Fred Fredericks is a veteran cartoonist, who has drawn 'Mandrake the Magician' for King Features for many years. He was born as Harold Fredericks Jr. in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Fredericks drew the military comic strip 'Salty Ranks', after joining the Marine Corps in 1950. He went to the Cartoonists and Illustrators School now the School of Visual Arts on the GI Bill.
From 1953 to 1960, he drew a number of historical strips and panels for regional papers, such as 'New Jersey's Patriots', 'The Late Late War' and 'Under the Stars and Bars'. Fredericks started his career as a comic book artist in 1960. He worked with Dell and Gold Key on such titles as 'Daniel Boone', 'King Leonardo', 'The Blue Phantom' and 'The Twilight Zone'.
The Street were Evil Dwelt (The Twilight Zone #9, 1964)
He was accepted to succeed Phil Davis on 'Mandrake the Magician' after Davis's death in 1964. Since that time, Fredericks devoted most of his career to drawing both the daily and the Sunday feature. He also took over the writing over the strip when creator Lee Falk died in 1999. He retired from the Sunday page in 2002, and from the daily strip in 2013. He also inked the 'Phantom' Sunday comics between 1995 and 2000.
Besides 'Mandrake', Fredericks returned to comic books in the 1980s and 1990s as an inker for Marvel and DC on such titles as 'The Punisher War Journal', 'Nth Man: the Ultimate Ninja', 'Daredevil', 'G.I. Joe' and John Kricfalusi's 'Ren & Stimpy'. In June 1983 he also continued a comic strip based on W.C. Fields, originally created by Frank Smith and Jim Smart for the L.A. Times Syndicate. The new scripts were written by Fields' grandson Ronald J. Fields. Although this new incarnation was closer in tone to W.C. Fields' original misantropic comedy, the feature only lasted a few more weeks, until August. Fred Fredericks passed away in March 2015.
