{"id":38099,"date":"2022-10-09T00:00:40","date_gmt":"2022-10-09T04:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/?p=38099"},"modified":"2022-10-10T12:57:36","modified_gmt":"2022-10-10T16:57:36","slug":"the-many-mirrors-of-mandrake-the-magician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/2022\/10\/the-many-mirrors-of-mandrake-the-magician\/","title":{"rendered":"The many mirrors of Mandrake the Magician"},"content":{"rendered":"

As mentioned in today's review, Mandrake the Magician<\/a> inspired many an imitator. Take a look:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mandrake the Magician debuted in the newspaper comics on June 11, 1934. It took four years for the first knockoff to arrive, DC Comics' Zatara.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Notice how similar he looked to Mandrake: tuxedo, top hat, everything. He even wore a cape in his earliest appearances.<\/p>\n

In August of 1939, Fox Features introduced Zanzibar, who managed to distinguish himself from the competition by wearing a fez:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

(You'll find that a lot of these guys are only separated from one another by their hats.)<\/p>\n

Two months later, in October's Daring Mystery Comics<\/i> #1, Timely Comics gave us Monako, Prince of Magic, who was back in a top hat:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

By issue #4, he'd also switched to a fez.<\/p>\n

MLJ introduced a turban with Kardak the Mystic Magician in December:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Timely was back at it again at the start of 1940, putting Dakor the Magician in the first issue of Mystic Comics<\/i>:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Dakor really<\/b> bucked the trends, by wearing no hat at all!<\/p>\n

Just a month later, Quality Comics came out with Ibis the Invincible, our second turban-man:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Comic companies then made it all the way to April before introducing Marvo the Magician:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Marvo cast his spells in some kind of Italian gibberish, and had a super-intelligent monkey sidekick.<\/p>\n

Norgil the Magician appeared as a backup in The Shadow<\/i> and Doc Savage<\/i>, but neither book ever really had a clear shot of him:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

All appearances to the contrary, this isn't Ibis again; it's Mr. Mystic, who was created by Will Eisner:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The most unique headgear among all these guys has to belong to Quality Comics' Merlin the Magician, who sometimes wore the hood of his cape up:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

He activated his powers by speaking the words backwards. Just like Zatara had two years before.<\/p>\n

The third Timely Comics character come out in September of 1940, Mantor the Magician:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

What sets him apart from Monako? Not much.<\/p>\n

Quality Comics came back in February of 1941 with Tor the Magic Master:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

He also uses the backwards-talking gimmick, and dresses exactly like Mandrake.<\/p>\n

All-American Comics, one of the forerunners of DC, created comics' fourth \"suit\/cape\/turban\" combo with Sargon the Sorcerer:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

And coming very<\/b> late to the game was 1954's Mysto, the Magician Detective:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Marvel also had a Mysto, but that one was a villain who just used plain stage equipment to fight Captain America.<\/p>\n

So today, Marvel owns Monako, Dakor, and Mantor; DC owns Zatara, Ibis the Invincible, Merlin, Tor, Sargon, and Mysto; Zanzibar, Kardak, Marvo, and Mr. Mystic are all in the public domain; and that leave Mandrake and presumably Norgil to remain property of their original publishers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As mentioned in today's review, Mandrake the Magician inspired many an imitator. Take a look:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-addendums","category-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38099"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38120,"href":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38099\/revisions\/38120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}