That masked, purple-clad champion, Lee Falk’s Phantom, appears to be a cross between Batman and Tarzan.
Created in 1936 as a newspaper comic strip, the Ghost Who Walks became popular worldwide, inspiring a 1943 Columbia movie serial and a 1944 hardcover novel.
In the 1950s, at Halloween, you could dress up as a plastic and vinyl Phantom in a Ben Cooper costume that cost $3.
If you were lucky, you might even run across a Harvey Hits Phantom comic book. They were rather odd-looking repackaged newspaper strips, and eight Phantom issues were published sporadically, beginning in 1957.
“The Phantom was the first fictional hero to wear the skintight costume which has become a hallmark of comic-book superheroes, and was the first shown in a mask with no visible pupils (another superhero standard),” Wikipedia notes. “Comics historian Peter Coogan has described the Phantom as a ‘transitional’ figure, since the Phantom has some of the characteristics of pulp magazine heroes like the Shadow and the Spider, as well as anticipating the features of comic book heroes such as Superman, Batman and Captain America.”
The Phantom fought criminal conspiracies in the jungle and worldwide without the aid of the super powers possessed by his comic strip “brother” Mandrake, although he pretended to have them to give himself a mysterious edge. Really the 21st in his line of champions, the Phantom posed as being an immortal who’d lived since 1536.
Tough, durable and admirably optimistic even when the odds were against him (which they often were), the Phantom was a pulpish character.
In fact, like the Lone Ranger and the Black Hood, he could have headlined his own pulp magazine.
The Phantom did finally get his pulp adventures, beginning in 1972 in a series of 15 Avon paperback novels written by Lee Falk and Ron Goulart. The handsome covers were by George Wilson, who’d previously produced similar paintings for the covers of the Phantom comic books published by Gold Key.
Johnny Williams wrote: Dan, So Many Sundays during my boyhood I would anxiously await the delivery of 'The Chicago American' newspaper, 'mainly' so that I could exalt over the ongoing adventures of and in two of my Favorite comic strips - 'Mac Rayboy's Flash Gordon', and 'Lee Falk's The Phantom'!
ReplyDeleteBoth strips were 'in color' because this was the 'Sunday Funnies'. Both Mac and Lee were responsible for many, many hours of complete enjoyment by this skinny little Black boy on the Southside of Chicago. Their stories transported me to times and places that transcended my quiet little Southside neighborhoods. Pirates, both ocean going and the space varieties needed vanquishing. Criminals of all stripes needed bringing in. Would be conquerors and despots, whether Earth bound, or interplanetary, and later interstellar, required being brought down a peg or two. Whatever, and wherever good deeds needed doing, Mr. Rayboy, and Mr. Falk Always delivered the goods!
....And it was all in color for a quarter newspaper. Just .25, and the Whole World and Beyond became for a time my playground.
Michael Fraley said:
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that in the first weeks of the strip, the Phantom's costume was as subject to change as Superman's was in Action #1. Those peculiar candy stripes shorts were originally just shading on the drawing with parallel pen lines!
Teddy Harrell Jr. said:
ReplyDeleteWonderful piece of historic comic strip/Comic book history
Bob Doncaster wrote;
ReplyDeleteI still have that series of 15 paperbacks. I was thrilled when I saw them on the book store shelves back in the 70s
Paul Zuckerman wrote:
ReplyDeleteI am not sure which paper carried the Phantom in NY, but it wasn't one of the ones that made it to our house, so I didn't pick up on the Phantom until sometime later. I think the first time I read his stories were when Don Newton drew the Charlton comics--until then, the art seemed pretty pedestrian. I finally found the newspaper strip reprints and read some of them and really enjoyed Falk's early strips. The art seemed to vary in quality but some of the artists appealed to me. Mostly, I am vague on the details!
Hasn't it been the same Phantom in the strip since the 1930s? Or did he finally get replaced by his son or grandson?
Some strips had characters aging in more or less real life years, most notably Prince Valiant and Gasoline Alley. But both long ago slowed down to a crawl though I think Val is now a grandfather and Walt Wallet a great-grandfather.
Sort of reminds me of an Ellery Queen pastiche that I just read last night. The story envisioned a VERY elderly Ellery still alive in the 20th century, being helped by the granddaughter of his first aide-de-camp Nikki. The aging in the story was funky because one of the characters had been used in a mid 60s Queen book, where he appeared to be about the same age or maybe a little bit younger than Ellery, but in this story he was much younger. Guess that is the weirdness of aging in series fiction that gets dated!
Jim Hampton wrote:
ReplyDeleteIn the days of the Sunday Funny Pages my dad read The Phantom and Prince Valiant without fail.