The Phantom is an American adventure comic strip created by Lee Falk, also creator of Mandrake the Magician . A popular feature adapted into many forms of media, including television and film, it stars a costumed crimefighter operating from the African jungle. The series began with a daily newspaper strip on February 17 , 1936 , followed by a color Sunday strip on May 28 , 1939; both are still running as of 2009. At the peak of its popularity, the strip was read by over a hundred million people every day.
Lee Falk died in 1999. As of 2009, the comic strip is produced by writer Tony DePaul and artist Paul Ryan. Previous artists on the newspaper strip include Ray Moore, Wilson McCoy, Bill Lignante, Sy Barry, George Olesen, Keith Williams, Fred Fredericks and Graham Nolan.
New Phantom stories are also published in comic books in different parts of the world, among them by Moonstone Books in USA, Egmont in Sweden, Norway and Finland and Frew Publications in Australia.
While the Phantom is not the first fictional costumed crimefighter, he is the first to wear the skintight costume that has become a hallmark of comic book superheroes, and the first to wear a mask with no visible pupils, another superhero standard.
Publication history
Creation
After the success of his Mandrake the Magician strip, the King Features newspaper syndicate asked Lee Falk to develop a new feature. Falk's first attempt was a strip about King Arthur and his knights, which Falk both wrote and drew. When King Features turned him down, Falk developed what would become The Phantom , about a mysterious, costumed crimefighter. He planned out the first few months of the story and drew the first two weeks of a sample strip.
Inspired by Falk's lifelong fascination with such myths and legends as those about El Cid and King Arthur, and such modern fictional characters as Zorro, Tarzan, and The Jungle Book' s Mowgli, Falk originally envisioned the Phantom's alias as rich playboy Jimmy Wells, fighting crime by night as the mysterious Phantom. Never actually having revealed that Wells was the Phantom, partway through his first story, The Singh Brotherhood , Falk moved the Phantom to the jungle. He had tinkered with the idea of calling his hero The Gray Ghost (which later became the name of a Batman character, and was alluded in first episode of Phantom 2040) after thinking there were already too many Phantoms in fiction, such as The Phantom Detective and The Phantom of the Opera. He could not, ultimately, come up with a name he liked better than "The Phantom", and therefore retained it.
In the A&E American cable TV documentary The Phantom: Comic Strip Crusader , Falk revealed that Greek busts inspired the idea of the Phantom's pupils not showing when wearing his mask. The Greek busts had no pupils, which Falk felt gave them an inhuman, awe-inspiring look. In an interview published in Comic Book Marketplace in 2005, Falk also told that the Phantom's skin-tight costume was inspired by the legendary figure of Robin Hood, who often wore tights in film and stage adaptations.
Newspaper strips
The Phantom started as a daily strip on February 17, 1936, with the story "The Singh Brotherhood", written by Falk and drawn first by him, for two weeks, followed by Ray Moore, who was an assistant to artist Phil Davis on Falk's Mandrake the Magician strip. A Sunday Phantom strip was added May 28, 1939.
During World War II, Falk joined the Office of War Information, where he became chief of his radio foreign language division. Moore also served in the war, during which he left the strip to his assistant Wilson McCoy. On Moore's return, he worked on the strip on and off until 1949, when McCoy succeeded him. During McCoy's tenure, the strip appeared in thousands of newspapers worldwide, and The Phantom strip was smuggled by boats into the Nazi-occupied Norway during World War II. The word "Phantom " was also used as a password for the Norwegian Resistance, leading the character to receive iconic status in the country.
McCoy died suddenly in 1961. Carmine Infantino and Bill Lignante (who would later draw Phantom stories directly for comic books) filled in before a successor was found in Sy Barry. During Barry's early years, he and Falk modernized the strip, and laid the foundation for what is considered the modern look of the Phantom. Barry would continue working on the strip for over 30 years before retiring in 1994.
Barry's longtime assistant George Olesen remained on the strip as penciller, with Keith Williams joining as inker for the daily strip. The Sunday strip was inked by Eric Doescher until Fred Fredericks became the regular inker in 1995.
Falk continued to script Phantom (and Mandrake ) until his death on March 13, 1999. His last daily and Sunday strip stories, "Terror at the Opera" and "The Kidnappers", respectively, were finished by his wife, Elizabeth Falk. After Falk's passing, King Features Syndicate began to cooperate with European comic publisher Egmont , publisher of the Swedish Fantomen magazine, which now went from only publishing Phantom stories in licenced comic books to providing the stories for the newspaper strip as well, by adapting their own Phantom comic book stories into the comic strip format. Fantomen writers Tony De Paul and Claes Reimerthi alternated as writers of the newspaper strip after Falk died, with De Paul handling the daily strips and Reimerthi being responsible for the Sunday strips. As of 2009, De Paul is the regular writer. Some of the stories have been adapted from comic magazine stories originally published in Fantomen .
In 2000, Olesen and Fredericks retired from the Sunday strip which was then taken over by respected comic book artist Graham Nolan. A few years later, Olesen and Williams left the daily strip after Olesen decided to retire and artist Paul Ryan, who had worked on the Fantomen comic stories and had been a fan of the character since childhood, took over the daily strip in early 2005. Ryan succeeded Nolan as artist on the Sunday strip in 2007.
The Phantom is one of few adventure comic strips still published in 2009.
Fictional character biography
In the jungles of the fictional African country of Bangalla, there is a myth featuring The Ghost Who Walks , a powerful and indestructible guardian of the innocent and fighter of all types of injustice. Because he seems to have existed for generations, many believe him to be immortal. In reality, the Phantom is descended from 20 previous generations of crime-fighters who all adopt the same persona. When a new Phantom takes the task from his dying father, he swears the Oath of the Skull: "I swear to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice, in all their forms, and my sons and their sons shall follow me". (The comic sometimes runs flashback adventures of previous Phantoms.)
The Phantom of 2008 is the 21st in the line. Unlike most costumed heroes, he has no superhuman powers, relying only on his wits, physical strength, skill with his weapons, and fearsome reputation to fight crime. His real name is Kit Walker. References to "Mr. Walker" are in the strip often accompanied by a footnote saying "For 'The Ghost Who Walks'", although some versions of the Phantom's history suggest that Walker was actually the surname of the man who became the first Phantom.
A signature of the character is his two rings. One has a pattern formed like four crossing sabres, "The Good Mark", that he leaves on visitors whom he befriends, placing the person under his protection. The other, "The Evil Mark" or "Skull Mark" has a skull shape, which leaves a scar of the corresponding shape on the enemies he punches with it. He wears the Good mark on his left hand because it is closer to the heart, and the Evil Mark on his right hand. The Skull Ring's original owner was Emperor Nero of the Roman empire, and the Good Mark ring was made after the sixth Phantom founded the Jungle Patrol. It would later be revealed that the Skull Ring had been made from the nails that hung Jesus to the cross.
His base is in the Deep Woods of Bengali (originally "Bengalla", or "Bangalla" and renamed Denkali in the Indian edition), a fictional country initially said to be set in Asia, near India, but depicted as in Africa during and after the 1960s. The Phantom's base is the fabled Skull Cave , where all previous Phantoms are buried. For a period of time, he also lived with his family in a tree house built by the Rope People — a tribe he had assisted. The Phantom has an Isle of Eden in which he has trained animals that are natural enemies to live in harmony, a Mesa in America called Walker's Table and a castle in the Old World.
The Phantom is a commander of Bangalla's world-famous Jungle Patrol, who never know his name but answer consistently to his orders. Due to a betrayal leading to the death of the 14th Phantom, the identity of the commander has been kept hidden from members of the patrol ever since. The Phantom use several ways to stay in contact. These include radio and a safe with a false bottom. At a few rare occasions the Phantom also visited the patrol wearing his patrol unifo
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