Lee Falk

Lee Falk (April 28, 1911 - March 13, 1999) was an American writer, best known as the creator of the popular comic strip superheroes Mandrake the Magician and The Phantom. He was also a playwright and theatrical producer, and contributed to a series of novels based on The Phantom.

When he began his comics writing career, his official biography claimed that he was an experienced world traveller who had studied with Eastern mystics, etc. etc. In fact, he had simply made it up in order to seem more like the right kind of person to be writing about globe-trotting heroes like Mandrake and the Phantom; the trip to New York to pitch Mandrake the Magician to King Features Syndicate was at the time the farthest he'd been from home. In later life, however, he became an experienced world traveller for real - at least partly, he said, to avoid the embarrassment of having his bluff inadvertantly called by genuine travellers wanting to swap anecdotes.