MANDRAKE VS. THE WITCHES

Lee Falk's creation of the newspaper strips THE PHANTOM and MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN were (and still are) popular -- strike that -- very popular not only in the U.S. but around the world. Both were reprinted in comic books and collections in numerous languages and were a reflection of the appeal that the characters had, as well as the stories that included everything from adventure, mystery, fantasy, science-fiction, the supernatural, crime and more.

Shown today is an example of a MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN comic book that had a run in India. It was published by Indrajal Comics, an imprint of  The Times of India, Bennet, Coleman & Co that began in March 1964. The first 24 issues featured Falk's THE PHANTOM. Mandrake first appeared in issue #46.

During its 805-issue run (that lasted until April 1990), Indrajal used many comic strip characters from the King Features Syndicate including Flash Gordon, Rip Kirby and Buzz Sawyer. Sometimes revisions and outright censoring was made to better coincide with Indian society and enable some of the stories more understandable to readers.

"The Witches" was the title of Indrajal Comics #121 with a cover date of 1 November 1970 and is the 130th story of the Mandrake dailies. It was written by Lee Falk and drawn by Fred Fredericks. Frank Thorne and Bob Fujitani ghosted for Fredericks for two weeks during its original run.

Cover art by Govind Brahmania (aka B. Govind).

A MONTH OF SUNDAYS: MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN

Beginning today is the first month of installments for Lee Falk's MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN. "The Garden of Wuzzu" was Mandrake's 26th Sunday serial story and ran for 17 weeks from January 30, 1944 through May 21, 1944.

Created by Falk, the syndicated comic's first published strip was on June 11, 1934, preceding THE PHANTOM by almost two years. Some comics historians say that Mandrake is the first superhero and fits the two basic requirements: 1) he has super-powers and, 2) he fights criminals and evil-doers.

Falk handed the art chores over to Phil Davis and Davis drew the strip until his death in 1964. The strip was syndicated by William Randolph Hearst's King Features among whose properties included Popeye, Flash Gordon, Blondie and Jungle Jim.

BONUS! In December 1951, Harvey Comics had a special issue devoted to Mandrake in their HARVEY HITS title (#53), Accompanying the two stories is this pinup with art attributed to Al Avison (who must have taken a brief time-out from illustrating Harvey's Pre-Code horror comics). Also shown is the preliminary line-work and color-model, hand-colored by the artist.