Pappy’s Sunday Supplement #9: Mandrake the Magician

Lee Falk created Mandrake the Magician in 1934, which makes Mandrake about 83 years old. He is still wearing evening clothes and a top hat. Tradition is important to Mandrake.

My introduction to the character was with this 1957 newspaper continuity, called “The Penthouse Mystery” in the index of Mandrake dailies and Sundays.* Mom and Dad began a subscription to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, owned by Hearst, which also owned the King Features Syndicate. I was 10 years old, besotted by comics and in those days non-discriminating. I bought into the mystery of the flying carpet and flying horse.

In 1966, when King Features started their own short-lived comic book line, I bought Mandrake the Magician #1, and recognized the story as a redo of my introduction to Mandrake. They made it more comic bookish; even giving the unnamed thief of the 1957 strip a name, the Toymaker, but the story is essentially the same.

The newspaper strip is credited to Falk, and artist Phil Davis, assisted by his wife, Martha Davis. The comic book version is credited by the Grand Comics Database to Dick Wood for the script, and for the art Werner Roth, inked by André LeBlanc. Don Heck and Mike Peppe are credited for the cover.

*Deepwoods.org

Number 1856: The Heck you say...

Craig Yoe has a volume in the IDW Chilling Archives of Horror Comics dedicated to artist Don Heck. He collects the pre-Code horror stories Heck did for Comic Media, a small-time publisher. Heck later went on to Atlas/Marvel, where he was an integral part of their line for several years. Heck was a solid professional, even if (in my opinion in the late fifties-early sixties) his more illustrative approach seemed too different sandwiched as it was between the work of comic art stylists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

In the early fifties Heck had a flair for horror, which may come as a surprise to some. This is one of the stories collected in the IDW volume. What you see here are my scans, not the ones in the book. It is from Weird Terror #2 (1952). The story is about what I have always suspected, that my accidents are caused by external forces (in this case, evil gnomes), not by my clumsiness and inattention to my surroundings.

Yoe’s book is available from the usual outlets.

Number 1193: Danger! Men at work

Pete Morisi and Don Heck met when they were both members of the Harvey Comics production department in the late forties. Both began their art careers in the Golden Age, and continued into the Silver Age.  Heck was doing fantasy and science fiction for Stan Lee at Marvel, and Morisi, by then a member of the New York Police Department who used the acronym PAM for his comic book work, had created and was writing and drawing Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, for Charlton.

These two short stories, from 1953, are for the Comic Media title, Danger. At the time Morisi was also doing the Mike Hammer-style private eye, Johnny Dynamite, for Comic Media, while Heck was doing horror comics for the same publisher. Morisi used a clean, medium ink line, in contrast to Heck, who was then an acolyte of the Milton Caniff school of comic art illustration.

Morisi's story, “Marijuana,” shows that not much has changed in the illegal drug business in the past sixty years. “Hot Steel” is a boy meets steel mill, boy loses steel mill, boy finds steel mill kind of story.

Both are now gone. Heck died in 1995, Morisi in 2003.

From Danger #4 (1953):

Number 462


What the Heck...?


I like the job Don Heck did on this well-drawn strip. It's obvious he put a lot of work into this five-pager from Strange Worlds #1, 1958. You'll probably recognize the last panel of this story It's a tale told in various forms over the years, with the same punchline.

I've now posted all of the stories from Strange Worlds #1, which was the reintroduction of the old Atlas line after a hiatus of over a year, when publisher Martin Goodman sold his Atlas distributing company.