John X

HERE’S a word about the new Phantom story that started two Sundays ago.

First, a few family pics. This weekend we were in nearby Massachusetts to see Ava, my great-niece, compete in a 3-day softball tournament. She and her dad, my nephew, Mike, drove up from Pennsylvania.

Ava throws right, bats left.

She’s a high school senior, will start at Penn State a year from now.

Playing defense… fly ball to right field…

D2 and D3 brought little D1D2 to the final game on Sunday. Fresh from a sleepover with her indulgent aunties, the 4-year-old turns up at the ballfield wearing lipstick she applied herself (you can picture that) and she’s jazzed on Skittles. I’m not sure she was aware of an athletic competition going on in our vicinity. She mostly turned somersaults in the grass.

First game of the weekend, Ava’s first at-bat, first pitch—she knocks it over the fence.

Her team made a video of that one. It’s kinda cute.

Ava’s coach felt lucky to be there. Two days earlier, on a New Jersey highway, a tractor-trailer clipped his left-rear quarter panel while moving over into his lane. The truck pushed him down the road sideways then spun him out into the path of a second tractor-trailer. That truck crashed into his left-front fender and spun him again.

He added a bit of text to the dash-cam video. I didn’t ask why but I think he had in mind a teaching moment for the girls, a metaphor on situational awareness on the field of play. Or I don’t know… some other thing…

Driver of the first truck, overwhelmed with concern, albeit for himself, does not stop. He flees the scene.

On to John X, one of the 21st Phantom’s alter egos.

John X, you may know, is said to be a law enforcement officer afflicted with loss of memory, likely declared missing by his department. He turned up at Jungle Patrol Headquarters some years ago, was recruited into the ranks and, that very day, vanished without a word.

The Jungle Patrol’s Unknown Commander (also an alter ego of the 21st Phantom) left an explanatory note in the safe for Colonel Worubu, the safe that is the sole fixture in his windowless office, an office the Unknown Commander is never seen to enter or leave.

Here’s how Lee Falk, the Phantom’s creator and my predecessor on the strip, set it up: there’s a tunnel under the office from a condemned water well, a long-forgotten well dug out past the wire in deep jungle cover. That’s how the Phantom gets access to a secret door in the bottom of the safe. Whenever he leaves orders in the safe, he turns on a signal light to alert his right-hand man, Colonel Worubu, the executive officer who manages the outfit day to day.

Here’s the art by the late Paul Ryan…

No, first a photo. I like this one a lot, Paul and Linda at a ranch in Sweet Grass County, Montana, a vacation getaway they enjoyed for years.

Gone almost seven years now, hard to believe. Paul was a good guy.

Okay, here’s his work on the John X continuity…

That’s where we left it in 2015. And now, as of two Sundays ago, John X is back. Clearly the Phantom’s up to something; something to do with the Unknown Commander, I gather, given the title of the yarn: The Commander Will See You Now

The Commander will see you now? He’s never been known to see anybody. All he’s ever been is a note in the safe, a voice from the shadows.

Here’s Jeff Weigel’s art on this unanticipated second coming of John X. The strips were published over the last two Sundays.

A few weeks ago, as the previous Sunday story was about to end, I said something here about it after the fact. This time, here’s a peek behind the curtain on a story just beginning. Let’s see how that goes.

Here’s a note I attached to the first page of the new script. I don’t always write a note, but sometimes it makes sense to point out some overarching issue the artist will want to think about.

I didn’t send Jeff the entire script at first. I think I had maybe the first third of it written. This must be six or seven months ago now.

Last week I filed an additional 18 weeks of script for Jeff. That leaves the final 8 to 10 weeks unwritten. I’ll get to it this winter. Will let the story breathe for a while now, see what it wants to do.

That’s something you learn over the long haul. A writer who can’t resist imposing a conscious will on a narrative, who writes to enforce a synopsis, an outline, any notion as preconceived as that, will never be surprised or delighted by an unforeseen-yet-inevitable answer taking shape under the touch of his or her fingertips on the keyboard.

Mike Manley, on the daily Phantom strip, continues to do the exceptional work everyone knows to expect of him.

Yesterday he filed his art for publication on August 14 through August 19. The psychological effect he achieves in that week through his inks alone is a master class on how it’s done.

Mike and I are getting near the end of the Dungeons Undone chapter, chapter 6 of the Wrack and Ruin series. Tomorrow we’ll witness the encounter the June 9 strip foreshadowed.

Devil’s the only one who sees it coming in today’s strip.

The visually literate reader Mike and I work for knows (tip of the hat to Yogi Berra) that you can see a lot by looking.

A close reader knows Mike wouldn’t burn more than a third of his opening panel on something as dumb as vehicle scenery. The vehicle, ergo, must be a scripted element of visual storytelling.

Our reader sees what it means; it means what it portends. It’s the same kind of vehicle that figured into the Phantom’s mortal wounding in the Mozz prophecy. And it’s the same kind of vehicle Savarna Devi tried to get the Phantom into in the December 2022 strips.

Savarna wanted to make a bold, shoot-’em-up dash out through the main gate of Gravelines Prison, where, unknown to her, the prophecy would likely come to pass. If you recall, Devil bared his teeth at the Phantom to keep him from joining Savarna on that fateful ride.

Any reader who didn’t see the vehicle in today’s strip (August 1)—or saw it and thought it was just a random whatever, something to fill space, well… make a friend of Yogi. Always be Yogi.

I love this cartoon I saw in the New Yorker the other day. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard something akin to this line over the years.

The 650 piglet’s back on the road for the first time in four years, ever since I got home from the Arctic among the walking wounded. I’ve been bombing around the neighborhood a bit, sorting out minor issues. Do check those critical fasteners, Moe…

Note the Arctic Circle badge.

She’s crossed the circle four times. Twice in the Northwest Territories, twice in Alaska.

Here she is in January 2020, home from the Arctic the previous autumn. She’s sporting lots of new equipment now.

In closing, here’s a song the 4-year-old has been singing in recent days, she of the somersaulting Skittles. We were all thinking, what’s this little ditty she’s always singing either full-on loud or under her breath? oh oh fee lee ah... ? What is that?

She’d heard it somewhere, sweet girl. Wouldn’t tell us what or where or when.

Then her dad figured it out.

Tony DePaul, August 1, 2023, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA