The newspaper adventure strip The Phantom is 90 years old this month. Created by Lee Falk, who had also created Mandrake the Magician two years earlier, The Phantom made its debut on February 17, 1936.
What is The Phantom about? Well, in the words of Falk himself, for those who came in late…
In the year 1536, the English ship Matilda was traveling through the Indian Ocean when it was beset by pirates from the notorious Singh Brotherhood. Captain Christopher Walker and his crew fought valiantly, but they were overwhelmed by the marauders. The entire crew was slain, save for the Captain’s teenage son Kit, who was cast out to sea. Young Kit Walker washed up on the shores of the African nation of Bangalla. He was discovered by a tribe of pygmies known as the Bandar, who nursed him back to health.
Later, returning to the beach where he was found by the Bandar, Kit discovers the corpse of the Singh pirate captain who attacked Matilda. Grasping the skull of the dead pirate, Kit swore an oath upon it:
“I swear to devote my life to the destruction of all forms of piracy, greed, cruelty and injustice. My sons, and my sons’ sons, shall follow me.”
Donning a skintight costume & mask, Kit became the first Phantom. When he eventually died fighting against crime & injustice, his son took his place as the second Phantom, and so on down through the ages. In the present day the current Kit Walker is the 21st Phantom, continuing his family’s crusade against evil. Because the Phantom seemingly never ages throughout the decades, he becomes known as “The Ghost Who Walks” and “The Man Who Cannot Die.”
The 21st Phantom is aided in his quest for justice by a number of individuals: the Bandar tribe, who to the present day have served to train & guide the Walker family, his girlfriend, and later wife, Diana Palmer, a world class athlete, their two children, Kit and Heloise, who are preparing for the day when they will follow in their father’s footsteps, Bangalla’s law enforcement agency the Jungle Patrol, and last but not least, Devil and Hero, a wolf and a white stallion, respectively, who often accompany the Phantom on his missions.
I think that Falk conceived an absolutely brilliant setup for The Phantom. Not only could he tell the adventures of the current Phantom in the present day, but the fact that the character was a legacy hero meant that there were 20 previous versions of the hero whose stories could also be explored in a variety of historical settings. There have even been a few stories that have flashed forward to the future, looking at the exploits of the current Phantom’s descendents.
I first discovered The Phantom courtesy of the 1996 movie adaptation, which starred Billy Zane, Patrick McGoohan, Kirsty Swanson, Treat Williams and Catherine Zeta-Jones. I didn’t see The Phantom movie in the theater, but I bought it on VHS tape in 1999, and I found it to be really fun & enjoyable. I subsequently picked up several of The Phantom graphic novels published by Moonstone Books in the early 2000s, which I also enjoyed. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the movie had been extremely faithful to the source material.
The Phantom newspaper strip continues to be published in the United States to this day. However, it is outside of America that The Phantom’s real following lies. It is extremely popular in countries such as Sweden and Australia.
Here in the States, the current writer of The Phantom is Tony DePaul, who took over the strip in 1999 following the death of Falk. The daily strips are drawn by comic book veteran Mike Manley, and the Sunday strip is drawn by Jeff Weigel. The Phantom strip can be read on the Comics Kingdom website, which is where I have been following it for a number of years now.
If you have not read The Phantom before, I encourage you to give it a try. It’s a really exciting, action-packed series, one of the few remaining newspaper adventure strips in the 21st Century. Here’s hoping for many more years of The Ghost Who Walks.
In My Not So Humble Opinion 