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The hard way -

to read the first strip of the story Mandrake’s Gangster Gallery from 29 jan 1979 in English.

This could be easy, if one had the newspaper from this day - in English language – somewhere in the house. But… the oldest newspaper I have is only 3 days old, in Norwegian language.. and it does not have any Mandrake strips insides. So what to do… Hmmm.

Perhaps one could find the strip through internet ?
Google’ing it – negative.
Search NewspaperARCHIVE.com – negative.

Looking at the great Xanadu site I found that Mandrake’s Gangster Gallery was printed only in a few comic books.

Sweden	Fantomen # 1988_23, 1989_06 and 1989_22	Parts only
Norway	Fantomet # 1990_23	Parts only
France	Journal de Mickey # 1824	Parts only
India	Indrajal Comics # 375	Edited version
India	Diamond Comics - # unknown	Edited version
Spain	Mandrake, Merlin el Mago # 17	First part – end 2. June
Serbia	Super # 7	“Original”
Portugal	Mundo de Aventuras # 377 and 399	“Original”

Looking through my Mandrake collection I found that I had them all, except the two issues from Portugal and the one from Diamond Comics.

I had a look for the pictures from 29. Jan 1979 from the various comic books.
Hmmm. Hmmm.

The Indrajal Comics have English text, but the first picture from the strip I want to read is missing.

The strip from the Serbian issue was original with KFS copyright and Falk-Fredericks date so I’m going to use that one for my reconstruction of the strip:

I opened the Serbian strip in PSP, took away the text, the ksanadu sign and cleaned the pictures a bit.

Then opened the Indian strip, made a copy of the Xanadu sign, took away the yellow color, resized it and glued it into the old Serbian strip:

Then - time for the English text.

First I did try to use an online translator from Serbian to English. I wrote:

Serbian: Ako dođete u posetu Mandrakovum zamku, Ksanadu… Kao ovi ljudi… Uputno je da se oglasite sirenom…

And the translator output this:

Whether dodete from visit Mandrakovum cobweb , Xanthippe. For ovi folks. Opportunetly had yes yourself advertiser mermaid.

Hmmm ???
I found my Spanish comic book and made a copy of the pictures from the strip.

Text in the first picture of the strip-->

Something like this:
If you visit Mandrake at Xanadu, honk the horn… two times…

Text in the second picture -->

Comparing the text from the Indrajal with the one from Serbia and Spain – it looks like the text in the bobbles are ok

Text in the third picture -->

Comparing the text from the Indrajal with the one from Serbia and Spain – it looks like the text are ok. But…

In the Indrajal Lothar said: “Enter… Please”.
Serbian: Uđite… Sledite oznake…
Spanish: Entren, por favor, y ebedezcan.

So I guess the text should be: “Enter… Please. And obey…”

Using the text tool in PSP I wrote in the text and added it into the old Serbian strip, using an arial font. Not perfect, but… :

After 1 hour - almost the original strip from 29 jan 1977 – in English:

And only 305 strips left to read the complete story in English :-)