn corrupt
and that all men can commit mistakes when
judging

and that all men can abandon the pure idea

of the good
by ignorance, by sickness, by old age or by
lack of discipline.

As the absolute king of the Deep Woods, the

Phantom acts like a medieval monarch , he is
at the same time a ruler and a judge over his
citizens.
By the oath to his ancestors, the Phantom is
forced to always take the right decissions to
always do the right deeds.

Other men couldn't fulfill all their life this oath

as they would have temptations to leave their
hard task of vigilante around the world,
for a more pleasant and peaceful life.

This is the reason why the Phantom tales

catch you,
even when you know that those comic strips
are childish and " for morons",
the lure of every Phantom tale is to watch
how the Phantom defeats the villains only by
his pure strenght
and his unbreakable faith on what is right .
Perhaps the only and last good man on
Earth when all the other people have turned
corrupted and bad.
The love of Lee Falk for a conservative
lifestyle can be detected by the suits of Diana
Palmer ,
his colonel father, his mother a traditional
housewife,
their house, their town, their university,
specially along the period of the simple but
effective drawings of Wilson McCoy,
who loved traditional life in small,
conservative towns.

Later, with Sy Barry as the artist, the hero

and his sorroundings get a new and more
modern appearance,
losing by the way the charm of the rural or
small traditional towns of the drawings by
Wilson McCay.

Lee Falk managed to write for years ,

hundreds of scripts about his two creations
The Phantom and Mandrake.
The quality of his writing is not always the
same, with ups and downs, given the quantity
of his produce it was difficult to keep a high
standard ,
but the title of " master taleteller of the
Universe "
suits perfectly to Lee Falk.

More research is needed to discover the

classical sources of many of Mandrake and
The Phantom tales
and perhaps by then, we will realize how
smart Lee Falk was by transforming those
sources into new scripts ,

for a new media of the XXth century which

we call "comics" or " strips " or " bande
dessinèe" or "fumetti" or
" tebeos" ,
a media that allowed Lee Falk to create his
characters, mixing his classical influences
with the usual US pulp and serials clichés
and exploring his fantasy on the way.

Other writers such Rod Serling worked the

same way for motion pictures and television,
as in Serling's series "Twilight zone".

We can think on Lee Falk ,Stan Lee or Renè

Goscinny, to name some of the greatest
writers for comic-strips, as magicians
who, like Mandrake , could make believe us
that all kind of impossible things and events
are real ,
by their control of our mind, in some way,
with the help of their fellow master artists
Phil Davis , John Romita or Uderzo.

Thanks to the magic of the drawings, they

were a sort of magicians like Mandrake,
who made believe us that Spiderman could
crawl the skyscrappers ,
Mandrake could jump above the ravine's
void
and Asterix could defeat Julius Caesar.

So Lee Falk is Mandrake himself, the

conjurer who made believe all of us all those
fantasies which his mind could produce.
Lee Falk created an alternative universe
plenty of hundreds of tales of Mandrake and
The Phantom and very rich in situations and
characters.
It is interesting that most of the comic book
creators in the US were American Jewish,
such Lee Falk, Schuster and Siegel, Jack
Kirby and Joe Simon, Will Eisner and many
more
and that many of the comic book artists were
American Italian such Dan and Sy Barry,
Carmine Infantino, the Romitas and the
Buscemas.
Probably the American Jewish were smart
people who saw a potential market in the US
for the superheroes and they developed
steadly this industry,
meanwhile the American Italian brought with
them the very rich Italian artistic culture.
Other interpretations of the huge influence of
the American Jewish in the US popular
culture, from motion pictures to comic books,
deserve further research in depth.
By other side, each country has its own
reading on the Phantom myth.

In Italy they love the aesthetics of the

drawings,

in Spain we like to feel ourselves that we can

behaviour like the Phantom, a physically
strong punisher of the villains who doesn't
need a Justice Court and a lot of bureaucracy
to act,
 in Sweden they believe they are so strong as
the Pahntom is ,

in Australia all the Australians believe they

are the Phantom, a white man ruling South
Asia,

in India they read the Phantom just as pure

entertainment like the Bollywood movies,
in the US it is cheap entertainment for
children and morons ( as Dan Barry said
once ).
So at each country you can get a different
interpretation of the Phantom myth,

but overall the people of all the world admires

the strenght of the Phantom and his athletic
abilities.
The topic of ET coming to our planet in prehistoric times
and leaving here a device .
 The artichoke men .

Mandrake explores other dimensions. Giantic ET want to use the

Earth as fuel and are able to move the whole planet.
Difficult for Phil Davies how to render this giant in pieces.

The butterfly ET want to marry in Earth.

The Jupiter men are very strong and with a thick body due
to the gravity of that planet.

The Jupiter men cannot kill by their laws but are in war
against the Earth since ever.
The ET without sun.

The ET thieves of food and very fat.

Olimpus and the Wallhalla are vacation resorts for the ET.
The ET thieves of our water.

The four ET races of four different planets at war since ever.

Internet already exists between the two extremes of the
universe.

Some shapeless ET want to take some human form.

A very small race of ET has been living among us since ever
hidden in the walls and the cellars.
A bed against gravity.

A travel of Mandrake to the future to meet a

descendant of him.
The ET without sun feed themselves by taking the sun.
The ET without sun have no weight
and live inside an asteroid turned spaceship.
The ET eggs don't eat neither sleep. A new challenge
for Phil Davies on how render the living eggs.
The ET from Mars remain always kids all their life and
employ their time writing travel books on the planets.

Another travel to the future, so far as 50.000 years,

when there are no longer microbes on Earth and the time
travels are forbidden due to the risk of bringing
microbes to the future.
Transportation of beings by descomposition in atoms and
recomposition from those atoms in the destination.

An actor who knows very well the script of Hamlet travels

to the Shakespeare time.
Some ET don't like our planet due to the difference of
pressure and only come here to recharge their batteries.
Mandrake the conjurer and the illusion which lives the
mesmerized king in front of the reality.
More ET , this time real invaders who believe in the law of
the stronger.
Mandrake acts as an avenger god who arrange things for the
weak can fight in equal terms with the strong.
 A natural "telephaty" happens when two far away
beings think on each other.

A powder which turns people without memory.

Many tribes believe that the photographs

steal the soul of the people and in some way it is true

as part of the soul is in every man's body and face.
The men apes .
The most ugly man on Earth finds some release by collecting
fine paintings.
A king who is the law in his country, kidnaps Narda.
For once, Lee Falk uses the real tricks of the real
magicians , a dummy and a real woman dressed exactly
like the dummy to fool a buyer.
Tales of giant grasshopers, the career of a thief and a feud
between actors.
A thief riding a fake Pegasus.
An astronaut despised takes revenge.
The moving tale of the king douphin who wants to lead a
revolution of the fish against the men.
Mandrake turns the tyrant king into a philosopher farmer not
longer afraid of treachery against him at the court.
A magic world class robbery of paintings.
Another SF topic, the underwater town.
Lee Falk in Buenos Aires.
An original from Lee FALK.
Another fine sample of Phil Davies second period . A new
Nero builds a castle upside down just for fancy and kills
and turn a statue his architect.
A place where everybody is old, the desire to come back to
the youthness turns crazy the people. Some steals their
youth to Narda and to a rock star.
Wilson McCoy, himself travelled a lot to get documentation
for the Phantom.

Most of the landscapes around his home in BARRINGTON

appear at the comic strip of the Phantom.

Wilson McCoy was himself a strong man with strong

conservative values which he drifted to the character of
the Phantom . As well as Lee Falk travelling around, he
enjoyed a big life drawing the Phantom at his farm . His
style was deceptively simple, but artistic, in fact he used
to paint advertisement pictures before taking the job from
Ray Moore who had returned form the war with an injure
which made him unable to draw more, Wilson McCoy paid Ray
Moore a royalty to use the character for the rest of his
life.
The artichoke men live inside a poisonous atmosphere and refresh
their roots in water.