Phantom (comic)

Early Phantom Comics logo

Phantom in the style of Seymour Barry

The Phantom is an American comic book series published by King Features . As a superhero, the focus of the stories is the phantom. The series was created in 1936 by Lee Falk (who also invented the comic Mandra , in the American Mandrake the Magician ) and is continued to this day by various illustrators and with different characteristics.

The main character: the phantom

The phantom lives in a skull cave in the jungle among pygmies . The superhero helps the jungle police, solves injustices and crimes internationally on his own, helps private people who have lost their way in the jungle, turns (and washes) the heads of beautiful millionaire daughters and much more. As a walking spirit , he has apparently ruled the jungle for several hundred years. Over time, the impression of an immortal being arose, but in fact the first phantom , a shipwrecked man after a pirate attack, passed the role on to the respective sons. The current Phantom is the 21st member of this unique crime-fighting dynasty in the direct line. Only the bandars, the pygmies, know the true nature of this secret.

The well-trained hero without the typical superpowers, but one of the first comic superheroes, wears a dark purple costume, a black mask in front of his eyes, two self-loading pistols of the Colt M1911 type in a belt holster and two distinctive signet rings . The first ring with a skull symbol is used to mark villains and criminals with a knockout blow. The second ring, with a four-fold "P" (like phantom) in the shape of a cross, serves as a protective symbol for helpers and crime victims. On his adventures, also in “civilian clothes” as Mr. Walker (with hat, sunglasses, scarf and turned up coat collar), his mountain wolf, Devil, helps him, who obeys his word.

Important characters

Kit Walker - Phantom's real name and alias for the Phantom on the hunt for criminals, who operates in civilian clothes, characterized by his appearance with dark glasses, hat and coat
Devil (wolf or devil) - Phantom's loyal wolfhound, constant companion and best-trained helper on criminal hunts
Hero, his fast, majestic, white stallion, trained for all of the Phantom's jungle missions
Rex, a blond-haired boy raised by Phantom, later adopted and identified as the missing Prince of Baronkhan
Diana Palmer, formerly the phantom's childhood sweetheart from the USA, now works under the double name Palmer-Walker wife of the phantom and as a UN representative in Bangalla. Diana already gave the phantom two children - Kit and Heloise.
Dr. Lamanda Luaga, black president of Bangalla, personal friend of Phantom
the Bangalla Jungle Police, founded by the first phantom of defected pirates, under the elder phantom under the leadership of Colonel William Weeks, now under Colonel Jonathan Worubu
The Singh Brotherhood, a centuries-old, dangerous pirate syndicate, which - although defeated several times by the phantom - is constantly developing new branches of crime.
The pygmies - a small jungle people who worship the phantom as the immortal "walking spirit" and protect their home in the jungle with their poison arrows
Guran, chief of the pygmies, childhood friend of the phantom, guards his home "skull cave" in the jungle

Origin of the story

The history of the phantom's ancestors and their ancient secrets can be found in the chronicles recorded by his ancestors, which are kept in the skull cave. Most of the secrets of the past can be cleared up for the current phantom, the old stories often shed light on puzzles and can be of great importance for the struggle of the present. The origin of the phantom story is explained in the first volume of the almost 500 year old chronicle: On February 17, 1536, a British merchant ship was attacked by robber Singh pirates off the coast of Bangalla . On board the British ship was the captain Sir Christopher Standish, who had sailed to America as a cabin boy on the Santa Maria with Christopher Columbus . The pirates looted the ship and assassinated the captain and all his crew. There was only one survivor of the bloody massacre, namely the captain's son, Kit Standish. Completely exhausted, he escaped swimming to the near coast of a deserted area. Local pygmies found him, took the unconscious man to their hidden deep forests and nursed him back to health. After Kit regained his strength, he went to the beach of his tragedy to look for flotsam. He found the body of a corsair who was apparently the murderer of his father, he also wore parts of the clothing of his father Christopher Standish, who had fallen in battle. Filled with bitter hatred and thoughts of revenge, Kit swore merciless retribution on the killer's skull. He vowed eternal hostility to all pirates and criminals (similar to Bruce Wayne in Batman ) and devoted his life to fighting them. After he was the only white man who already had a high status with the black natives, he tried to secure their support through his "immortality". In order to encourage the natives in this, he began to mask himself completely and then lived as a "walking spirit" in a hidden skull height in the deep forests. His descendants were to follow him continuously, he prepared them for this dangerous mission from their youth. Today the 21st generation of the Phantom is already working as “Kit Walker” in the service of a fair fight against all kinds of crime.

The artistic creators of the comic

Lee Falk, actually Leon Harrison Gross (born April 28, 1911, † March 13, 1999), was the creator of the Phantom story and wrote daily newspaper trips for the King Features Syndicate in New York City on February 17, 1936 until his death . Phil Davis (* 1906, † 1964) and Ray Moore were at his side as the daily story drawers . Raymond S. Moore (* 1905, † January 13, 1984) was the first artist of the Phantom Strips from 1936 to 1949, his drawing style was soft and childlike, as was that of his successor Wilson McCoy (* April 6, 1902, † 20. July 1961), who was responsible for the artistic design of the daily stories from 1949 until his death in 1961. McCoy's last work appeared on September 17, 1961. Bill Lignante (born March 20, 1925) took over the artistic design from October 1, 1961 and completed McCoy's unfinished stories "The Limper" and "Queen Samaris" by May 1961. Lignante's name never appeared on the Strips, he worked anonymously and continued McCoy's drawing style as his former collaborator.

Seymour (Sy) Barry (born March 12, 1928 in New York City) succeeded Ray Moore and Wilson McCoy. Sy Barry was responsible for running the Daily Strips for 33 years from 1961 to 1994. He was a younger brother of the comic artist Dan Barry and was certainly the most famous of all phantom artists. Creator Lee Falk liked his drawing style so much that he quickly decided to modernize the comic strips. This was the period when the comic book peaked in popularity, Lee Falk and Sy Barry's Phantom Stories being read by over 100 million people every day in newspapers or comic books. The stories were regularly published in comic books and also in hardcover collections in countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Australia. Over the years, Barry has gathered numerous other employees, such as Frank Giacoia, Alex Toth , Don Heck, Bob Forgione, Andre Leblanc and Frank Springer . Barry slowly withdrew into private life in 1994 and handed over the continuation of the Daily Stories to his long-time assistant George Olesen (* December 6, 1924, † October 15, 2013), who was supported by his colleague Keith Williams (* 1957).

Between September 1994 and March 1995, none of the new artists on the Daily Strip signed his drawings and there was a rather disadvantageous break in style in the design of the characters. After the death of the creator Lee Falks on March 13, 1999, his wife Elizabeth Falk completed the then unfinished Phantom Story, until August 2000 Graham Nolan (born March 12, 1962) drew the daily Phantom Strip on Sunday. The following stories were written by the new phantom authors Tony De Paul and Claes Reimerthi and designed by George Olesen and Fred Fredericks until 2005.

On January 31, 2005, the cartoonist Paul Ryan (born September 23, 1949, † March 6, 2016) took over the daily work on the comic strip. Ryan's straightforward, naturalistic style of drawing revalued the quality of his work, which had been greatly reduced by his predecessors. After Ryan overloaded the additional design of the Sunday Strips too much, Terry Beatty (born January 11, 1958) took over this task on January 29, 2012. At the end of May 2016, after the unexpected death of Ryan, the works again experienced a significant reduction in their artistic quality. New cartoonist Mike Manley took on the design of the Daily Stories, while Terry Beatty continued to write the Sunday Stories.

Publications in Europe

The Phantom series originally appeared in newspapers as the comic strip Gray Ghost . The striking purple-red of the costume was the result of an early misprint. In Germany , the Hamburger Morgenpost published the first comics strips in 1949 and for many years ran a whole page of comics. In January 1951, the Frankfurt night edition also published Phantom Strips. In Austria daily phantom strips appeared in the Kronen-Zeitung between 1977 and 1990 . In April 1952, Aller Verlag published the first Phantom issue. Bastei-Verlag started publishing its large-format comic books in 1974, and after the last issue number 238, publication was discontinued in 1984. In Germany, the booklets appeared in two-tone printing in the 1980s, black and red on white paper, a rare but ideal form of production in comics today. In other countries other colors were sometimes used, such as blue in Sweden, red in Italy, brown in Australia. Albums and even written books have also been released abroad, albeit with little success.

The Italian Fratelli Spada Edition brought out its own phantom stories with artists such as Germano Ferri, Umberto Sammarini, Domenico Mirabella, Senio Pratesi, Germano Ferri, Dino Leonetti, Silio Romagnoli and Anders Thorell. From 1974 phantom paperbacks in the Kelter adventure series were published by Kelter-Verlag. The stories by Joe Giella and the third-class drawing style of the Texan Patrick "Pat" Boyette or that of the German story writer Peter Mennigen (* 1952) mostly only served as closing material for the German Bastei publishing house from 1981 onwards. From 1975 to 1980, the Spanish draftsman Rafael López Espí (* 1937) obtained the best color covers for the Phantom booklets of the German-language editions of Bastei Verlag. From 1983 onwards, stories from Egmont Verlag and the Swedish production Fantomen were primarily taken over by Bastei Verlag. The writers Norman Worker (* 1927, † 2005) and Donne Avenell (* 1925, † 1997) worked here in the 1980s with the draftsmen Özcan Eralp (* 1935) and Bertil Wilhelmsson (* November 11, 1926, † July 9 1992) together. This was followed by higher-quality work by the Story Workers and Ulf Granbergs (* 1945) by the draftsmen Kari Leppänen (* September 1, 1945), Jaime Vallvé Peralta (* 1928, † 2000) and Heiner Bade (* 1949).

Movie and TV

There are various cinema and television adaptations of the phantom:

1943: a 15-part cinema series starring Tom Tyler .
1955: an unauthorized 15-part cinema series starring John Hart , renamed Adventures of Captain Africa .
1961: American television film with Roger Creed in the lead role.
1968: The Red Mask (Kizil mask) , Turkish feature film with Irfan Atasoy .
1968: The Red Mask (Kizil mask) , Turkish feature film with Ismet Erten .
1971: The Vengeance of the Red Mask (Kizil maske'nin intikami) , Turkish feature film with Levent Çakır .
1972: Guest appearance in the Popeye film Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter .
1986: In the animated series Defenders of the Earth , the phantom was one of the main characters.
1994: Phantom 2040 , a 35-part US animated film series about a future Phantom.
1996: The Phantom (1996) with Billy Zane in the lead role.
2009: The Phantom (2009) - The World Has a New Hero, an American miniseries starring Ryan Carnes .

Trivia

Bangalla , the fictional pygmy jungle kingdom , was originally located on the edge of India, but later moved to Africa (Madagascar?) Via Indonesia, Java and Sumatra. Mr. Walker's PO Box address is Morristown (the capital). Bangalla was written in early Bengalli stories.

Mr. Walker and the “Walking Spirit” could be a symbolic play on words for one and the same thing. Walker could also be the (Americanized) name of the original, first phantom, the stranded shipwrecked Kit Standish.

The comic series was written by Falk until his death in 1999 (Plots). In Australia, the entire newspaper strips have now been reprinted.

In Finland, the comic series appeared under the title Mustanaamio , as a black mask. In Turkey, the series is called accordingly red mask, Kizil mask .

In the Australian television series Hey Dad! Nudge loves to read these comics and is convinced that the Phantom really exists.

In 1985, the substance of Peter Falck and Urban Wrethagen was adapted as a musical under the title The Phantom Musical ( Fantomenusikalen ) in Stockholm listed.