The first volume of “The Complete Gold Key collection” (to be followed by complete King and Charlton Collections) shipped last week. I cannot remember whether my first exposure to the character was issue #22 of the King series or the Captain Action doll, but Phantom #22 was released in 1967, so I would have been no older than three years old in either case. The mantle of “The Ghost Who Walks” has been passed down from father to son for 400 years, but what admittedly little Phantom continuity (in comic strips or comic books) I’ve read over the years hasn’t dealt with the transition from father to son, although I do remember a sequence from the ‘80s (I think) in which Kit Walker and Diana Palmer were the parents of fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. I remember fans of the day complaining that the Phantom is an action/adventure hero and shouldn’t be shown changing diapers.
With the dual series from Hermes Press, it’s not too difficult to imagine that the comic strips are the adventures of the father and the comic books are the adventures of the son. The first volume presents the first eight issues, most of which feature two stories each (except #1 and #8, so you get 14 stories total). Issues #5-7 present a three-part “Boyhood of the Phantom” story, and the full-length story in issue #8 picks up from there, telling the story of the transition from one Phantom to the next. The timeline they establish doesn’t quite work, but if you ignore one (of two) lines of dialogue, everything slips into place.
I originally acquired my first issue Phantom in a three-pack with Mandrake and Flash Gordon. I (fairly recently) re-acquired those specific issues of Mandrake and Flash Gordon, but I have yet to find The Phantom. I can hardly wait until this series of reprints gets up to #22!
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...You've given me a platform , Jeff , to expound upon the Phantom based on the time , after I got on the Net , that I became more familiar with him - And , with some windfall (may have essentially or actually been inheritance money) , had an Air Mail'd subscription for a year to the Frew Publications comic book of the Phantom that comes out in Australia - more frequently than bi-weekly (about 29?? issues a year) and it's been going since the post-WWII years and its numbers are well into the 100s by now !!!!!!!!!
I fount out some Phantom Phacts little-known to the average US comics fan bear from this...
I'll start out with this - All of the stories in the Gold Key issues were re-makes of newspaper strip stories ! Not reprints . Re-makes . This was true of much , anyway ,of the King material as well...
It fits the charracter though, that he'd happily do it. (I assume that's quite a ways back too) He's a very well-centred, big hearted and 'grown up' hero. He's probably a better person - certainly a 'bigger' one - than most superheroes, who tend to be quite juvenile, emotionally. The Phantom is a real man!
The Frew Phantoms are now in the mid-1000s btw.
I read the final Air-Pirates story recently, from 1941. It was great fun, with an all-female band of airborne bandits. There was spanking...
And I have 'The Phantom goes to war' on my read pile. Looking forward to that.
There were early Frew editions of the Phantom - sealed in blocks - in a local comicshop here for 90 dollars a pop. when I asked about the high price, I was told that the belonged to the reference library of the phantom's creator - they were certified as such.
...Figs , I assumed that you'd chime in on this
( Perhaps I avoided saying so to avoid " assuming unduly/appearing to pressure-stereotype people " ? )
,and you did :-) , but , While I see that my hurried type of my first post put in " 100s " , mightn't you have guessed from context that I meant " 1000s " ? :-(
Switching now to addressing Jeff/all others , I guess the King Features strip can be considered the " mainstream " Phantom continuity , in it he has has the twins since I suppose the early 80s?? They are late " tween " now , IIRC ,. and IIRC from my days of being more involved in a Phantom board , they are still living with the Phantom and Diana in The Deep Woods in the KFS strip , while the ( Mostly , anyway . ) Scandanavian-produced comic book material which Frew's comic book uses as its bread & butter has them following Phantom custom and now going to boarding school in their mother's home country .
This is not the only continuity difference which King allows the European material , incidentally !
:-P
It's all good.
I didn't know that the Scandanavian strips deviated from continuity in that way. Perhaps we can merge them, by saying that they are on their holidays when we see them in the KFS strips?
I can see why the 'less than cononical' and 'more frequently produced' Scandanavian strip would want to sideline the kids to some extent. There's too much opportunity to deviate from the canonical strip with them.
When I started reading Phantom strips, I too tried to imagine that the 40s strips were an earlier Phantom, but once you've read enough of them, it becomes harder to do. The romance with Diana and then the adopted child (Rex?) and then the 'natural' kids are a consistent throughline from the 40s. You have to imagine that it is the Marvel sense of time, with the past rolling up behind them like a carpet.
And, ultimately, the Phantom is like Batman. Sure there can be replacements to fill his shoes if needed, but THIS Phantom is where it's at. They couldn't replicate someone with his personality, and the great qualities I mention above.
...Yes , the " superheroes don't age - normally - nor their family either " custom has paid hob with Father Time in more than the Walker twins staying winsome - The present-day Phantom has remained the 21st Phantom , with first girlfriend later wife Diana , since 1936 !!!!!!!!!!!
Figserello said:
Good luck with that. Be sure to let us know how it works out. :)
Volume one of “The Complete Charlton Collection” shipped yesterday. Volume one of “The Complete King Collection” was solicited for February 2, but this one was supposed to have been released sometime in 2011. Hermes Press collections, printed in China, usually ship about six months later than their solicit date, but they do ship… eventually… if you’re patient. It’s odd (to me) that they’ve chosen to release this series out of chronological order. Here’s the way it breaks down by publisher:
Gold Key: #1-17
King: #18-28
Charlton: #30-74
[No, that’s not a typo; somehow, in the transfer from King to Charlton, no #29 was published!]
With volume one of the Gold Key and Charlton years published, that gives us #1-8 and #30-38; when volume one of the King years ships, it will begin with #18. See what I mean? Weird!
I haven’t begun to read the stories in this volume yet, but I have paged through it. First I would like to point out that the reproduction of these stories is not very good, but that’s not necessarily Hermes Presses’ fault. Charlton not only paid the lowest page rates in the business at the time, but they also used the cheapest paper and had the shoddiest printing presses. (All of the production was done in house, including the printing and distribution, so that Charton was able to stay in business in the ‘60s when many of its contemporary publishers from the ‘50s had gone out of business as printing costs rose.) These shortcomings are particularly obvious when comparing the original art of several pages also reprinted in the volume to the final product. The most significant aspect of this volume is that it presents Jim Aparo’s first published comic book work.
I hope you’ll agree, as the cover to issue #31, his first, plainly shows, he hit the ground running:
#33 has a very “DC” feel to it, I think:
Perhaps covers such as #36’s helped get him the Aquaman gig:
A few years back, I was amazed when I skimmed over covers of various PHANTOM comics over the years. In many ways, THE PHANTOM was one of my favorite adventure heroes of the 1960's. We used to read newspaper strips, you see-- only very rarely did we ever BUY (gasp!) comic-books.
Anyway, it kind of blew my mind to find out that 2 longtime BATMAN artists got their start at Charlton doing THE PHANTOM. In retrospect... I can't help but feel it's a SHAME Charlton didn't pay more. I get the feeling I'd have rather seen Jim Aparo, and moreso, Don Newton, do a lot more PHANTOM than BATMAN. (It may be just my opinion, but I do feel DC has completely run BATMAN into the ground in the last 20 years. It's not any version of the character I'd ever want to read about anymore...)
I hope I can get ahold of these one of these days.
Don Newton's run will begin in the next volume (that is, the next volume of The Complete Charlton Collection, Vol. 2; the next to be released will be The Complete King Collection, Vol. 1).
...I believe Don continued working on the Phantom/other Charlton?? after he picked up his DC gigs , actually...
BTW , from my reading on that Phantom board/source from Australia I mentioned above , forigen Phantom fans refer to this 60s/70s material as " The Gold Key/King/Charlton " material , incidentally .
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