You know, the black guy they made up, like all those rotating minority characters on the Superfriends.

Lothar has been around since like 1924. In the strip he was Mandrake's bodyguard and valet, who also happened to be an African prince. So... yeah.

Never saw this show, but I love all the old pulp heroes, so stars all around.

That "so... yeah" was not meant to be a Comic Book Guy expression of smugness. Lothar is just a weird, kind of embarrassing character.

Ah, the 20's. You gotta love the kind of racism that says that being African royalty only renders you worthy of being a magical white guy's houseboy.

On the show, Lothar was super-strong, and also a mechanical genius, and also a tactical mastermind, and also a master of the martial arts. But it's not like we're trying to compensate or anything.

Singer, Mandrake was created in 1934.

Xeno, Lothar chose to accompany Mandrake on his travels so that he could both see the wide world (presumably enhancing his perspective and experience against such time as he would be responsible for leading his people), and fight injustice. In the comics, he frequently fought criminals all on his own. He is widely regarded as the first mainstream African American (what a funny term, since he wasn't American) crimefighter, just the same as Mandrake is considered by some to be the first honest-to-goodness superhero. Mandrake viewed him as an equal. Originally he didn't speak much English and wore a leopard skin, but they changed him to make him more hardcore, intelligent, and generally formidable after just a couple of years.

Any which way you slice it, they are viewed as the first interracial crime-fighting team in Western history.

Which I don't buy, because I think the Green Hornet and Kato were around first.

So at least they were the first black/white duo.

I say that's worth something, coming from the 1930's.

Singman, I am being smug.

Smug as you are, you're still WRONG. Re: The Lothar stuff, yeah, he was treated surprisingly well as a character, al things considered. But Mandrake was created in 1924-- he was only sold to King Features Syndicate ten years later, which is often falsely cited as the date of his creation.

Holy fucking shit. You appear to be right. Almost everything on the web says 1934, but on digging deeper, you appear to be right.

I would suicide at once, but I think most of what I say is still a valid response to Xenocide.

The only thing that was a response to you was the year.

I concede about that. I owe you one.

Apparently Stan Lee wrote the lyrics.

I don't recall the animation sequence ever actually featuring ten tigers.

I CALL UPON THE POWER OF BETWEEN SEVEN AND TWELVE TIGERS

Somebody is tired of life (still you)