A few months ago I had the privilege
of talking with Elizabeth Falk, the widow of Lee Falk, creator of the
Phantom and Mandrake the Magician, at the Boston Comic
Con. There were a lot of great people to see there (I'm still
bummed I didn't get a chance to talk to Peter Bagge--Hate was
my Indy comics gateway drug--but them's the breaks) but the only one
I really talked to was Mrs. Falk.
I was aware she was his widow but my
friend was not. He asked if she was his daughter, which made me want
to hide my face but it's a fair enough question. She was about twenty
years younger than he was when they married. She still looks great,
by the way.
In its day, Mandrake the Magician was
as well known as Spider-Man or Garfield. It depends on how you look
at things but Mandrake could be considered the first "superhero" in comics. His superpower was making people believe anything he
wanted them to, simply by making a gesture. The strip began in 1934,
four years before Superman. Not only that but the Phantom, who is
without superpowers and relies on his strength and wits, was created
in 1934, five years before Batman. It's hard to say who came first
and maybe it really doesn't matter (hey there hipsters) but it's
interesting none-the-less. Falk continued writing the Phantom from
1934 until his death in 1999. That's dedication. That's love for what
you do right there.
I admit I'm not all that well read in
Mandrake or the Phantom but I've recently been trying to correct
that. While the Phantom, if not widely read, is still remembered,
it's too bad Mandrake's been largely forgotten because it's really
good stuff.
There are better examples, sure, but "pussy-visaged" is hard to beat. |
A friend and I were lucky enough to see
some of the original art pages for Mandrake and the Phantom comic
strips, pieces from Mrs. Falk's own collection. Unfortunately I don't
have any photos of the art, but like all art it's better seen in
person.
While Mandrake was modeled after Leon
Mandrake (among others, too), a real life magician, the look of Mandrake was modeled on
Falk himself, who sketched the early strips before asking Phil Davis
to draw the strip, which he did until his death in 1964. She even told us that Mandrake's smoking jacket was
modeled after the same jacket Falk would walk around the house in.
Okay, so maybe that's only interesting to me, but still.
Falk wrote the scripts while the art
was by Davis, whose art really stood out. You could see
individual ink strokes and the texture of a striped overcoat that
gets lost when printed on newsprint. The word balloons were still
there, some cut out and pasted on, others written directly in the
panels.
I couldn't find scans of the art I saw but I mean just look at panels 5 and 6. Uh, please. |
One panel had a great looking dinosaur,
which had to have taken hours and hours to fully render despite the
fact that the majority of the detail would be lost due to the
limitations of the printing process back then.
Then on the next page Mandrake boarded
a rocket ship blasting off to who knows where.
Dinosaurs and rocket ships? Why haven't
I read Mandrake before this?
Who can forget Brass Monkey, that funky Monkey? |
Despite his famous comic creations, Falk preferred theater. On the stage, he directed Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando, among others.
That's not to mention all the trips he took all over the world.
I get the feeling a biography on Lee
Falk would be one fascinating read. Someone needs to get working on
one right now.
They were selling the art, too. And we
got a really good price on a set of 3 pages: $7,000. My friend
seriously contemplated buying them. I kind of wished he did.
By the way, Mrs. Falk herself is an
accomplished stage director and writer and helped write some of the
later Phantom strips. She was the first woman ever to direct a stage play
at Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London. How cool is that?
Yeah, she's pretty awesome.
Man, sometimes I hate Comic Cons, but
sometimes I love 'em, too.
Mandrake, the Phantom, and Flash Gordon in the 80's! |
Side note: One of my professors in
college is the Phantom expert Robert Griffin who was a consultant on
the Billy Zane Phantom movie. Um, well, at least he got to
meet Kristy Swanson and Catherine Zeta-Jones, so that's something.
*All material related to Mandrake the
Magician, the Phantom, and the Defenders of the Earth copyright King Features Syndicate.