Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko, by Blake Bell (Author) Steve Ditko (Artist), 220 pgs, Fantagraphics Books, 2008, $15 ebook

ZATARA THE MAGICIAN, Don Markstein s Toonopedia,
https://www.toonopedia.com/zatara.htm

GREEN LANTERN, Don Markstein s Toonopedia,
https://www.toonopedia.com/lantern1.htm

The Phantom Unmasked: America's First Superhero, by Kevin Patrick, 258 pgs, University Of Iowa Press, 2017, $24

As Patrick says in his scholarly book: “The Phantom truly is, to borrow Joseph Campbell’s phrase, “the hero with a thousand faces” (ch6 p145 ) “Many survey participants also cited his mythic status as “The Ghost Who Walks”  as a key reason for his enduring popularity” (ch7 p153) “But so long as readers worldwide are free to imagine him into existence, he will forever remain “The Ghost Who Walks–Man Who Cannot Die” (ch8 p203). Patrick's main focus is to analyze the appeal of the Phantom in three different nations: Australia, Sweden, and India. He only makes passing notice that Mandrake the Magician was also created by the same person. Yet this book has incited this reviewer going down another, different rabbit hole:

In the 90-year history of superhero comic books one could find an endless number of arbitrary and capricious matchings of different characters to make a pair-up such that one has essentially magical powers and the other is relatively mundane. By far, the most vivid example which probably comes to everyone's mind is a pairing of Superman and Batman, although that is off. A few years before this there was the original pair that contributed to them and a quarter century after them came the next most significant foundational pair. It contained the other most-famous comic book character Spider-Man. So let's look at the most significant Magic-or-mundane (M-mp) pair-ups in superhero history, two pairs incontrovertible while the middle pairs are arguable.

The Origin: Mandrake and the Phantom

The original M-mp was created by the same person. In 1934 Lee Falk wrote and drew the first Mandrake the Magician story in a newspaper strip followed by The Phantom in 1936. Both strips are still continuously published to this day in 2026 by King Features Syndicate.

According to Toonopedia’s post on Zatara, “and superheroes dressed like stage magicians, looking and acting for all the world like Mandrake, became so common they formed a distinct sub-genre.” As Arizona fandom knows, Don Markstein is gone but his website is maintained by one of his nephews and it remains one of the best sources to learn about classic comic books. One should start here to see if an article exists and then could be directed to such as Wikipedia for more information, possibly.

Our next M-mp may not even have a magician. Or does it have two or three?

The Greatest: Superman and Batman

It only took two-plus-one years after the debut of The Phantom for the next M-mp’s to appear in 1938 and 1939 in DC Comics. Superman came from Siegel and Shuster, then a year later Batman came from Kane and Finger. A new magician named Zatara debuted in the same issue that Superman did and in 1935 Siegel and Shuster had created Doctor Occult! We would then have had two different M-mp’s in which Superman was the mundane character: Zatara and Superman or Doctor Occult and Superman.

Yet fans could argue that the latter M-mp puts Superman instead in the magical role. While Superman's powers have a claimed science fictional basis that he comes from a heavier planet, the results are magical. He's impossibly strong, he flies, he's bulletproof, has x-ray and heat vision. In contrast Batman’s gimmick is that he has no superpowers (like The Phantom) although this requires suspension of disbelief at the impossible gymnastics and skills with a boomerang. 

To resolve the issue of whether or not Supes and Bats go together, one has to consider whether Kane and Finger had ever created a magician character besides the eminently mundane Batman. A year later one of them did.  In 1940, Bill Finger as writer co-created the original Green Lantern with artist Martin Nodell (Toonopedia calls it “finishing touches”). Unlike the many Green Lanterns we know of today, this solitary character used a magic ring instead of a science fictional power ring. So while Superman and Batman are famously paired in the title World's Finest they really do have separate M-mp’s from their separate creators.

Despite any other M-mp’s that may have debuted after 1940 the next most important one which was instrumental in creating the Silver Age of comic books did not come for 22 more years.

Next Greatest: Spider-Man and Doctor Strange

Ask anyone (or Google, as I also did) to name a superhero and if they don't first mention Superman or Batman they will probably say Spider-Man. While Marvel Comics' editor Stan Lee co-created Spidey in 1962 once again we have a significant psychic archeology in that Spidey and his magical friend Doctor Strange were initially drawn and created by the same artist: Steve Ditko. Unlike the first two M-mp’s in this case the magical partner again comes a year after the mundane one, not before.

For an excellent survey of Ditko's life and work I recommend the book on him by Blake Bell. It is no longer in print but it is still available as an ebook. And of course it has separate chapters on both Spidey and Doctor Strange.

Why Pairs? Archetypal Urges or Logical Possibilities

There is a difference between archetype as a prototype versus psychological model. Yet we can view these M-mp’s from either perspective, whether they arose merely as the most logical character possibilities to satisfy story needs or whether these stories had such lasting foundational success because they satisfied more basic mental instinctive needs. I suggest that these M-mp’s have had such ultimate success because they are home-run hits in both ways.

Why is a story a success? Because it satisfies an instinctive need. Yet aside from that it can also merely fill a niche in a plot formula. Why does a creator come up with an idea for a story or character? If it feels more satisfying, we may say that it was inspiration and if it is less than that we may call it formulaic hack work.  Of course both urges may be operating at the same time.  The hack skill to notice the hole in the formula may open up the talent for inspiration in that direction. In the cases of Lee Falk, Siegel and Shuster, Bill Finger, and Steve Ditko they obviously were making opposite characters to what they did before. The separate aspects of mental or story need get subsumed into the single concept of “appeal” and no deeper thinking is necessary.  Maybe no more deeper writing on all of this is necessary here either.

By M L Fringe