Tag: Legacy of Mandrake the Magician

Smash Pages Q&A: Tea Fougner

The editorial director of comics at King Features talks about their website Comics Kingdom, legacy comic strips, finding new creators and more.

Tea Fougner is a writer, editor, cosplayer and currently the editorial director of comics at King Features. In this job she oversees a wide variety of strips ranging from Beetle Bailey to Zippy the Pinhead, Prince Valiant to Macanudo, Mark Trail to Rhymes with Orange.

Fougner loves comics and comics history, and in recent years has been introducing new artists, new voices and new ways to pay tribute to characters and strips like Flash Forward, which celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Flash Gordon movie.

Fougner and I attended college together many years ago, and we spoke recently about Comics Kingdom, newspapers and getting at the heart of legacy comic strips.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Erica Schultz

The writer and instructor discusses the new ‘Legacy of Mandrake the Magician,’ her work at The Kubert School and more.

Mandrake the Magician was one of the great classic adventure strips. Created by Lee Falk, who also created The Phantom, the strip ran from 1934 until 2013 and told of a stage magician and hypnotist who also traveled the world fighting criminals and occasionally supernatural forces.

The comic strip ended in 2013, but now has a new life in comic books in the new series Legacy of Mandrake the Magician. The new series from Red 5 Comics and StoneBot Comics launches next week; it’s about a young teenager named Mandy who’s trying to figure out her own talents and her own relationship to the original Mandrake.

The writer behind the comic is Erica Schultz, who readers might know from her work on comics like Forgotten Home, M3, Xena and Charmed. She’s also an instructor at The Kubert School and was kind enough to answer a few questions about what’s essential about the character, what elements needed updating and why Mandy has a secret identity.

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