Bob Powell, the artist of Mr. Mystic, is one of the pioneers of comic book art. Like Jack Burnley, Lou Fine and Will Eisner, he relied on an articulate style of art that used both surreal perspective and realistic forms to create his memorable tales. This grasp of the surreal and the realistic allowed his artwork to really stand out in a time when many comic artists were rather staid and applied a cookie-cutter approach to their artwork. Mr. Mystic was one of Powell's few real attempts in the super-hero genre, being perhaps better known for his ability to illustrate animals, which was put to good use in his days on Sheena, for which he is probably best remembered today. He also worked for Harvey Comics, Hillman, Gleason Enterprises, Street and Smith, and Marvel Comics (where he worked on Daredevil, Blonde Phantom, Kid Colt, The Human Torch, The Young Allies and many other series), and also worked for The Topps Company, producing non-sports trading cards.

Mr. Mystic was actually created by the legendary Will Eisner, though in in a slightly different form (as Yarko the Great) for a British comic book weekly in 1939. The character began running under Powell's pseudonym (W. Morgan Thomas) in The Spirit Section for June 2, 1940 (which also featured The Spirit and Lady Luck). It appears Eisner did script the first and probably the first few adventures, before turning over all of the creative reins to Bob Powell. During Powell's war service, Fred Guardineer "ghosted" the art on the series. Powell started his own art studio after the war, and never returned to Mr. Mystic, which Eisner dropped from The Spirit Section.

Mr. Mystic can be looked at today as a combination of several early costumed mystery men. The Green Lama from the pulps and radio, Fawcett's Ibis the Invincible, and Dr. Occult from DC Comics can all be seen intertwined in Mr. Mystic, along with just a hint of Johnny Thunder. His origin is rather hackneyed and old-fashioned when viewed today.

Right out of Lost Horizon, a young American attaché named Ken forces Prof. Padewski to take his place on the last US plane out of the European country that is under seize (in fact, Ken knocks the Professor out and throws him on board the plane, sacrificing his own seat to make sure the genius makes it). After the plane leaves, Ken finds that the Professor has dropped his memoirs (which could eventually bring peace) and resolves to stay alive to get them back to him. He manages to find a plane and gets in the air before the invading forces destroy the airfield.

Ken's plane is caught in a storm that blows it far off course, landing in a canyon somewhere in the Himalayas. He is rescued from the wreckage by a group of lamas, who proclaim his their prophet according to their Book of Ages, where it was said that "on the seventh hour after sunset on the day of the seventh month in the seventieth century after our deity's death, our prophet shall come to us from the sky". The lamas' BRANDED Ken on the forehead with a mystic symbol that would allow the mysteries of life to be known to him and was named "ruler of magic, disciple of the Seven Lamas and knight of righteousness".

The pain of the brand woke Ken up and he was told that his "every wish will now come true." His first wish was to be free to "beat their ears off", and his bonds disappeared, but he was prevented from touching the lamas, and they and their pagoda disappeared. Ken then wished for his plane to be repaired and it instantly was, and he was suddenly clothed and a voice from the sky told him "you will be known as Mr. Mystic, endowed with unlimited powers to combat the forces of evil plaguing the earth. Go, and do you work. Mr. Mystic hurried off to complete his first mission, and managed to save the life of Prof. Padewski from a bombing at a chalet in the Swiss Alps. He easily stopped and jailed the would-be assassins, and returned the memoirs, and (supposedly) got the Professor to go to America for his own safety.

Mr. Mystic's origin was fairly representative of most of his other adventures. Like his mystic counterparts in other comic books, such as Ibis the Invincible and The Spectre, he was fairly omnipotent, but a crook could still get the drop on him enough to make an adventure interesting. He did have The Spectre's habit of changing people into other things (birds, balloons, etc.), but unlike Jim Corrigan's ghost, Mr. Mystic eventually changed them back to normal for prosecution by the authorities. It was really the artwork that was the highlight of the Mr. Mystic stories, much in the same way Lou Fine or Jack Burnley fans suffer through the pedantic and fairly unimaginative scripting of the Ray or Starman for the flair and technical perfection of the pictures.

Reprints of Bob Powell's Mr. Mystic are few and far between. Several stories were reprinted in issues of Will Eisner's Spirit Magazine from Kitchen Sink Press (including issue #41, which reprints The Spirit Sectionfrom July 7, 1940 in full-color). Eclipse Comics' Will Eisner Presents #1 featured the first five Mr. Mystic stories (June 2, 1940 to June 30, 1940), so at least the first six weeks of the strip are fairly readily available to the average comic art fan. I believe that at least several other stories were reprinted in Spirit Magazine, but I don't have any details on them at the moment.