Mandrake the Magician the Complete King Years: Volume One (MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN COMP KING YEARS HC) Hardcover – March 1, 2016

I purchased this collection from published by Hermes even though I had some of the original comics which I had bound together.My reason being, this Volume will far outlive my Lot, and these stories are to be cherished and preserved as it's doubtful we will ever have the benefit of the work of such greats , as Lee Falk and Phil Davis, ever again.Kudos to Hermes Press for taking up the challenge and delivering an end result worthy of the contribution of the these trail blazers.

I used to read Mandrake comics in the eighties and nineties. This was a good trip down the memory lane for me. Recommend.

I gave this book as a gift to a fellow classic comic enthusiast, it was very well received.

Just like old days. Real stories to enjoy!

Very ggod!

The stories are good but the colors bleed through. Not as good a job as the Phantom books by Hermes Press.

Wow it seems like I have been waiting forever for this and several other Mandrake books to be published. This is the first one out of the gate and interesting enough this was my introduction to Mandrake. In 1966 I was a comic book obsessed eight year old boy who found a three pack poly bag of King Comics at my drug store for 25¢. Tucked in the middle between Flash Gordon and The Phantom comic was a Mandrake comic one of the very ones reprinted here. I have loved this trio now for 50 years now. While the other two have had numerous collections poor Mandrake never got his share of attention.I am hoping this is the start of a trend that ends that draught. Collected here are the first half of King Comics Mandrake run. The first five issues plus the short stories from Flash Gordon #1, #2 and #3 that featured Mandrake. The book is a handsome sewn binding Hard Cover with crisp color reproduction on slick glossy paper. It has a matching dust jacket and an informative illustrated introduction by Eileen Sabrina Herman. In the back we get an eight page interview with Mandrake illustrator Fred Fredericks done shortly before his death.I know many of you are very concerned about the quality of the Color Restoration so let me describe it to the best of my ability. It has not been recolored like the Marvel Masterworks nor is it just "Color Xerox" like the PSArtbooks. Instead it had been scanned into a computer and then digitally corrected to fix imperfections of the source material. So you still see the original dot matrixs that they used to create more then four colors. But in those cases where the printed colors got off center and bled over panels that has been corrected. Also in those cases where the originals have faded those colors have been punched back up so it looks like a brand new copy. In my opinion it looks excellent and some of the best work yet by Hermes Press.Mandrake actually was Lee Falk's first creation prior to The Phantom and created in 1934. While comic strip reprints did appear in comic books prior to this, this was the first time new material was created for exclusively for a Mandrake Comic. Mandrake appeared in two full stories each comic book ranging from 9 to 15 pages each. Mandrake #1 had two small back and white vignettes on the front and back covers by Fred Fredericks who had just two years earlier started his 35 year reign on the Mandrake Newspaper Strip. The two first issues featured retellings of four Lee Falk Newspaper Mandrake stories from 1957 and 1960. These were condensed and rewritten and redrawn.Dick Wood (no relation to Wally Wood) adapted these four stories and then wrote the rest of the stories included here. Wood was a journeyman writer who started during the Golden Age. His stories are entertaining , but pail when compared to Lee Falk's Comic Strip stories.Mandrake #1 is the most interesting because it features art by two Silver Age Marvel names. Don Heck co-creator of Iron-Man and Werner Roth who did a run on the early X-Men. The cover is also by Don Heck and highlights the Werner Roth story , not the story Heck illustrated.Andre LeBlanc who inked Heck and Roth in #1 takes over full art duties for issues #2 , #3 and #4. He is an interesting artist, he was born in Hati but moved to the states and worked in comics for several decades starting in the 1940's. He assisted many great artists including Will Eisner on The Spirit. Some time later he moved to Brazil and won awards on their version of Classics Illustrated.The fifth issue is by Ray Bailey who did Dell's Steve Canyon comics. I enjoyed his work here which looked very Milton Caniff like.Next we get the three four page stories from Flash Gordon #1, #2 and #3. The first two stories are once again the work of Don Heck. The third story's artist could not be indentified. That story is actually printed twice. Once normally and then in Black and White shot from the original pages as a bonus.As we are speaking about back up stories I should mention the other characters who had short stories in these original issues are not included here. Since I don't own all the originals I don't know if they all had back ups or not. I know Mandrake #1 had a Phantom story and #5 featured Brick Bradford.In closing this book comes highly recommended. I can't wait for volume two and the those Comic Strip Collections.