Thursday, January 17, 2008

Mandrake Cover Project #5: Mandrake/Lothars Various ADVENTUROUS Trips special

In their more-than-seven-decade long adventurous lives,Mandrake/Lothar had have experienced many a mysterious,deadly n amazing ones in their various dual trips. There are some discreet trips where they faced weird/scary situations ,but most famous probably the series-of-adventures during their visit to Moxley U for a show!

Now,firstly coming to the discreet ones,their meeting with legendary Big Foot in a jungle near a Mountain-region(IJC No.362) or dealing with crazy-n-crooked botanist,Dr.Fleur and his mysterious Glass-Castle (Vol.21 No.23/24) and how Mandrake dealt him are among some MOST famous tales!

Besides these,how one can forget the discovery of legendary Golden-City:El Doredo(under ground) amidst a lonely high-way where everything were IN GOLD (Vol.21 No.6)?? Or their meeting with a SCARY WONDERLAND (during eruption of a forbidden volcano) where insects are in gigantic sizes & with contrary, humans
are like some 6-inch weird shape(Vol.21 No.42)!!!

Besides these,one should not forget a rather lighter and funny(to some extent) tale of a distant-mountain witch who was in reality a young-n-beautiful lady & 7th in her 'witch'-generation(Vol.20 No.44)!!!some generations........ :)
Of course all I've mentioned are great thrillers matching with gripping scripts & in support,marvelous illustration by Fred Fredricks!!

Now coming to their trip to the Moxley U,M/L faced many a weird situations!! Firstly, they faced hijackers(#277;inside story) followed by most scary meting with Ghost town (#265) ! When I first read Ghost Town,the concept of a secret hide-out of ALL 'suppose to be dead/missing' crooks/under world leaders fascinated me!!wow!!
After this,Mr.Heavy from Planet Uropa was waiting for them (NEVER appeared in IJC)!!But that was not enough,as first bank robbers & then a gang of local killers (who robbed & then killed old people) were faced Mandrake's amzing trick(#348)!!!

Finally, M/L duo reached their destination:Moxley U & after a great show of various fabulous tricks from the GREATEST Magician on earth,their journey finished with discovery of weirdest under-ground hide-out of millionaire 'Top Dog' amidst an American desert (#318)!!

[Please notice,IJC did NOT published 'Moxley U adventures' in the serial orders as appeared in the original strips]

Well,in the last days of Indrajals,we have seen again a trip from this world-famous duo.That time they were in way towards another University show:in Harison,where they met Madam Sir-see,who enslaved men using her invented deadly drug(The grip of treachery ;IJC Vol.27 No.4)! Well,I'm NOT sure whether this a particular trip can be treat as 'only' M/L dual trip,as this time their saviours (from Sir-see) were Narda & Karma - their beautiful girlfriends !!

I donno whether they had any such trips in '90s!

8 comments:

comic.crazy said...

Dara, nice post.

Lothar was one of the few characters of Lee Falk who underwent lot of transformations. In the beginning he was a servant of Mandrake with funny English, who later on was potrayed as his buddy with more modernity and fluent English after FF took over the illustration. Again later, political compulsion got him another transformation - he was not shown as black anymore! (sort of Michael Jackson act!!!).

Nevertheless, no Mandrake story is complete without Lothar.

HojO said...

#CC:

Yes!!! Lothar was a servent-come-body guard in '30 to '40s..then in early '60s he became a more closer frnd of Mandrake....later in '70s he was shown as a real buddy of Mandrake!!!

Quite a transformation he went through!!

he was not shown as black anymore!

I think,u meant DC Mandrake,wheer the poor color-quality made lothar-Karma occasionally white,otherwise,if ya check eevn 2006 strip(Orcid story) wheer Lothar drawn as dark person...but yes,not like eaxctly black anymore!! ;-))

But,personally there's a typical change in Mandrake's dailies...since F.Fred took charge in 2000,slowly Lothar (& Karma/Hojo/Jed completely) become 'pretty secondary' in the strips(specially after 2003) n ONLY mandarke-Narda adventures are there!!

It's make strips bit boring sometimes n also monotonus.....just can't imagine a Mandarke adventure without Lothar n also ocasional Jed/Hojo serves the varity!!

HojO said...

Now CC,

Can I ask u something??
As it quite obvious,u r a professional in those strip-coloring/rearranging etc....can u put 3/4 of SINGLE b/w Daily strip in one page ,,,,together??

I meant,as MTM had published Mandrake's wedding D226-228....we get 'single Dialy-strip per-page' n NOT '3/4 strip per-page' as we get usually in book-format,say like IJC!!

So,is it pos'ble to rearrange those single daily strips in page-format??

Just a quary!

comic.crazy said...

Dara,
No probs, get me those files

HojO said...

@CC:

Thnx 4 prompt reply!!:-)

Can u mail me at :'sagnik99@gmail.com'??
I think you may have all those D226-228 downloaded frm MTM site...like we did!!

comic.crazy said...

Dara I tried to email you.. not going through.. Address is correct?

HojO said...

Did ya put that 99?

I mean ,it's: sagnik99@gmail.com

Try 4 a 2nd time,lets see...

comic.crazy said...

got my mail now?