Wizard's Duel

Over the weekend, while preparing a pie, I threw in a DVD of an old film that I’d seen at a matinee as a kid – Bert I’ Gordon’s The Magic Sword. Gordon was a schlockmeister, turning out low-budget science fiction, horror, and fantasy films in the 1950s and 1960s on budgets even lower than Roger Corman’s (although I’ve come to admire his creativity in wringing good results for minimal cost), but this film was uncharacteristically expensive and ambitious – he hired Basil Rathbone and Estelle Winwood for it, it starred a young Gary Lockwood six years before he played Frank Poole in 2001 and it had Maila Nurmi – the original Vampira – as both a temptress and an ugly hag. It was extravagantly filmed in color, and had numerous effects, including a two-headed fire-breathing dragon (an elaborate puppet). Still pretty impressive overall.

The climax features a Wizard’s Duel between Estelle Winwood’s Sybil the Witch and Basil Rathbone’s Evil Sorceror Lodac. It occurred to me that Wizard’s Duels had featured in three films from about the same time. The Magic Sword, which came out in 1962, was the oldest of them. There was another film featuring such a duel between Vincent Price as Dr. Erasmus Craven and Boris Karloff as Dr. Scarabus in The Raven from early 1963 (the film also has Peter Lorre as another wizard and a young Jack Nicholson as his son. The film was produced and directed by the aforementioned Roger Corman, who obviously spent more than Gordon for his cast and effects). And there was still a third in the Walt Disney film The Sword in the Stone between Merlin and Madame Mim. That film was a free adaptation of T.H. White’s 1938 book of the same title, which left out all mention of Robin Hood/Wood, for instance. When White adapted the book as the first section of his novel The Once and Future King he changed it considerably, removing all mention of Madame Mim. It’s been a while since I read either White novel, but I seem to recall a duel between Mim and Merlin in that book, although it would not have been along the same cartoony and comedic lines as in the Disney film. You could also make a case for a Wizard’s Duel being in the 1962 Jonathan Small/Nathan Juran film Jack the Giant Killer (which shares with the Gordon film the depiction of a castle full of live-action freaks and monsters) between the sorceror Pendragon and the forces of the leprechaun.

Wizard’s Duels have become commonplace in novels and films – just look at the Harry Potter series, and Harry Dresden, and Dr. Strange in the MCU. But it was comparatively rare at the time these films were released , all in the space of a year or so. I don’t know what caused the phenomenon to precipitate at that moment. I certainly don’t recall cases of earlier depictions of wizard’s duels in cinema. Dr. Strange himself didn’t appear until mid-1963, and it’s been argued that his look was inspired by Vincent Price (and the character’s middle name is “Vincent”), and possibly the character himself might have ben inspired by The Raven.

I can’t recall many literary examples before those early 1960s films, either. Robert E, Howard sometimes had magical duels between characters, especially in his Conan stories, the most blatant examples being The Scarlet Citadel and The Hour of the Dragon, although they show up elsewhere, as in The Tower of the Elephant.

Tolkien has lots of magic, but most of his confrontations between magicians happen offstage, so we never get to see his council taking on The Necromancer, or even Gandalf fighting Saruman (you have to watch Peter Jackson’s movie for that). Gandalf in the books is more likely to use his sword, or to blast non-magical enemies with bolts of power. Even to get the Balrog off the Bridge he strikes the bridge, not the Balrog. Gandalf recalls his fight with the Balrog in very vague terms, and it seems to involve more fisticuffs than magic.

Curiously, the TV Tropes page on Wizard’s Duel doesn’t even list all the examples I have here, and for earlier examples only has two stories from “Myth and Religion”

Anybody know of earlier examples in film, pre-1960? Or notable efforts in literature prior to Howard? Otherwise, it looks as if our present infatuation with magic vs magic might be datable back to a handful of movies from the early 1960s.

While not the sort of one-on-one confrontation you’re looking for, there is the bit in Exodus where Moses and Aaron go before the Pharaoh several times to performs a miracle then Pharaoh has his court magicians replicate it, including an amusing bit where Moses turns Aaron’s staff into a snake, the magicians turn all their staffs into snakes and then Aaron’s snake eats all of their snakes. Wizard duel!

That’s one of the two listed in the TV Tropes section on “Myth and Religion” I’d mentioned.

If you think your examples worthy, register with TV Tropes and add them to the page.

I think my favorite is from the Discworld novel Sourcerer:

One of the wizards of Unseen University is facing off against the Sourcerer, and knows full well that he’s outclassed, and that in any lethal confrontation, he’ll be the one lethed. And so, in an uncharacteristic bit of wisdom and restraint for a Discworld wizard, he… summons up an elaborate and beautiful illusion of a tiny tranquil garden.

Whereupon the Sourcerer, of course, makes the real thing in full size, and nobody gets killed.

Some of the Arabian Nights stories had non-wizards competing to see who could find the best magical item, but offhand, I don’t recall any wizard-vs-wizard duels. The closest I can think of is Aladdin, which had a little bit of genie-vs-wizard conflict.

There were a couple of stories in which a female genie falls in love with a human. Her father disapproves, and she has to magically outwit him to get him to approve the marriage. Would that count? I think there were some Russian folktales about wizards’ daughters, in a similar vein.

I am fond of Larry Niven’s “What Good Is a Glass Dagger?” The story opens with a discussion about how much speculation there is about wizards’ duels, and how little firsthand knowledge there is.
“The winner is not giving away any secrets. The loser is dead, at least.”

Although he regularly battled mundane criminals, Mandrake the Magician likely went up against magic-spouting evildoers on occasion and dueled in kind. Ditto for Ibis the Invincible. And all their knock-offs leading up to Dr. Strange.

Forgot about Dr. Fate. He definitely had magical duels with wizards (or wizard equivalents).

But did they have any magical duels pre-1960? Golden Age heroes usually just fought mobsters, or mad scientists, or monsters, not enemies with the same power set.

Per Jess Nevin’s "Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes,

Ibis fights ordinary criminals, an animated and living Sphinx, the Yellow Peril Trug, a spider made man-sized and man-smart by the Ibistick, the super-intelligent maimed madman Half-Man, the Dark Spirit (a forgotten god of wickedness), Ruthven the Warlock, and Satan Himself.

Ruthven the Warlock sounds like a possibility for a wizard duel, but in that story (now in the public domain), “Ruthven the Warlock” just summons a demon, Orpo, who is the real villain of piece; Ibis and Ruthven wind up having a brief sword duel, but no magical duel. And Ibis doesn’t even have a magical duel with the demon, Orpo - he just punches him (“Let’s fight like ordinary people!”).

I don’t own and do not recollect having ever read any Golden Age comics (or reprints) with Ibis, but I did find this:

There are several titles on this lengthy list which MIGHT contain magic duels, e.g., “The Black Sorcerer” (May, 1943), “Karlan, the Last of the Sorcerers” (Winter, 1945), “The Magician of Mars” (May, 1952), “The Magician in the Mirror” (Sept., 1952), etc.

This list of Dr Fate’s enemies contains several sorcerers, at least some of whom date to the 1940s:

Bottom line: IF Ibis or Dr. Fate dueled magic-spoutin’ foes, it most certainly would have been before 1960.

I certainly don’t have a detailed enough knowledge of their Golden Age stories to say that they definitely didn’t have any pre-1960 wizard duels. But I’m a bit confused as to why you would say any wizard duels they had would most certainly have been before 1960.

Dr. Fate is a current DC character. He’s definitely fought wizard duels since 1960. He may have done so pre-1960, but I’m not sure. With one exception, every one of those foes you cite that I could find information on is either not a wizard or is a post-Golden Age character (or at least didn’t encounter Dr. Fate until the post-Golden Age period).

The one exception seems to be Wotan, who is cited as an evil wizard that fought Dr. Fate in his first appearance in 1940.

I found the story (it’s not public domain so I’m not including a link). In the story, Wotan remotely hypnotizes some random citizen to try to kill Dr. Fate’s assistant, Inza, then magically sets the building they’re in on fire. Dr. Fate teleports in, and teleports Random Citizen out, who for no apparent reason has broken free of the hypnosis. The story then forgets about the fire, and Dr. Fate disintegrates a random vase to demonstrate his mighty magical powers to Inza. They then go to confront Wotan, who…releases killer gorillas on them from behind a hidden panel (I want to emphasize here that he doesn’t conjure the gorillas and they’re not magical gorillas - Wotan just releases Random Killer Gorillas from behind a mundane hidden panel like a cut-rate Fu Manchu). Dr. Fate defeats them by magically enhancing Inza’s strength and having her toss them around - well, one of them. The story promptly forgets there were more than one. Wotan then tries to stab Dr. Fate, and Dr. Fate surprises him and throws him off balance with magical energy. So Wotan returns the favor by using magical energy on Inza, and threatens Dr. Fate by proxy. Dr. Fate explicitly says at that point that they’re checkmated, because they can’t affect each other with their magical energies “except by surprise”, but Wotan can…do something to Inza with his magical energy (I think the implication is that Wotan is threatening to disintegrate Inza the same way Dr. Fate earlier disintegrated a Random Vase). So, Dr. Fate punches Wotan, picks him up, and tosses him out a convenient window. And so ends their mighty Wizard Duel.

I suspect that’s about as close as you’re going to find in the Golden Age to a “wizard duel”.

You see, this is the thing – I’ve known about these 1930s and 1940s magicians for a long time, but have never read any of their stories. Mandrake, in 1934, is the one who started it all. Lee Falk (“The Phantom”) created him, and he’s been called “the first superhero”. Zatara came along four years later in the first issue of Actio comics, alongside Superman, and then a flood of others. They fought more mundane nemeses, but to match them you’d need similarly powered enemies. And, according to the various internet sources, they had magical enemies.

But that doesn’t indicate that they had one-on-one direct “wizard’s duels”. You can fight someone indirectly, working against them without direct confrontation, fighting their minions, and the like. the big question is – did they ever directly square off against each other? I don’t know – as I say, I haven’t read any of those early adventures.

The finale of Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards always annoyed me. After setting us up for one big winner-takes-all Wizard’s Duel, he subverted the whole thing – and Avatar’s ostensible moral code – by

having him pull a gun on Blackwolf

Thanks

–Cal

I’ve got a copy of Mandrake’s first appearance, and it kinda goes the way you figure: the evil magician known only as The Cobra has ordinary minions who get foiled on an ocean liner and in country after country by Mandrake, who’s investigating a heist; and then the evil magician sends out The Flying Death, which (a) Mandrake doesn’t know how to foil, but which (b) the high priest of the sun, back in ancient Egypt, did know how to foil, and Mandrake knows how to bring him to the present long enough to say the proper incantation over a cauldron filled with myrrh and sandalwood and grey clay and black crystals; and then, after nearly driving one of Mandrake’s traveling companions mad, The Cobra and his retinue of Faceless Men directly confront our hero, who’d magically opened a gate that “a twenty-ton tractor couldn’t budge”:

The Cobra, in best Bond villain fashion, shows the guy around his HQ — demonstrating how translucent mental images of various world leaders visit his throne room, night after night, to receive hypnotic commands — and offers Mandrake a chance to “rule on twin thrones as world emperors! That is my bargain, Mandrake!”

Mandrake refuses, for the moment, and soon finds his way blocked by magic that now counters his own — “Can’t you open this gate the way you opened the gate at the castle walls?” “No, Sheldon. The Cobra’s spell is too strong” — and, when a lion advances on him, he’s only able to keep it mesmerized for as long as he maintains eye contact, making it hard for our hero to make a graceful getaway. And then The Cobra warns Mandrake not to bother raising that circle of fire again: “I’ve learned how to overcome it.”

Mandrake has figured out something too — he’s been “desperately searching for a single shard of sunlight”, having deduced that the lack of direct sunshine in the castle is the reason The Cobra’s spell has built up so much counter-magical power — and so makes a big show of accepting the villain’s offer, in order to innocuously arrange for a bit of daylight to come streaming in through the ceiling; and, man, that’s it, because instead of now getting a wizard duel among near-equals we pretty much just see little jags of lightning from Mandrake’s fingertips before The Cobra gets taken out in one gesture.

(The other reprints I’ve got involve Mandrake tackling problems where he’s really the only magical element in the story; but that first story misses it pretty close.)

Thanks for that synopsis.

I think I have to retract my statement that the Dr. Fate vs. Wotan “duel” is as close as you’re likely to find in the Golden Age.

The first story you mention, “The Black Sorcerer” (which is in the public domain), actually does feature something of a wizard duel.

In the story, after the Black Sorcerer kidnaps a professor and his fetching daughter, Ibis tracks him down to a cemetery and confronts him. TBS summons a ghost pirate who tries to stab Ibis, but Ibis defeats him with a sock to the jaw.* TBS then summons a flame blade, and Ibis counters with a cold shield which blocks, freezes and traps TBS’s flame blade. Magic vs. Magic! It’s a Wizard Duel! TBS then turns invisible and flees. Ibis tracks TBS down to a ruined castle and confronts him again. TBS summons a horde of rats! Ibis counters with a horde of tomcats! Magic vs. Magic! Wizard Duel! TBS creates a barrier of netherworld flames against which Ibis’ Ibistick is powerless, and flees again. Ibis has a final showdown with TBS over a treasure hoard of gold coins. TBS is greedily gather coins, and Ibis causes them to swarm and cling to TBS “like insects”. TBS begs to be freed and agrees to return to the Netherworld, and disappears in hellish flames (so, apparently, he was a demon? That wanted gold coins for some reason? And had to kidnap a professor to locate them?).

Ok, the climax is kind of meh, but before that, actual Wizard Duel!

*This trope of the Bad Buy trying to stab the Good Guy and the Good Guy dispatching the Bad Buy with a sock to the jaw is a Golden Age staple. As I noted above, it turns up in more than one Golden Age “wizard duel”. I suspected most Golden Age “wizard duels” would be the same, but I was wrong - there were some legit magic vs. magic duels.

I’ve looked at those stories.

“Karlan, the Last of the Sorcerers” features a sorcerer who just wants to brew a &@#* potion, and keeps getting interrupted by Ibis. Karlan sics a demon on Ibis and flees, then sics a cat(!) on Ibis, and while Ibis is distracted, tries to use the Ibistick and is destroyed. No actual dual.

“The Magician of Mars” is actually an ally of Ibis, who dies at the beginning of the story. The villains are “rust men”.

“The Magician in the Mirror” is an evil wizard of sorts, but his sole magical ability is to travel through mirrors. His duel with Ibis, and stop me if you’ve heard this before, is him trying to stab Ibis and Ibis socking him in the jaw (he doesn’t plunge from a height, though - he crashes through a mirror, a shard of which pierces his heart).

“The Black Sorcerer” seems to be pretty exceptional in actually having featured a wizard’s duel.

@CalMeacham, if you go through the oeuvres of the various Golden Age wizard-heroes with a fine-tooth comb, I think you’ll probably be able to find a handful of actual wizard duels, but I also suspect that even many of the fights with evil wizards will amount to a sock to the jaw.

That was my suspicion. There are websites where you can find old comic issues scanned, but I haven’t looked at any of them.

Another early magician that should be noted is Chandu, who actually predated Lee Falk’s Mandrake by a couple of years. He started out as a radio drama in 1931 on KHJ in Los Angeles. Judging from the episode titles listed on his Wikipedia page, it doesn’t look as if Wizard Duels featured prominently, if at all.

I knew Chandu mainly from his movie interpretations – first as a feature, then as a serial, both of them predating Mandrake.

Evidently the radio programs are available free on the internet