[Andrew999]

Just read today that Vasan Bala's new Phantom movie has reached the casting stage and is expected to begin filming in the summer.

The Phantom has always had a huge following in India so it will be interesting to see what Bala can bring to the concept.

[Andrew999]

Karthik Aaryan has signed up for the lead role:

https://www.filmfare.com/news/bollywood/kartik-aaryan-signs-his-first-superhero-film-titled-phantom-45387.html

The signs are looking hopeful - Bollywood movies are much more professional now than they were in the days of those dreadful (though strangely compelling) Superman and Spiderman rip-offs.

[The Australian Panther]

If this film is well-made it could be a breakout film for Bollywood.

I would expect an action film with no subtlety. Humour but no subtlety.    And a Phantom film with a chorus of pygmies singing and dancing? That's probably what we'll get.

I don't think KING features will put as much care into looking after the franchise as either Marvel or DC.

We can only hope for the best. Bollywood can do it, but will they?

That actor, by the way, would make a better Mandrake than a Kit Walker.   

[profh0011]

Even though Mandrake and The Phantom exist in the same universe (and know each other), I'm of the firm belief that MAGIC has NO place in any Phantom story.

Which was one of the FEW things that bugged me about the Billy Zane PHANTOM movie.

[The Australian Panther]

No argument there. In any case, except for some of the very early stories, when Lee Falk couldn't seem to make up his mind about Mandrake, Mandrake's power was hypnotism and autosuggestion, never magic.
Falk tho, introduced the Phantom to Aliens, fairly early in the saga, and then we have the 'little people' stories which verge onto Fantasy.

The best Mandrake stores were the ones in the 50's with Phil Davis. They were the high-point of Falk's work on Mandrake. After Davis passed, and the strip went galactic on one set of stories and attempted to ape the Man from Uncle' on another set of stories, it was all downhill from there. Mandrake lost his gravitas.

And now we have this.
SDCC ?20: ?Mandrake the Magician: Mandrake?s Legacy? Reinvents Lee Falk?s Creation

http://www.multiversitycomics.com/news/mandrake-magician-legacy/

It  may well be an interesting concept in itself, but Mandrake, it is not.

As I have said before, King Features have no real respect for the properties they own. 

Cheers!

[crashryan]

Maybe it's an "interesting concept," as the Panther says, but this take on Mandrake epitomizes what drives me crazy about reboots. You take an existing character,  dump all the original's backstory, characteristics, and universe, then create a totally different character which you give the same name. What's the point? Mandrake the Magician is basically unknown outside a small number of mostly senior-aged ex-readers who remember him from their youth. What's the point of keeping the name alive?

A young adult audience would certainly enjoy the adventures of a young, spell-casting girl and her hip pal more than they would those of a middle-aged hypnotist who wears a pencil mustache. They'd feel just the same about her if the original Mandrake the Magician had never existed. Working the original into the girl's backstory would be little more than a sop to the historians. You could just as easily name the new girl Btfsplk the Magician. It wouldn't make any difference.

I'm apparently in the minority in thinking the challenge (and fun) in doing old characters comes from being as true as possible to their characteristics, time period, and feel, yet still making a story that's interesting to contemporary readers. Unless a character has name recognition (e.g. The Phantom and to a lesser extent Flash Gordon), there's no point in using that name for a totally different character. Or so it seems to me.

[The Australian Panther]

What's the point of keeping the name alive? 

Probably that is the point. To keep control of the brand. For the same reason, Marvel and DC will find a character they haven't used for a long time and include them for two pages in an event or give them a small min-series and then forget about them again.
I agree with everything you say, Crash.

Cheers!     

[profh0011]

I remember watching a pair of low-budget TV movies in the late 70s, both of which gave me the impression the writers got their source materials confused.

"DR. STRANGE" had an English "ancient one", and his arch-enenmy was Morgan Le Fay.  Now... this CAN'T be a coincidence... but less than a year earlier, Marv Wolfman & Carmine Infantino's early run of "SPIDER-WOMAN" featured an old English guy who was an ancient magician, and Morgan Le Fay.  Sounds like somebody in Hollywood was looking at the wrong comics, doesn't it?



And then there was "MANDRAKE".  Just to be "different" (or something), Mandrake wore an open-to-the waist shirt that made him look like he stepped out of a late-70s DISCO... and his sidekick, Lothar, wore a TUXEDO. Gee, it was almost like they'd swapped characters.

But the other thing that confused me was... they briefly touched on Mandrake's origin, which involved a plane crash in the Himalayas, and his being raised by a group of Monks on a secret city hidden high in the mountains.  Oh, and he had an amulet and used REAL magic.  It seemed to me somebody's borrowed a few elements from DR. STRANGE comics.  Or "LOST HORIZON".  Or both.

But then, some years later, I read a reprint of Mandrake's origin from sometime in the early 50s (I think).  And the one in that movie was EXACTLY what was in the comics!  This was akin to my learning, years after-the-fact, that the Lynda Carter WONDER WOMAN origin story was ALMOST IDENTICAL to the one from 1941.  When I saw that on TV first-run, I had NO IDEA that TV-movie had been so authentic in some respects.


Growin up, I always figured Mandrake used some form of mass hypnosis.  But, HOW the hell did this work?  That didn't make sense. It was cool though.  Only decades later, did I find out, all the time, Mandrake used REAL supernatural magic... which he manifested in the form of "hypnotism".  So he was passing it off as some kind of stage trickery... fooling people so they wouldn't have a clue he was using REAL magic.  That's like a double layer of trickery.



Recently I saw 2 other versions of "MANDRAKE" on Youtube.  The first was a 12-chapter movie serial from the late 30s.  The same actor who played him also played THE GREEN HORNET and THE SPIDER, but while he was GREAT in both of those, he looked all wrong as Mandrake.  Apart from NOT being thin as a rail, he was clean-shaven.  Also, his sidekick was called "Luh-THAR" (emphasis on the 2nd syllable).  How could they get THAT wrong?  And, Mandrake's girlfriend was some generic blonde... NOT Princess Narda.  Oh yeah... and Mandrake in the serial NEVER once used hypnotism.  WTF!?

Then I saw the UNSOLD TV pilot from the 1954.  WHOA!!!  This one got all the right details RIGHT.  It's a damn shame it didn't go to series.  Woody Strode played Lothar, Lisa Howard was Princess Narda.



I can believe King Features doesn't care about their properties.  I remember the Sci Fi Channel "FLASH GORDON" series.  What a wrong-headed abortion that was!

[paw broon]

You're right about the Mandrake serial and movie.  Apart from not being Mandrake, they are not very good.
I still read old Mandrake stories and love the corny, "Mandrake gestures hypnotically".  I also love the silly alien/giant termite/invisible robber stuff. Part of it is nostalgia.
You've put me in the mood to watch the first Spider serial again.  Ta.

[Andrew999]

I'm optimistic but it's early days - filming hasn't even started yet.

The best Bollywood movies are outstanding - if you haven't seen the Dhoom movies, for example, you are definitely missing out.

It's true tradition dictates they have at least four songs in the movie but they are clever at doing this in modern movies (a nightclub scene, a dream scene, someone watching a show on TV - that kind of thing).

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I agree - the Flash Gordon Sci-Fi channel series was amongst the worst I have ever seen

[The Australian Panther]

his sidekick was called "Luh-THAR" (emphasis on the 2nd syllable). 

Puts me in mind of the early Superman movies when Otis would grovel to 'Mr Lu-THOR.' 

Cheers!

[crashryan]

You're right, of course, Panther. I wasn't thinking like an IP lawyer. "We have this property, Mandrake...what's that, natural healing or something?" "It's a magician." "Whatever. Trademark expiring soon. This Mandrake guy hasn't made us more than a few tens of thousands for years, but we can't risk letting him slip. Someone else could come along and hit it big with him. Put out something with Mandrake. Netflix one-shot maybe. Or a book. Books are cheap. Get somebody to do a Mandrake book."

[Andrew999]

I'm embarrassed to say I've never seen the Mandrake serial so I shall be catching up tonight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNt-ixSbTxw

[profh0011]

The MANDRAKE serial is "fun" if taken entirely on its own merits.  It just has nearly-nothing to do with the comics-strip.  The tacky 70s TV-movie was more authentic (heehee).

Around the same time, possibly the same people did a PHANTOM serial, which WAS far more authentic.  The odd thing about that was... the elder PHANTOM is murdered in Chapter 1, and his SON takes over as the NEW Phantom for the rest of the serial.  So it's like the "pilot" story of the "current" guy.  I'm not sure what inspired them to do it that way, but it didn't really detract from anything.

Though not listed as such at the IMDB, I learned that Coe Norton, who played MANDRAKE in the unsoild 1954 TV pilot, was a stage magician in real life!  That would be almost like hiring Harry Blackstone Jr. to star in a TV show as a stage magician (I saw him in person twice, and MY GOD, did he have an incredible stage presence).

Warren Hull played MANDRAKE in 1939.  I like him, just, not as Mandrake. 

One of the things that I got a kick out of watching "THE SPIDER'S WEB" (1938) was that both The Spider and his civilian alter ego Richard Wentworth were EQUALLY dynamic. There's a sequence in the 1st chapter where the criminals decide to bump off Wentworth, and without batting an eye, he gets into a gunfight with them at the airport, and takes out 3 killers with 3 SHOTS.  I thought, "Holy cow! Just like DIRTY HARRY!"

Both "THE SPIDER'S WEB" and "MANDRAKE", I believe, have "mystery" villains not revealed until the finale of the last chapter.  If I'm not mistaken, in "THE SPIDER'S WEB", you never even once see the villain's face-- just find out who he was after he's already killed.  It's just a personal preference for me, but I always prefer when you KNOW who the villain is right from the start.  That's one of the reasons I liked both "BATMAN" (1943) and "CAPTAIN AMERICA" (1944) so much.  J. Carrol Naish & Lionel Atwill really got to have fun chewing the scenery in those.  By comparison, in "BATMAN AND ROBIN" (1949), by the end, I stopped caring who the hell "The Wizard" really was, especially as they had so many suspects, and then did a double-fake-out at the end.

I just watched one that could be nick-named "The Generic Crime Serial":  "GOVERNMENT AGENTS VS. THE PHANTOM LEGION".  Half the cliffhangers were reused from earlier Republic serials (including "CAPTAIN AMERICA"), the hero looks like Dick Tracy's long-lost inept brother, and among the 4 obvious suspects, I never even figured out which one was the actual leader of the gang when his identity was revealed!

[profh0011]

Puts me in mind of the early Superman movies when Otis would grovel to 'Mr Lu-THOR.' 

"SUPERMAN" (1978) is another classic example of "mixed source materials".

I realized this when I read, of all things-- SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPER-VILLAINS #7:  "Luthor's League Of Super-Villains" (May-Jun'77).   This one comic features both Lex Luthor and Funky Flashman.  At the end of the story, non-stop smart-ass Funky YANKS OFF his toupee-- exactly as Gene Hackman did in the movie a year later.  When I saw that, I realized HOW they'd gotten the villains confused!  (Screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz said in an interview he felt the Salkind Brothers had NO IDEA what the hell they were doing when it came to making movies.)

So in effect... Gene Hackman wasn't really playing "Lex Luthor"-- he was playing "Funky Flashman".

Which means...Gene Hackman was playing STAN LEE in that movie.

[paw broon]

"GOVERNMENT AGENTS VS. THE PHANTOM LEGION".
Oh yes, I have that one and you're right.  Although I find it daft enough to enjoy.  There are a couple of others in the same vein.  I haven't watched them recently, but some of you might want to have a look.
G-Men Never Forget with Clayton Moore.
Federal Operator 99
Federal Agents versus Underworld, Inc. with Kirk Alyn

But The Spider's Web serial is great.  No messing about.
As for Mandrake, I had to re-read the first 2 Mandrake dailies and his powers in these tales do look like magic, not hypnotism.

[crashryan]

I plan to watch Federal Agents later. I sampled the first-chapter and it began with a frantic succession of trucks crashing and blowing up. How could I resist watching the rest after that opener?

[The Australian Panther]

"SUPERMAN" (1978) is another classic example of "mixed source materials".

I think they just read a lot of comics and take what they think will work.
The 1984 Super-girl movie (which is much better than its reputation would lead you to expect)  used a sequence which was obviously directly swiped from a four-issue 1982 Phantom Zone miniseries by of all people, Steve Gerber and Gene Colan. And it worked well in the film, in my opinion.
And of course being by Gerber and Colan, that mini-series is well-worth seeking out. 

Apparently in the Batman Movies, if you know what to look for, there are bits of business and dialogue in homage to Batman '66.       

[profh0011]

When Frank Miller rebooted BATMAN in 1986, he turned Alfred into a sarcastic SONOFAB****.  So when I heard, 3 years later, that they'd cast Michael Gough as Alfred, I thought, perfect casting.  Most of his roles had been playing really nasty, sarcastic, bordeline psychotics.  But instead... he was written & acted like an older and mellower Alan Napier.

My personal favorite bit in the 1989 BATMAN movie was the art museum bit... clearly a tribute to my favorite TV Joker story, "Pop Goes The Joker", where he breaks into the art museum, and begins vandalizing paintings.  The camera TILTS just like whenever the villains appear on the TV show.  And the sequence ends when we finally see "THE CAR".  With FLAMES shooting out the back.  No other Batmobile had flames in the back before, except the 1966 TV Batmobile.  Later, when The Joker cuts in on TV broadcasts, it seemed a call back to "The Joker's Wild", when Cesar Romero played "What's My Crime?"

Some fans have lamented that Adam West didn't have a cameo as Thomas Wayne.  Myself, I kinda wish Cesar Romero had played Gus Grissom.  After all, Romero had played a LOT of gangsters in his career... including in the 3 "Dexter Reilly" films from Disney.



Horrifylingly... "BATMAN RETURNS" pays tribute to 2 TV stories I rank AT THE BOTTOM of the barrel-- "Hizzoner The Penguin" and "Nora Clavicle and the Ladies Crime Club", with an army of exploding penguins filling in for an army of exploding mice.

[narfstar]

I don't care for magic characters at all. So Mandrake they hypnotist always worked for me. Having both Mandrake and the Phantom exist in a "real" world also works best for me. Like Tarzan and Batman, the Phantom is just the height of actual human

[Andrew999]

DC are to reprint all their Phantom stories - could this be the prelude to a revival of the character - maybe even a new TV series to expunge the memory of the last travesty?

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/hermes-press-to-publish-complete-dc-comics-the-phantom/

[The Australian Panther]

Trust me, the Phantom doesn't need a revival!
The daily strip is still going strong, and concentrating a lot on the next generation.   Young Kit, now in training in a monastery in Tibet [ and incommunicado] and his sister H?loise, now a University student, originally in New York.  What's been happening to her you won't believe. No spoilers from me, except to say she is a chip off the old block. Tony DePaul is the writer and Mike Manley draws the dailys, and Jeff Weigel draws the Sundays. Both great.
Meanwhile in Australia the Phantom has been regularly published every fortnight since 1948 by FREW comics.
https://www.phantomcomic.com.au/
And they are currently going through a very creative period.
The next one, due out next week is the 2021 Annual -Its always Huge - this time a 244 page special collection of Sy Barry stories. 
The DC and Marvel phantoms are about the only US phantoms not collected. The Gold Key, king and Charlton Phantoms can all be found in collections if you look hard enough. There are also the Moonstone phantom comics.   
Then there is Egmond in the Nordic Countires.
http://www.phantomwiki.org/Egmont

Egmont continues to produce more original Phantom material than any other publisher in the world. 

Then there is India.
http://deepwoods.org/india.html

So, no, no revival necessary!

Cheers!
And then there is India.

[Andrew999]

Frustrating for those of us in the UK because none of this stuff is ever released here - though of course in the modern world, it's possible to get hold of things if you really want to.

Ideally, what I would like is a Phantom magazine I can subscribe to and which plops on my doormat - a gift from the Gods - once a month (or even once a week!)

[paw broon]

Andrew, that would be great.
Many of the Nordic Egmont stories are and have been reprinted in Frew comics.
Over a few months, I bought piles of Frews, incl. specials, from 30th Century Comics in Putney.  Many translated Egmont tales in them.  The Indrajal run, although in colour, doesn't have very good reproduction, but well worth having.  Bear in mind Indrajal also publish Mandrake, Rip Kirby and Secret Agent X9.  Available  in English and local language(s)?
The Phantom stuff that really upset me was the horrible Dynamite material. Well left alone imo.
As some of you might know, A Lady (girl) Phantom has appeared now and then and Moonstone did a lovely cover for one of her stories:-
https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=19708389

[profh0011]

Mike Manley & Jeff Weigel-- WHOA!!!!  I'm familiar with both these guys, and feel certain the strip is in fine hands (better than anything DC ever did with THE PHANTOM).

I mainly know Jeff Weigel from THE SPHINX, a character he created as part of Gary Carlson's BIG BANG COMICS.  His art reminds me a lot of Curt Swan's.  You could hardly get more "classic" in style than that!

I think Mike Manley worked on some of the later JON SABLE FREELANCE issues (but my memory's a bit more fuzzy on that one).


As an aside, Gary Carlson's in the hospital right now having surgery.  A lot of his fans online are wishing him a safe & speedy recovery.