The boys names were Tim Tyler and 'Spud'.

Mandrake, known as a man who could find justice and someone whose interests in challenges spanned wide, was approached with a request to find the two orphaned runaways. As always, he put the case forward to his friend, former performer and compatriot Prince 'Lothar'.

The trail led them through India and Africa, as the boys last whereabouts put them working for the Ivory Patrol - a small, poorly funded group who task themselves with the destruction of the poaching industry.

As the case delved deeper, and Mandrake used his many and varied means to attempt to find the boys, it looked like they had been taken, as the poachers' paths found themselves delving deeper into jungle, towards the almost untouched and unknown grounds of the Bandar - a little known pygmy tribe scarecly touched by the ever-probing hands of modern civilization.

A tribe with their own interesting lore, myths, legends, and sayings.

The echoes of drums became ever more prevalent as the men reached deeper into the jungle. For the Phantom has a thousand eyes and ears^#.

Finding the boys later, unharmed but with a strange story to tell, the natives who had lent them aid and their murmurings of a purple ghost who protected them unseen from the depths of the jungle.

The tale sounded absurd, but with the boys returned completely unharmed, beyond all reason for the dangers of the jungle it left little doubt in Mandrake's mind that indeed some kind of trick was at hand. And nothing piqued his curiosity like a trick he could not yet understand.

With that, his interest in the strange happenings in the Deep Woods of Bangalla began.

But answers were slow in trickling out.

More came his way back home, when Mandrake and Lothar thwarted an attack on the U.N., and the pair met the Bangalla representative to the U.N. and had the barest glimpse at the mysterious visage of her husband from the shadows. Who thanked the pair for their help.

It wasn't until much later that a trip to Bangalla for the pair saw Mandrake and Lothar come face-to-face with the man who would be legend. The myth which somehow had spanned back to the 1500s, yet still stood before them.

The trick's methodology did not get past Mandrake. But true to the magician's code, he never told a soul.

A new friendship borne, amongst allies with shared values, and what would be a very useful resource on the ground in making sense of Lothar's familial past and responsibilities, as his father told a tale which unravelled his own ancestry and revealed him to be 'Prince of the seven Nations'.

This was not the strangest thing to happen that year, however.

A small aircraft crashed in a clearing in the Bangalla jungle; the survivors, a brilliant scientist of questionable stability and notoriety, a collegiate cartographer with a vast knowledge in geology and biology who had been interviewed by many private companies looking into space exploration, and Alex 'Flash' Gordon - collegiate All-American student-athlete, majoring in sociology.

The trio found themselves surviving the depths of the dark jungle, with few questioning how there happened to be a convenient clearing in what otherwise looked like untamed forestry. The scientist, Zarkov, found himself satisfied with the pair's ability to keep themselves safe from the trials and perils of the jungle. Strangely, he seemed to act as if his approval and satisfaction was something they should seek under the circumstances, but 'Flash' was too distracted by another question which plagued him.

It all seemed too easy. The worst of dangers seemed to be cleared. And he could have sworn he saw movement in the shadows.

Under the pretense of foraging, Flash separated himself from the others and waded deeper into the jungle alone. Until a voice held him. A voice which could chill the bones of lesser men. A masked figure clad in purple stepped from the shadows.

Both men had questions.

And as the Phantom explained his purpose as a protector in these parts, and Flash explained how the trio came to be in the jungles of Bangalla, Flash began to discover his own concerns and queries about the scientist amongst them, Zarkov, as he spoke them aloud. Thoughts he hadn't previously given proper mind.

The Phantom agreed that he would lead them from the jungle to Mawitaan, and watch over the trio, paying special attention to Zarkov from a distance.

...but it was in two days that a secret rocketship blasted from the jungle, tearing through the sky and beyond.

Zarkov had brought the pair here to test their abiity to survive and lend support for a theory he had. A theory which would see him build a rocketship with the intention of going to the planet Mongo - for the fate of the Earth!

Upon Mongo, Flash Gordon, Dr Zarkov and Dale Arden came face to face with Emperor Ming the Merciless, a cosmic authoritarian figure of immense power, resources and with vassel worlds all across the galaxy! In this world power and desire reined supreme, and ran the whims of its highest class of royalty.

Upon meeting Dale Arden, Ming was instantly enamoured with taking possession of her, and saw little value in Flash Gordon, sentencing him to death on a whim like discarding rotten fruit - only for his cause to be pleaded for, by Ming's daughter the Princess Aura; who herself wanted to claim Flash Gordon for her own.

These earthlings seemed rich in spirit, and hope, having come from a world ignorant to the ways of Ming the Merciless. Playthings are always more valuable before they are broken... Few things seem more exotic than a plaything from a new world.

The trio discover that, in support of Zarkov's theories, Ming has been setting off a string of increasingly volatile and frequent natural disasters; earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes - in order to annihilate much of the world's population, and making it easier to subjugate it's survivining people into Mongo's new slave class, and stripping the earth of all of its valuable minerals, metals and rare earths.

Ming has come to claim this new world entire.

It is now twelve months later, and with the efforts of the Phantom and Mandrake, combined with the sacrifice of the intrepid three on Mongo, and the efforts of a 'home' contingent of Earth-bound S.W.O.R.D scientists by the names of Donald Brashear and Adam Strange, the threat has now been considered 'neutralised'.

An assault on Mongo headed by Flash's trusted compatriots Mandrake and the Phantom, saw Ming's forces pushed back as they were forced to defend themselves from a revolutionary front led by Flash Gordon and allies he found in strange places upon Mongo itself.

One final sacrifice from Flash, Dale and Dr Zarkov saw Mongo reloacted by newly discovered 'Zeta beam' technology to another goldilocks system, far from earth, adrift from Ming's allies and vassel planets in a corner of the universe unknown to him.

Mandrake and the Phantom broke free of Mongo in time. Flash, Dale and Zarkov could not.

The later trio find themselves hurtling through space, searching desperately for a way back to Earth, pursued endlessly by the vengeful Ming the Merciless.

Why do you want to play this character, what is the driving motivation behind both this desire and the character themselves. What do you hope to accomplish and where do you want the character's story/stories to go?

For Pulpy Space Opera..? Flash Gordon.

For Pulpy Mystery..? Mandrake.

For Historical-Fiction Pulp Action..? The Phantom

For all other face-punching Pulpy fun... there's Lothar.

Possible Plots: