40 Fun Facts About Mandrake the Magician

Which African prince, called the strongest man in the world, is Mandrake the Magician's sidekick?

Lothar gave up a throne to travel with Mandrake, debuting beside him in the very first daily strip in 1934. He is counted among the first African crime-fighting heroes in comics.

Mandrake the Magician's mountaintop mansion shares which name with Kublai Khan's summer capital?

Xanadu sits atop a mountain in New York State and is packed with gadgets, including closed-circuit TV, vertical iron gates and a road that divides in half.

Some comics historians call Mandrake the Magician, who debuted in 1934, the first of which character type?

Superhero is the label historians such as Don Markstein attach to Mandrake, who was using his powers against evil four years before Superman appeared.

Which Marvel legend wrote the theme lyrics for the 1980s cartoon teaming Mandrake with Flash Gordon?

Stan Lee is named in the closing credits as lyricist of the main title song, written while Marvel Productions was making the 65-episode series.

Mandrake the Magician creates illusions with a lightning-fast form of which technique, set off by a gesture?

Hypnosis is the secret behind the act: when Mandrake gestures, his targets see whatever illusion he chooses, a trick he has turned on gangsters, aliens and beings from other dimensions.

Which strip about a masked crime-fighter in Bangalla was the second hit by Mandrake the Magician's creator?

The Phantom began on February 17, 1936, two years after Mandrake, and follows a masked hero whose role has passed from father to son for centuries.

In which 1980s animated series does Mandrake the Magician join Flash Gordon to battle Ming the Merciless?

Defenders of the Earth ran for 65 episodes, was set in the then-distant year 2015, and gave each hero a son or daughter to fight alongside.

The bumbling wizard Schmendrick was named as a parody of Mandrake the Magician in which 1968 fantasy novel?

The Last Unicorn author Peter S. Beagle first made up Schmendrick as the hero of family bedtime stories, then wrote the hapless wizard into the unicorn's quest.

Long before Mandrake the Magician, the word mandrake named which living thing, feared in old superstition?

A plant with a forked, man-shaped root, the mandrake belongs to the nightshade family; one superstition held that it screamed when pulled from the ground.

Mandrake the Magician's evil double Ekardnam, his name spelled backward, lives behind which object?

A mirror hides Ekardnam's upside-down world, where a lowly private runs the government, generals do the menial jobs, and he works magic with an evil eye.

Which writer, later a stage director who worked with Marlon Brando, created Mandrake the Magician?

Lee Falk went on to run five theaters and produce about 300 plays, while still writing Mandrake's adventures until his death in 1999.

Which princess became Mandrake the Magician's wife after a courtship that began in the strip's second story?

Narda and Mandrake stayed sweethearts for about six decades of strips before finally marrying in a lavish triple wedding ceremony.

Which arch-enemy of Mandrake, real name Luciphor, returned in 1965 wearing a menacing silver mask?

The Cobra seemed beaten in 1937 before that comeback, and his main goal is to seize one of the Crystal Cubes that boost mental energy.

Which Hearst-owned syndicate has distributed the Mandrake the Magician strip since its first day?

King Features bought the strip after its young creator pitched it in New York in 1934, the same year the syndicate launched Flash Gordon.

Mandrake the Magician's stage outfit pairs a scarlet-lined cape and a pencil-line mustache with which hat?

Top hat, cape and mustache were also the look of Leon Mandrake, a real stage magician who toured for decades under the same name as the comic-strip hero.

Don Mueller, nicknamed Mandrake the Magician in the 1950s, earned the name for his skill in which sport?

Baseball fans gave the New York Giants right fielder the name because he so reliably put the ball in play and found gaps through the infield.

A crime ring Mandrake fights, dating to medieval times, is organized like which sea creature?

An octopus is the model for the gang known as 8: eight arms of headquarters around the world answer to one head, the unseen leader Octon.

Which European director, a friend of Mandrake the Magician's creator, planned a Mandrake film in the 1960s?

Federico Fellini never got his Mandrake picture made, but his 1987 film Intervista shows Marcello Mastroianni dressed as the magician for a commercial.

Which artist drew Mandrake the Magician for three decades until his fatal heart attack in 1964?

Phil Davis was drafted for war work in the 1940s, so his wife Martha, a fashion illustrator, helped draw the strip and stayed on afterwards.

Mandrake the Magician learned his craft as a boy at the College of Magic, hidden in which mountain range?

The Himalayas hide the Collegium Magikos, run by a headmaster said to be hundreds of years old and possibly kept alive by the crystal cube he guards.

Which cartoonist took over the art of Mandrake the Magician in 1965 and later wrote the strip as well?

Fred Fredericks drew Mandrake for 48 years, added the writing after the creator's death in 1999, and retired in 2013 with a story left unfinished.

Which centuries-old headmaster of the College of Magic is the father of Mandrake the Magician?

Theron guards a crystal cube that may be what keeps him alive, and he fathered more than one magician: his eldest son turned to evil.

Which chef at Mandrake the Magician's mansion is secretly chief of the crime-fighting agency Inter-Intel?

Hojo is also a superb martial artist who taught Mandrake's wife to fight, and he often recruits the magician for Inter-Intel cases.

Which twin brother of Mandrake uses near-identical magical powers for his own short-term satisfaction?

Derek looks just like his brother, and Mandrake tried to wipe his knowledge of magic but never entirely succeeded.

The Mandrake villain Saki, a master of disguise, leaves a clay model of which animal at his crimes?

A camel made of clay is the calling card that gives the Clay Camel his name; he can mimic anyone and change his appearance in seconds.

The princess Mandrake married comes from which European kingdom, named after a mythical land of plenty?

Cockaigne in the strip is ruled by the princess's brother Segrid; in medieval legend the name meant a dreamland of ease where food was plentiful.

Which actor, also the screen's Spider and Green Hornet, played Mandrake the Magician in a 1939 movie serial?

Warren Hull became one of the most popular serial heroes of his day, and later found a second career as a television personality.

Which Hollywood studio released the 12-chapter Mandrake the Magician movie serial, its seventh serial overall?

Columbia Pictures sent Mandrake to work the cruise lines, where he protects a professor's radium energy machine from a masked crime lord.

Which masked crime lord hunts a radium energy machine in the 1939 Mandrake the Magician movie serial?

The Wasp turns out to be Dr. Andre Bennett, a scientist posing as a close friend of the machine's inventor, Professor Houston.

Which former NFL player turned actor played Mandrake the Magician's strongman partner in NBC's 1954 TV pilot?

Woody Strode, later the gladiator Draba in Spartacus, starred opposite stage magician Coe Norton; the pilot never became a series.

Which English-born future Oscar winner voiced Mandrake the Magician's princess sweetheart on 1940s radio?

Jessica Tandy was a regular on the serial decades before she won Best Actress for Driving Miss Daisy at the age of 80.

Which radio network, the first network home of The Lone Ranger, aired the Mandrake the Magician serial from 1940?

Mutual carried the 15-minute serial until 1942, starting at three days a week and growing to five; 195 episodes were recorded.

Which British actor was cast in 2016 as Mandrake the Magician for a long-planned Hollywood film?

Sacha Baron Cohen followed Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Hayden Christensen, who had each been lined up for the role in earlier versions of the project.

Which DC Comics stage magician, introduced in Action Comics #1, was inspired by Mandrake the Magician?

Zatara arrived in 1938 in the same comic that introduced Superman, and casts his spells by speaking words backwards.

Which comic series from the publisher of The Times of India brought Mandrake to Indian readers?

Indrajal Comics launched in 1964 and added Mandrake three years later; his first appearance came in issue 46.

Mandrake's creator and its artist of three decades were both born in which Midwestern city, where they met in 1933?

St. Louis was where the writer, then working in advertising, asked the artist for a dozen sample panels before pitching the strip in New York.

In the earliest Mandrake strips, the hero's strongman companion wore a leopard skin and which hat?

A fez, short pants and a leopard skin were dropped in 1965, when a new artist gave him modern clothes and correct English.

Mandrake appeared in animated form in a 1972 ABC special headlined by which fellow comic-strip star?

Popeye headlined The Man Who Hated Laughter, an hour-long special that squeezed characters from almost every strip its syndicate owned into one story.

In which country does a popular saying, translated as 'I'm no Mandrake', mean 'I can't do the impossible'?

Italy is not alone in giving the magician a proverb: Colombians say that only Mandrake would know when a question seems unanswerable.

In the 1980s cartoon that teamed Mandrake with Flash Gordon, which orphan does Mandrake adopt as his apprentice?

Kshin was a street orphan Mandrake found after a gang of boys used him as a distraction in a failed pickpocketing attempt.