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Adaptation of original strips for reprint editions

Reading Mandrake Sundays ...

In the years 1972 and 1973 the Italian Fratelli Spada (and the French Editions des Remparts) did, in their série cronologia (série chronologique), reprint Mandrake's first 499 sunday pages. Some years later in 1980 this pages was collected into a 4 album serie.

When reading the pages from The Flame Pearls Pt.7: Land of the Giants (ms-410629-411102) I found something strange :

27 july - US-print	03 aug - SW print	10 aug - US print	17 aug - US print	24 aug - US print	31 aug - US print

TD 339	TD 340	TD 341	TD 342	TD 343	TD 344
	Sorry, but this one I don't have in my collection. I guess it is the six first pictures, leaving the last picture to be printed on TD 341. Note the eyes of the girl !

From the 3 aug (TD 340) the original pages have 4 rows of pictures, but the Italian reprint still only have 3 rows, and soon the "reprint" become a bit out of order.

07 sept - US print	14 sept - US print	21 sept - US print	28 sept - US print	05 oct - US print	12 oct - US print

TD 345	TD 346	TD 347	TD 348	TD 349	TD 350

The reprint version then increase their rows from 3 to 4 rows, edit some pictures and take away some and they soon catch up with the original.

Note that the first pictures in the panels from 31 aug, 7 sep. and 21 sept. is taken away.

Why did the italian publisher edit the original this way?

I guess it is because the reprint pages was copies taken from an old european magazine printed late in 1941. It was war time and getting the popular Mandrake strip from US was not easy. In many countries the 1941 govorments had banned all comic strips from US (in Italy from late fall 1938) and only few countries could import and print the Mandrake strips. It may be that some pages (panels?) was missing (lost - damaged?) and the publisher in 1941 (or 1971?)tried to "repair" the pages. In the collection and reconstruction for the série cronologia this was the most original print the editor could find in europe, and used it for their cronologia version.