science

Mr. Mystic

Mr. Mystic is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mr. Mystic rather than just read about it. In short: Mr. Mystic is a comics series featuring a magician crime-fighter, created by Will Eisner and initially drawn by Bob Powell.

Key takeaways

Mr. Mystic belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mr. Mystic to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mr. Mystic from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mr. Mystic is a comics series featuring a magician crime-fighter, created by Will Eisner and initially drawn by Bob Powell. The strip featured in four-page backup feature a Sunday-newspaper comic-book insert, known colloquially as "The Spirit Section". It first appeared in 1940, distributed by the Register and Tribune Syndicate. Mr. Mystic, whose alter ego was an American diplomat named Ken, gained his superpowers in Tibet, where he was chosen by the mysterious Council of Seven Lamas to fight against evil. The council gives him a tattoo of an arcane symbol on his forehead, and he dresses in stage magician clothing: a business suit, with a cape and turban. Among his abilities were the power to transform into animals and to grow to giant or minute sizes. After receiving these gifts, he returns to the United States to fight crime.

Publication history Along with the series Lady Luck, the Mr. Mystic strip followed the seven-page lead feature The Spirit in a 16-page, tabloid-sized, newsprint comic book sold as part of eventually 20 Sunday newspapers with a combined circulation of as many as five million copies. "The Spirit Section" premiered on June 2, 1940 and continued through 1952. In 1941, Mr. Mystic had a sharp-tongued fiancee, FBI agent Penny Douglas. Later on, he took on a comedy sidekick named Chowderhead. Fred Guardineer filled in for Powell on the strip for three weeks in October 1943, but Powell resumed the strip and continued until its end on May 14, 1944. Unlike the newspaper series The Spirit or Lady Luck, Mr. Mystic was not later reprinted in standard comic books by publisher Quality Comics, and considered the least successful, it was the first of the three series to end. During the 1970s and 80s, several Mr. Mystic stories were reprinted in the black-and-white magazine The Spirit, during the Kitchen Sink Press portion of the magazine's run. In 1990, Eclipse Comics published a one-shot comic book reprinting the first five Mr. Mystic stories. Mr. Mystic also appears as a regular character in Will Eisner's John Law: Dead Man Walking (2004, IDW), a collection of stories that features new adventures by writer/artist Gary Chaloner. The book features other Eisner creations including Lady Luck, John Law and Nubbin, the Shoe Shine Boy.

Quotes After The Spirit, perhaps the best drawn feature in the section was Powell's Mr. Mystic. Eisner created Mr. Mystic by retooling his Yarko the Great, which had been syndicated overseas. After running through Eisner's scripts, Powell wrote and drew the feature until he was drafted a couple of years later. A very good artist, Powell was a journeyman writer who tried but never managed to sell Eisner on some Spirit scripts, a situation that rankled Powell for some time.

References

External links "Will Eisner's The Spirit" Original page Will Eisner's John Law Website (featuring Mr. Mystic)

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mr. Mystic

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mr. Mystic claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mr. Mystic before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mr. Mystic ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mr. Mystic

In research: Mr. Mystic appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mr. Mystic in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mr. Mystic is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1940 comics debuts, 1944 comics endings, Comics about magic (supernatural), so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mr. Mystic outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mr. Mystic in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mr. Mystic means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mr. Mystic out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mr. Mystic in simple terms?

Mr. Mystic is a comics series featuring a magician crime-fighter, created by Will Eisner and initially drawn by Bob Powell.

Why does Mr. Mystic matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mr. Mystic?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mr. Mystic.