Mandrake the Magician is a syndicated  newspaper comic strip, created by Lee Falk  before he created The Phantom.[1][2] Mandrake  began publication on June 11, 1934. Phil Davis soon took over as the strip's illustrator, while Falk continued to script. The strip was distributed by King Features Syndicate.[3] 

Mandrake, along with the Phantom Magician in Mel Graff's The Adventures of Patsy, is regarded as the first superhero of comics by comics historians such as Don Markstein, who writes, "Some people say Mandrake the Magician, who started in 1934, was comics' first superhero."[1][4][5][6]
Davis worked on the strip until his death in 1964, when Falk recruited artist Fred Fredericks.[3] With Falk's death in 1999, Fredericks became both writer and artist. The Sunday-newspaper Mandrake strip ended December 29, 2002. The daily newspaper strip ended mid-story on July 6, 2013, when Fred Fredericks retired, and a reprint of Pursuit of the Cobra (D220) from 1995 began July 8, 2013.