Broadcast on the Italian streaming service RaiPlay, we find an episode of Wonderland which features a comic strip segment showcasing both the Phantom and Mandrake the Magician.

RaiPlay is an Italian subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by RAI. The service primarily distributes films and television series produced by RAI.

The Wonderland episode released on the 9th of July 2024 contains a variety of segments featuring documentary style entertainment news. One of the segments features comic strips, with a heavy focus on Lee Falk and his two creations, the Phantom and Mandrake the Magician.

The segment showcases the Phantom and Mandrake the Magician comic strips from SuperGulp! episodes, footage from Lucca comic convections, footage and images of Lee Falk (including an interview held at the Lucca comic convention in Italy in 1984) and other comic book characters which saw popularity in Italy.

The Wonderland episode runs for almost 27 minutes, with the segment containing the Phantom starting around 9 minutes into the episode. The comic strip feature runs for 9 minutes, with footage seen in both color and black and white in Italian language.

The episode is described by RaiPlay as:

“Wonderland” delves into a true legend of international comics in the season finale, Lee Falk, creator of two immortal icons of the 20th century: Mandrake and The Masked Man, in the special space of the column curated by Luca Raffaelli, “Rebels, Dreamers and… Cartoonists”. “Mandrake” was born on June 11, 1934 and brought with him the charm of the illusionists who filled the theaters in the 30s, but with that elegant tailcoat, cape and top hat he recalled the look of the European magicians of the late 1800s.

From the darker atmospheres of the first strips, after a few months we moved on to a more adventurous cut and his skills with magic and transformation make “Mandrake” a true forerunner of the superheroes who will soon invade the world of drawn strips. The true progenitor of all masked heroes in tights is “The Masked Man”, originally known as “The Phantom”, who made his first appearance on February 17, 1936 in the New York American Journal, while in Italy we would have had to wait seven months to see this first strip in “L’avventuroso”, together with his “colleague” “Mandrake”. Defender of the weak and champion of justice, The Masked Man lives in a cave on the island of Eden, in the imaginary nation of Bengalia, and is surrounded by the faithful Bandar, a people of pygmies who guard the secret of his immortality.

Both “Mandrake” and “The Masked Man” have inspired novels, films, television series and animated products, as well as an important line of merchandising that still today feeds the collections of millions of fans around the world. To begin, “Wonderland” dedicates this week’s Pop cover to “The Last Revenge”, the new action/crime film directed by Robert Lorenz and starring Liam Neeson, which will hit theaters on July 17.

The Wonderland episode featuring the comic strip section running for approximately 9 minutes can be watched below.

A user registration is required to watch the full Wonderland episode on the RaiPlay website, which is free of charge. The full episode can be found HERE

---