What a strange comic hero was
Mandrake the Magician. Created by
Lee Falk, who would go on to create
The Phantom (
slam evil!), Mandrake was written as a magician whose prime skill was the ability to hypnotize people really, really fast. Using this technique he could induce hallucinations, and for some reason he went into crime fighting rather than politics.
Mandrake's adventures, aided as he was by the African "Prince of the ...