Mandrake the Magician: Fred Fredericks Sundays Vol. 1: The Meeting of Mandrake and Lothar

This is the fourth Mandrake the Magician book from Titan and the fourth volume 1. How is that possible? We’ve had two books of Sunday comics and two books of dailies and these pairs are from two different time periods 30 years apart. This latest book is the same dimensions as the dailies rather than the oversized 1930’s Sunday comics so they fit well on a shelf. What isn’t so cool is that Titan chose to remove the color and go with black and white. I found pictures online of these strips in color so it’s clear that they were not originally in black and white.Titan started with Mandrake’s beginning in the mid 1930’s and then jumped forward to the 1960’s when Fred Fredricks took over as the artist. One of the two introductions talks glowingly about Fredricks but I found his art amazingly unremarkable. It’s clear that Fredricks was your classic artist workhorse and for a comic producer that’s awesome because you’d like high volume and reliable output but from an artistic standpoint there is a sacrifice to be made and Fredricks art looks like it was dashed out. It seems like just about every artist finds some fans but as far as I’m concerned the art here is the definition of generic.Why Titan chose to jump forward is a mystery to me since the books own introduction admits that Mandrake had passed his peak by this point. When Mandrake was first introduced in the 1930’s he was a mysterious figure with incredible powers. Here in the 1960’s Mandrake seems far less mysterious and rarely uses his powers and when he does it’s generally *meh*. As if this weren’t enough, Fredricks always draws Mandrake with heavy eyelids and bags making him look less like a man of action and more like a man in need of a long nap. It reeks of a series running on empty and this was where Titan chose to jump to.I really like the concept of Mandrake but this period is not capturing me at all. Mandrake now works for, or with, an organization called Inter-Intel and acts more like an agent with a few hypnotic tricks. Intel-Inter claims to not even be able to do arrests since they are merely for intelligence gathering *snore*. Falk took a very interesting character and made him boring. Mandrake is fighting against the most banal, pedestrian villains. This is the mid 1960’s. It’s not like supervillains were an unknown concept. What I can’t understand is Titan’s illogical decisions. Were the 1930’s comics not selling as hoped so they jumped to an entirely different era? Did they think that fans of classic comics wouldn’t notice that they stripped out the colors of the Sunday comics? That’s a pretty big deal. There is currently no further Mandrake books slated in the future which may not mean anything but it doesn’t bode well. My hope is that Titan quits the shenanigans, go back to the 1930’s and do what pretty much every other publisher would do and that’s publish the series consecutively. I hate to come down hard on what Titan is doing because I’d hate to think that I might, in some small way, hurt the series but I couldn’t do any more damage than what Titan itself is doing.

I liked this book because I'm a great fan of Lee Falk's work- the Phantom above all but also Mandrake- but I was still disappointed. The main reason is the lack of color followed by the landscape format, inconsistent with prior Sunday Vol. 1 (Phil Davis' art). Fred Frederick's art is not bad, but in black and white it appears competent but not exciting. The stories were mostly good, but not great. I like the science fictionish elements of a few stories, which replaced the fantasy elements of the 1930's but overall they are not on a par with stories in the Dailies collection (both Phil Davis and Fred Fredericks). Also too much James Bond plots and action. If cost was a factor why didn't they produce another volume of dailies, with stories already advertised for Volume 2 of Phil Davis' Mandrake Dailies to actually describe Volume 1 of Frederick's Dailies.

I received in amazons protected box, in good condition, thanks. Its the original BW version. ButAWW(Australian Women's Weekly)’s colored version is also a masterpiece. It should be considered as another colored series.

Excellent produkt. Hope for more books later. Mandrake is one of my favourites.Knut

A quality product from Titan barring the lack of color. Good sturdy binding and cover.Was exposed to Indrajal comics in the mid to late seventies, wherein most of the Fred fedricks work was published. Hence am a bit partial to his work as compared to Phil Davis whose art I found a tad stiff.Fedricks art was a bit more fluid and slick. It is also interesting to see the appearance of both Narda and Lothar change over the years in this book.The stories are decent considering the period when they were written. However the last 2 stories "All or nothing hunt" and "Galactic Rumble" are plain "silly".Hope Titan publishes the next volume in color.

A very good book with awesome stories , very nice work of Falk & Frederics only disappointment is sundays were coloured and this book is in black and white .

DELUDENTE IL B/N PER LE TAVOLE DOMENICALI. NON AGGIUNGE NULLA A QUANTO PUBBLICATO PRECEDENTEMENTEGABRIELE MARCHESI

Reminiscence of a genius who enthralled my childhood.Thank you Amazon.