By Lee Falk & Ray Moore (Ken Pierce)
No ISBN
In the 17th century a British sailor survived an attack by pirates, and washing ashore in Africa, swore on the skull of his murdered father to dedicate his life and that of all his descendents to destroying pirates and criminals. The Phantom fights crime and injustice from a base deep in the Jungles of Bengali, and throughout Africa he is known as the “Ghost Who Walksâ€, considered an immortal avenger by the credulous and the wicked. Down the decades one hero after another has fought and died in an unbroken line, and the latest wearer of the mask, indistinguishable from the first, continues the never-ending battle…
For such a successful, long-lived and influential series, in terms of graphic novel collections The Phantom has been very poorly served by the English language market. Various small companies have tries to collect the strips – one of the longest continually running adventure serials in publishing history – but in no systematic or chronological order and never with any sustained success.
This particular edition is a black and white paperback album from the early 1980s and comes courtesy of that pioneer of strip preservation and proliferation Ken Pierce, collecting in almost its entirety the second ever dailies saga (originally published from 9th November 1936 to April 10th 1937) from the annals of “The Ghost Who Walks.â€
Lee Falk created Jungle Avenger at the request of his publishers who were already making history and public headway with his first strip sensation Mandrake the Magician. Although technically not the first ever costumed hero in comics, The Phantom was the prototype paladin to wear a skin-tight body-stocking, and the first to have a mask with opaque eye-slits.
He debuted on February 17th 1936 in an extended sequence that pitted him against a global confederation of pirates called the Singh Brotherhood. Falk wrote and drew the daily strip for the first two weeks before artist Ray Moore took over the illustration side. The Sundays feature began in May 1939.
This second rip-snorting adventure-mystery follows directly on from the initial outing (and with the Singh Brotherhood tale forms the basis for the exceptionally watchable 1996 movie staring Billy Zane) and finds the anonymous, indomitable hero blamed for the depredations of a gang of airborne bandits currently raiding passenger planes and airships throughout the orient.
Entitled ‘The Sky Band’ it was a great shock to avid readers of the 1930s to discover that those enigmatic, ruthless aerial brigands were all weak and feeble women – whereas re-titling the book “The Sky Maidens†might have tipped off any later fans…
Escaping from police custody with the aid of his faithful Pygmy warriors the Bandar, The Phantom is soon hot on the trail of the real mastermind…
Stuffed with chases, assorted fights, stunts and many a misapprehension – police and authorities clearly having a hard time believing a pistol-packing masked man with a pet wolf might not be a bad egg – this a gripping blood and thunder tale that still packs a punch and quite a few subtle laughs. Captured by the manic Baroness who runs the all-girl gang, The Phantom eventually turns the tide not by force but by exerting his masculine wiles upon the hot-blooded – if psychopathic – harridan, unaware until too late that his own beloved, true-blue Diana Palmer is watching…
It is truly inexplicable to me that in a marketplace which has rediscovered so many lost and forgotten comics treasures that such an iconic strip as the Phantom (and Mandrake the Magician for that matter) can remain uncollected and ignored, especially as the material is still fresh, entertaining and addictively compelling.
But, even if it were only of historical value (or just printed for Australians – who have long been manic devotees of the implacable champion) surely the Ghost Who Walks is worthy of a definitive chronological compendium series?
© 1982 King Features Syndicate. All rights reserved.