Thanks for providing the story, Guran!
The tale does seem to jump paces a bit.
Indeed, it would have been interesting to see what Falk's take on the '8' gang would have been, and how it would have tied up with the secret mission. However, it was held in place by Fred Fredericks quite well.
However, the way the story begins, with two panels without any captions, and the very minimal: A return?, very noir and gritty!
My vote for this story is Good, but that's just me!

Going thru the sunday story list at http://www.deepwoods.org/mandrake_sunday.html, I noticed that S41 is titled The Raft People.
Is this in anyway connected to Narda's flashback in The Secret Mission?

First of all, it was a great read! Not just for the story but also for the artwork. I think Narda was looking hot -- could give Sy's Diana some competition in the looks department!

As for the story itself, I gave it a good but I must make it clear that the rating is for the 8 reference and also for the part about the raft people! Both these parts of the story had me on the edge, wanting to read on and on as quickly as possible to know what'll happen next. I was delighted when I saw a raft man look on at Mandrake's yatch in the present (instead of the flashback) in the panel of 8 May 99 (d990508.gif), strongly suggesting that they'd be involved in the story ahead... didn't happen!

The actual focus of the story, ie, the secret mission itself, was a real big disappointment.

Anyway, the next story in the daily lineup is "Siege at Xanadu". Does this have anything to do with the 8 or their copycats? I doubt it as Bryan would have spoken of it otherwise, I think. But it would have been logical to continue with the 8 case upon Mandrake's return from the cruise.

Nope. Siege at Xanadu featured the partnership of Derek (Mandrake's identical twin brother) and Luciphor aka The Cobra (Mandrake's half brother). It's a pretty good story actually!

This was a fun read, although it was as I expected a bit "unfocused" (for reasons we all know). Just as csrins I really got hooked by the first strip, very cool. Overall, Frederick's art was good despite the ever shrinking format of the dailies. His use of black areas, shadows and great dramatic angles and layouts keep Mandrake dailies way ahead of Phantom dailies regarding artistic quality, IMO.

But as expected, this was not the "definitive" 8 story. I would love to see Fred return to 8 in a future story, hopefully with a little "nod" to this story (if only by mentioning it briefly in the dialogue in one scene) just to make it part of the continuity

Yes,that old sunday adventure was recapped in this daily.That was a pretty good story imho.One will find in Pioneer's sunday volumes.


That would be definetly great but logically,is this possible?? First of all,all 8 'arms' were destroyed and moreover,after showing Cobra as Octon the half of the excitement was gone!
Personally I would love to see some lesser exposed Mandrake's enemies like Cooler(the contract killer) ,Baron Chance or that midget couple from "The Case of the Headless Man(D193)".Both Cooler & that midgets did manage escapes,so there's definetly a scope for new plots.