Look deep into the picture above, concentrate especially on the woman with a top hat. Her name is Mandracca, and here's another pic of her:
These pictures are the cover art of Playcolt 1/1975 and 10/1975, remember them, because they are A TOTAL SCAM: behind those beautiful covers there are absolutely no signs of Mandracca! Fortunately for you, I'm now going to list the Playcolts she does appear in, and tell you all about her.
1. Playcolt 6/1974: Mandracca La Gran Vacca (Mandracca The Motherfucca)
The best translation for Mandracca would probably be "Woman-Drake", because she is clearly an evil female version of Mandrake The Magician. Here she makes her first appearance, which isn't very impressive, as she is portrayed merely as a thieving hypnotist. The most impressive part is when she tries to kill Playcolt using a blood-sucking vacuum cleaner:
2. Playcolt 11/1974: A Disneyland Ride La Morte (Death Laughs In Disneyland)
This story reveals Mandracca's lesbian rapist nature. She also sics Disney characters at Playcolt, like this:
3. Playcolt 14/1974: Il Compleanno Di Strasex (The Birthday of Strasex)
Mandracca makes only a brief appearance, attending the birthday party of Playcolt's nemesis Doctor Strasex. His giant birthday cake has fifty candles, all held by naked women, now that's impressive:
4. Playcolt 17/1974: L'isola Di Bengodi (The Island of Plenty)
5. Playcolt 18/1974: C'e' Casino In Mezzo Al Mar (A Casino In The Middle Of The Sea)
In this two-part story Frank Sinatra gets ass-raped while riding a dolphin, I guess things didn't always go his way. Mandracca on the other hand is now using voodoo instead of hypnotic powers, and has accumulated a plethora of female servants, including the lewd Esmeralda of India, who from now on stays always by her side:
6. Playcolt 20/1974: La Vendetta Di Mandracca (The Revenge of Mandracca)
At this point Mandracca is starting to get really pissed off at Playcolt, and for a good reason, because I've neglected to mention that he has raped her every time they've met. The whole story is about Mandracca capturing Playcolt and humiliating him with all kinds of nasty methods. Her hypnotic powers seem to be totally forgotten, but somehow she now commands giant eagles and lives in a rather peculiar castle. She even has her own shrine of tits, with holy walls that allow her servants to put their best parts forward:
7. Playcolt 2/1975: Per Amare Un Buco (The Assman Cometh)
Mandracca is now in Africa, and likes to enslave beautiful girls to work in her gold mines. Naturally Playcolt messes things up. Mandracca seems to have lost all her mystical powers, but the story is still pure gold, it has clearly been written by some truly magnificent douchebag.
And that was it, Mandracca never appeared again to my knowledge (I'm still missing four issues of Playcolt, though). While Playcolt had some other interesting arch-enemies, most of the stories were just boring crap, without our lady in the top hat I would've never collected this series. I tried to be not too heavy on spoilers while writing this, so that you'll have plenty to discover, should you wish to enter the world of this wonderful she-devil. Next week I'll tell you about Madame Brutal, so stay groovy, folks, stay groovy.
12 comments:
I would not have guessed that Playcolt was so kinky/bizzare from the covers. Mandracca certainly seems like a pretty fun villainess though! Thanks for the post!
Polaris,
just about every fumetti published by Edifumetto/Ediperiodici had these kinds of scenes at some point, that's why I read them. When they try to be more serious, they usually fail miserably.
For many years, I had assumed Japan was the only country to work a significantly large number of delightfully absurd themes into their adult comics. I'm happy to have ultimately learned that this is not the case. :)
Shame on you!
How can you tease Frank Sinatra being raped and not the panels?
Seriously now (uh, right), nice article on Mandracca. I was anxious to read this since you promised to write about her.
Miguel,
the Sinatra rape wasn't much to look at, as the artist was totally unable to draw a good likeness of Frank. But as a concept it was naturally pure gold :-)
I always wondered that French movie star Alain Delon has never filled a court action against the publishers of Playcolt for using his face as the face of the fumetti hero! Maybe he was honored that they used his face for the action/porn hero! Who knows? LOL
The fact that Alain Delon never played an action porn hero was a waste of his charisma and looks. At least by inspiring a comic book that did he sort of redeemed himself :-)
Mirko,
This fumetti never used Alain Delon's name, only his general features, so technically it could be counted as a parody, and parodies are not illegal. Frank Sinatra and Walt Disney could've pressed charges, though.
Miguel,
well said, my friend, well said :-)
in italian "maldracca" is a word very similar for "baldracca".
Now, baldracca is one of the (many) words meaning "whore". Baldracca is one of the heaviest. In italian a lighter word for whore is "vacca" (cow). And one of the title of the cover is "Maldracca la gran vacca" .
Of course, the resemblance to Mandrake makes this name a very happy choice.
Lucrezio,
yeah, she is actually often referred to as "Mandracca la Baldracca". Which is somewhat odd, because she is certainly NOT the kind of woman who'd sell her body to anyone, but hey, at least it rhymes.
Also, the word "Casino" (without the last accent) means "whorehouse" OR just (when used without sex meanings) "a big confusion".
So: "c'e' casino in mezzo al mar" would translate into: "there is a fucked chaos in the middle of sea"...
By the way: the episode "la vendetta di Maldrakka" seems to be illustrated by Leone Frollo! Yup! :)
Seven,
yeah, but in the story there was an actual casino in the middle of the sea, with Mandracca's minions running the games. This was a hard pun to translate, and I decided not to use the literal translation, because I thought it would sound stupid. I did the same with "Per amare un buco", translating it as "To love a hole" would've been just weird.
And I really don't think Frollo ever had anything to do with Playcolt, the art is just too crude.
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