In Turkey, the adventures of Zagor were reprinted in weekly installments by the Tay Yayınları publishing house and had caught up with the regular monthly series in Italy. During that period, the Italian editions were available at newsstands with Zenith Gigante issue N. 173, titled “Addio, fratello rosso!”. The Turkish publisher, aware that they would need to halt the publication of their series while waiting for new prints from Italy, chose not to begin the new episode titled “Sulla pista di Union Town” (also known as “Zagor against Supermike”). Instead, they decided to create a completely unauthorized and apocryphal adventure titled “Esrarengiz Ada” (The Mysterious Island). This was included in the issues published between September 29 and October 13, 1975, under numbers 279, 280, and 281 of the series, which today is remembered in Turkey as “Zagor Tay Yayınları Fasikül Serisi (465’lik)”, meaning “Zagor Tay Files Series (Issue 465).”
The theme of this story draws clear inspiration from the Zagor episode featuring the “King of the Eagles,” Ben Stevens, by Guido Nolitta and Gallieno Ferri.
The setting of the Turkish story is in Florida, specifically between Fort Pierce and Lake Okeechobee. The eponymous “mysterious island” is actually an island in this lake. Ideally, within the Zagorian narrative, this adventure could be positioned right after the episodes involving the Seminoles "Una avventura in Florida", following Zagor and his sidekick Chico as they venture north from the Indian chief Manetola towards Darkwood.
It’s important to note that the dynamics with the Florida-based soldiers, including those at Fort Pierce, portrayed in the Turkish adventure contrast sharply with those depicted in the episodes written by Guido Nolitta and illustrated by Franco Donatelli, where the interactions are far from harmonious.
The narrative on the island introduces an elderly Indian named Yellow Flower who lives with several gigantic eagles that she has trained. Having survived a massacre of her tribe during her youth—a brutal act perpetrated by rival Indians allied with white settlers—she stumbles upon a chest filled with diamonds. Yellow Flower then devises a plan to lure people to the island using the diamonds, only to have them killed by her trained eagles, avenging her tribe’s slaughter.
The parallels with Ben Stevens, the “King of the Eagles,” are unmistakable. He, too, is the sole survivor of a massacre by the Munsee and finds sanctuary in a notorious place, the Great Fire Mountain. Similarly, he trains eagles to aid in his vengeance against the Munsee, controlling them to exact retribution for his past suffering. However, while Stevens’ eagles are normally sized, with only one, Ayala, being slightly larger (though not large enough to carry a human), Yellow Flower’s eagles are depicted as gigantic, capable of ferrying passengers, including the notably heavy Chico, from the mainland to the island.
