InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "It's only time."

dr_hermes (dr_hermes) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-06-13 20:30:00

Entry tags:

char: mandrake, creator: lee falk, era: golden age

Mandrake and Lothar ride swimming polar bears (no, seriously)

Lee Falk was one of the best storytellers ever to work in newspaper strips. It's a skill of precision. Every day you have to establish what's going on and have something happen, then leave a cliffhanger to make readers want to come back. Writing strips requires a certain rhythmn and economy of words unlike regular prose or comic books or radio or movies. Falk was great at it, there's a reason both Mandrake and the Phantom were so popular for so long.

From December 1936..

Early on, Mandrake was a real no-fooling sorceror. He gestured and a car leaped in the air to miss the person it was going to run over, for example. Here he is actually levitating, hovering in the air long enough for Lothar to pile up a cushion of snow. Soon after, though, Falk changed his mind. Mandrake's genuine powers made him too invincible against human opponents. Instead, we learned that the dapper magician was practicing a brand of highly effective instant hypnotism. This was way better than the stuff that guy charged you for to get you to quit smoking. No, Mandrake gestured and anyone he made eye contact with was under his spell. The victims saw their guns change to roses, the room turn upside down, Mandrake loom a hundred tall or themselves turned into snowmen. It was completely convincing. Yet someone watching from a distance could tell nothing happened, Mandrake and his subjects were just standing there. This gave the magician astounding abilities, yet left him vulnerable in many ways (a good balance).It's too bad about Lothar's pronoun trouble, but there it is. That's the convention of the time to show someone whose English is poor. Short of rewriting the past (always a bad idea), it's best to just let it go and enjoy the rest of the strip.

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besamim
2009-06-13 08:35 pm UTC (link)

Short of rewriting the past (always a bad idea)

Motto. As it happens, I know of an example relating to this very strip. In the late sixties, MAD ran a feature showing what would happen if newspaper comic characters took on social issues of the day. In the Mandrake the Magician parody, Lothar rebels against Mandrake and snatches his wand. Then he transports himself to a tropical island and says, "Crazy, man! Now I can dodge the draft like Cassius Clay, be Jewish like Sammy Davis Jr., and live in Bimini like Adam Clayton Powell [Jr.]!" Uh, thank you 1960s MAD; you just took a stereotype and made it worse.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-06-13 09:05 pm UTC (link)
	Ow, they misfired with that one. Gaines should have got the blue pencil out. MAD sometimes did features like "What If Comics Characters Acted Like Real People?" Jiggs getting a divorce, Dennis the Menace being spanked, Albert eating Pogo, the Peanuts crew talking like real little kids... (Reply to this) (Parent)

	tavella 2009-06-14 09:47 pm UTC (link)
	Does make it hard to read, though. He writes Lothar not just like he isn't good at English, he writes him like he's a child. Forgetting his parachute? "Look! Bears go away?" (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	arilou_skiff 2009-06-15 01:56 am UTC (link)
	Lee Falk really does get a lot better though. And he gave us Lamanda Lauga of course. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	proteus_lives 2009-06-13 09:31 pm UTC (link)
	Defenders of the Earth! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nm_jJBkHtU (Reply to this) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-06-16 02:15 am UTC (link)
	Was that show any good? From what little I've heard about it, it always struck me as something that I might want to check out at some point. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	sandoz_iscariot 2009-06-13 09:47 pm UTC (link)
	That's quite a dapper penguin. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-06-13 11:13 pm UTC (link)
	He's got some story to tell his friends. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	chipsnopotatoes 2009-06-14 09:11 pm UTC (link)
	love lee falk. used to follow his phantom in the newspapers. (Reply to this)