This is a complete list of daily comic strips featuring Mandrake the Magician (with GEMs highlighted). The list includes links for the following: (a) Wiki page (from the MandrakeWiki site), (b) e-book (available upon request), and (c) More info on each comic (via optional posts by various contributors).
Unlike most other super-heroes, Mandrake has appeared primarily in newspaper strips rather than comic books. Most Mandrake comic books contain slightly reformatted/rearranged versions of the newspaper stories, though there are a few original stories that have been created directly for comic books. There are two categories of Mandrake newspaper strips: (a) daily stories (usually in black and while) and (b) Sunday stories (usually in color). These two categories of strips generally follow independent story arcs, though sometimes when there is a major milestone (such as Mandrake getting married), both strips share a common storyline. In the list below, I have included every original Mandrake daily story ever published.
Considering his long writing career of 60+ years, Lee Falk partnered with relatively few artists for his newspaper strips, as they each had very long tenures. For his Mandrake stories, he started with Phil Davis, who drew Mandrake for 30 years until his death in 1964. The art was then taken over by Fred Fredericks, who outlasted Falk and even took over the scripting after Falk’s death in 1999. Fredericks produced original Mandrake stories until 2002, and after that the newspaper strips started reprinting previously published stories. It is amazing that over nearly 70 years of original Mandrake strips, there were only two artists (and only two writers, counting Falk himself)!
Please share any comments or suggestions on this list by filling out this form. You can use the same form to express interest in becoming a contributor to the site and also request downloadable e-files for the comics books listed below.
