Mandrake the Magician

Mandrake the Magician is a syndicated newspaper comic strip, created by Lee Falk (before he created The Phantom).Mandrake began publication on June 11, 1934. Phil Davis soon took over as the strip's illustrator, while Falk continued to script. The strip is distributed by King Features Syndicate.

Mandrake, along with the Phantom Magician in Mel Graff's The Adventures of Patsy, are regarded by comics historians as the first superheroes of comics. Comics historian Don Markstein writes, "Some people say Mandrake the Magician, who started in 1934, was comics' first superhero."

Davis worked on the strip until his death in 1964, when Falk recruited current artist Fred Fredericks. With Falk's death in 1999, Fredericks became both writer and artist. The Sunday Mandrake strip ended December 29, 2002. The daily strip ended mid-story on July 6, 2013 when Fred Fredericks retired, and a reprint of D220 "Pursuit of the Cobra" from 1995 began on July 8, 2013.

Characters and story

Mandrake is a magician whose work is based on an unusually fast hypnotic technique. As noted in captions, when Mandrake "gestures hypnotically", his subjects see illusions, and Mandrake has used this technique against a variety of villains including gangsters, mad scientists, extraterrestrials, and characters from other dimensions. At various times in the comic strip, Mandrake has also demonstrated other powers, including turning invisible, shapeshifting, levitation, and teleportation. His hat, cloak and wand, passed down from his father Theron, possess great magical properties which in time Mandrake learns how to use.Although Mandrake publicly works as a stage magician, he spends much of his time fighting criminals and combatting supernatural entities. Mandrake lives in Xanadu, a high-tech mansion atop a mountain in New York State. Xanadu's features include closed circuit TV; a sectional road which divides in half; and vertical iron gates.

Magician

Magician or The Magician may refer to:

Performers of magic

In entertainment

Books

Films

The Magician (Tarot card)

The Magician, The Magus, or The Juggler (I) is the first trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination. In divination it is considered by some to succeed The Fool card, often numbered 0 (zero).

Iconography

In French Le Bateleur, "the mountebank" or the "sleight of hand artist", is a practitioner of stage magic. The Italian tradition calls him Il Bagatto or Il Bagatello. The Mantegna Tarocchi image that would seem to correspond with the Magician is labeled Artixano, the Artisan; he is the second lowest in the series, outranking only the Beggar. Visually the 18th-century woodcuts reflect earlier iconic representations, and can be compared to the free artistic renditions in the 15th-century hand-painted tarots made for the Visconti and Sforza families. In the painted cards attributed to Bonifacio Bembo, the Magician appears to be playing with cups and balls.

In esoteric decks, occultists, starting with Oswald Wirth, turned Le Bateleur from a mountebank into a magus. The curves of the magician's hat brim in the Marseilles image are similar to the esoteric deck's mathematical sign of infinity. Similarly, other symbols were added. The essentials are that the magician has set up a temporary table outdoors, to display items that represent the suits of the Minor Arcana: Cups, Coins, Swords (as knives). The fourth, the baton (Clubs) he holds in his hand. The baton later stands for a literal magician's "wand".

The Magician (2015 film)

The Magician (Hangul: 조선마술사; RR: Joseonmasoolsa; lit. "Joseon Magician") is a 2015 South Korean period fantasy film directed by Kim Dae-seung. The film was release in December 2015.

Plot

Hwan-Hee (Yoo Seung-Ho) is the most sought after magician in the Moorangroo, a popular red-light district area in Uiji of the Joseon Dynasty. Hwan-Hee suffers personally from his abusive childhood. As a child, he was physically abused by Gwi-Mol (Kwak Do-Won), a magician from the Qing Dynasty. Hwan-Hee and his friend Bo-Eum (Jo Yoon-Hee) eventually ran away from Gwi-Mol. To this day, they worry about Gwi-Mol.

Meanwhile, Cheong-Myung (Go Ara) is a Princess of the Joseon Dynasty. She travels to the Qing Dynasty to marry the Prince of the Qing Dynasty. She doesn't want to get married, but she had no choice due to her family. On the way to Qing, she stops with her group in Uiji of the Joseon Dynasty. There, she meets Hwan-Hee near a cliff on the mountainside. Hwan-Hee is unaware that Cheong-Myung is a princess, but he falls in love with her. Cheong-Myung also falls for Hwan-Hee's free-spirited ways. The violent magician Gwi-Mol is set to return to Joseon in search of Hwan-Hee and Bo-Eum and a conspiracy is set to take place within the Princess' inner circle.