MOST
historians consider The Phantom as the first masked hero to appear in a
comic strip. The Phantom was created by comic creator Lee Falk (April
28,1911 - March 13, 1999) and first debuted in a newspaper strip in
1936. Lee literally wrote his comic strips from 1934 to the last days of
his life, when in hospital he tore off his oxygen mask to dictate his
stories. Falk's original stories were set in the dark African Congo of
the 1930's, fighting headhunters, pirates and other villains of the
time. Falk's character, like his bat-winged counterpart, used
superstition against his enemies. Villains believed him to be a ghost
thanks to a costume inspired by a mythical African spirit.
The
Phantom is an American adventure comic strip that 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.
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
The publisher Moonstone is bringing the
character up-to-date and targeting a more mature audience than previous
decades will breathe new life into a character that although often
overlooked, influenced much of the comic industry we know today.
In
the beginning The Phantom had been a half-drowned sailor, flung ashore
on the terrible, blood-drenched Bengalla coast after pirates burned his
ship and slaughtered his mates. The gentle Bandar pygmies, taking him to
be a sea god of ancient prophecy, nursed him back to fitness and became
his everlasting friends -- as the castaway faced his destiny, donned
costume and mask and was reborn as the first of the Phantoms, scourge of
predators everywhere.
"I swear to devote my life to the destruction
of piracy, greed, cruelty and injustice!" he cried as he formally took
"The Oath of the Skull" by firelight. "And my sons and their sons shall
follow me!"
And in time there was a son. In time that son begat
another, and thereafter that son begat again. After a while, there arose
a dynasty of Phantoms, one after another, born into the legend then
reared and rigorously drilled in the disciplines and the duties.
Through
the generations these eerily identical jungle lords have prowled an
evil world in the cloaks of many identities, and none today but the
Bandar and a handful of other secret souls know that all are not one and
the same.
The modern Phantom is the 21st of the line. Since Feb. 17,
1936, he has been the law in his dangerous part of the world, a one-man
police force, a silent avenger who appears and vanishes like lightning.
His home is the fearsome "Skull Cave," deep in the heart of his jungle.
His only intimates have been the faithful Bandar, his great white horse
Hero, his savage gray wolf Devil, and his lovely American sweetheart
Diana Palmer. Even the men of the Jungle Patrol, the paramilitary
peacekeeping squad an ancestor had organized some years ago, have never
seen the face of their mysterious commander in chief.
From thieves
and smugglers to cut-throat harbor rats to crazed dictators seeking to
enslave free men, all have met the Phantom over 60 thrilling years, and
all have tasted his wrath. Always changing with the whirlwind times
around him, he has increasingly come to function as something of a
United Nations troubleshooter-at-large, a shadowy trench-coated figure
slipping in and out of modern Third World political intrigue.
But
never far from the Phantom's stage are the great emperors and brigands
of yore, in the shining tales of his 20 heroic forebears, recounted in
the epic Phantom Chronicles. In more than 60 years of daily newspaper
stories and 58 years of Sunday-only yarns, "Phantom" creator Lee Falk
has meticulously fleshed out the most minute details of a fabulous
dynastic pageant, illuminating the lives of the Phantoms of old whose
blood courses through the veins of the modern Ghost Who Walks. Many of
them have swashbuckled their way through the famous newspaper comic
strip in grand flashback sequences -- one early Phantom is known to have
married Christopher Columbus' granddaughter; another is known to have
married Shakespeare's niece; still another took a Mongol princess as his
bride.
The fifth Phantom crossed swords with the pirate Blackbeard
in the early 1600s. The 13th Phantom traveled to the young United States
and fought alongside Jean Lafitte in the War of 1812. The 16th appears
to have put in some time as a Wild West cowboy.
And succession is assured.
The
current Phantom and Diana Palmer were wed in 1977, and today their
scrappy young son, Kit, is in training to someday take the sacred "Oath
of the Skull" and become the 22nd Phantom.
