The Evil Twin

The Evil Twin

Start date:	February 16th, 1976
End date:	June 19th, 1976
# of strips:	108 (18 weeks)
Writer:	Lee Falk
Artist:	Fred Fredericks
Preceded by:	"The Frame-Up"
Followed by:	"Narda and the Sheik"

"The Evil Twin" is the 163rd Mandrake daily story. The story was written by Lee Falk and drawn by Fred Fredericks.

Plot Summary

A quiet evening at Xanadu Mandrake tell his friends the story of his twin brother:

Their father was a traveling stage magician and their mother died when they were small. It was hard for their father to raise them so he had to entrust his baby girl, Lenore, to a foster home and brought the twins to the College of Magic in Tibet.

Their father left the ten years old boys with Theron, planning to return later - but he was ill and the boys neves saw him again.

During the seven years the twins were at the College they learned the magical skills and became experts. But Derek easily got borded, discovered girls early and often skipped the teaching. One night when Mandrake had his turn with the Crystal Cube Luciphor tried to steal it and almost killed Mandrake. Derek saved Mandrakes life and Luciphor fled the College, but Luciphor's evil left its mark on Derek. After graduation Mandrake and Derek stayed together a short time, but Derek misused his powers on silly tricks and cheating at gambling. They had a terrible fight and split up afterwards.

Derek got into bad company and he started his criminal career, in the beginning he was just showing off. He tried to earn a honest living for a while but soon he began a career in crime.

One day Theron call Mandrake through the Crystal Cube, telling him that Derek misused his powers. Through the Cube Theron lerned Mandrake how to take away Derek's powers, - like water from a sponge.

Mandrake found Derek at his estate at the coast and tried to talk to him. After a terrible fight Mandrake managed to take away Derek's magical powers.

Now five years later, somewhere, Derek keeps trying, hoping to get back his power...

Appearances

Recurring characters

One-time characters

Jill, Derek's girlfriend

Locations

Objects

The Crystal Cube

Behind the scenes

The title for the story is lifted from the plot.
Derek, reading a comic book with Mr. Walker on the cover (strip of March 29, 1976).
The first dialogue in this story, Narda: "You phoned your brother Derek"...., refers to a phone call in the previous story (strips of January 16-17, 1976). Presumably the sequence with the phone call gave Lee Falk the idea and inspiration to write this narrative story of Derek.