Mail bag

HERE’S a Phantom fan letter from H. Not his whole name, more like his secret identity. Daughter #3 is handy with Photoshop, so I had her white-out the letters that would reveal H to the world and compromise his ability to move with shadowy stealth, like any good Phantom.

H lives in the States now, but once lived in Australia. That’s where he became acquainted with the Phantom. The Ghost Who Walks, Man Who Cannot Die, is big in Australia.

H heard about me parting ways with King Features Syndicate last summer, but he missed the follow-up report wherein the company and I came to an agreement and I was back on the job. H wants to be a writer someday, might even write the Phantom when I get crumbly enough to start confusing the Ghost Who Walks with Popeye.

H is only 8, so now I have to figure out how to hang on for longer than I thought.

This is H’s second letter, wherein he thanks me for responding to his first. Of course I’m going to respond, it’s quite a novelty to hear from a young Phantom reader. All my other fans are wondering why the Phantom no longer downs a can of spinach before he slugs a guy.

H is bringing his younger brother, M, into the Phantom fold. He lets M read his comics now. M wrote to make me aware of that.

The lads sent me a pack of Tim Tams, the national chocolate biscuit of Australia. The biscuits are named, oddly enough, for the winner of the 1958 Kentucky Derby. Delicious with coffee! The Tim Tams, I mean, not Kentucky Derby winners. Although maybe they are, too.

H sent me a picture of a lizard. I’m hip to rattlesnakes, scorpions, and now, if I ever get around to motorcycling across Australia, I’ll beware of this particular species moving into my sleeping bag.

Flip side of the lizard card.

H sent me a selection of Aussie tattoos. Am I too old to get into body art? Will give it some thought. I shot this pic in a mirror to get the positive image. Weird how everything in the mirror has a halo…

The remark about H carrying a notebook everywhere, that’s because I told him writers must carry notebooks and instantly write down every idea they get. Even the bad ideas. We write down the bad ones to get the next good one!

As you know, the Universe is made of matter, dark matter, and ideas. When you write down your ideas, that’s a tip of the hat to the wellhead. You’ve acquired signal, you’re listening, the Universe sees you listening, the ideas keep coming. If you stop paying attention, the volume gets lower, lower, noise goes up, signal down, static, not even static, channel goes dark.

So do what H does. Carry your notebook.

The comic I sent to H was published in Australia this winter, a 100-page Christmas Special by Frew, the Phantom’s beachhead Down Under. It was a reprint of three stories I had written for daily and Sunday newspapers that subscribe to King Features Syndicate.

One was a crossover between the Phantom and Mandrake the Magician, Lee Falk’s other comics universe from the 1930s. It was a 26-week follow-up to a Falk story from 1995, when King Lothar defeated the authoritarian warlord Otanko, then relinquished the crown to set up his cousin, Monar, as a transitional president of the Twelve Nations.

Falk loathed bullies and blowhards, whether they led gangs, tribes or nations. His stories uphold democracy over strongman rule, and 1995’s “Revolution in Lotharton” is a good example. Here’s a week from the follow-up I wrote, where Monar wins the presidency in his own right. Terry Beatty was the artist on this one.

H sent me a few sketches from this story, and from the others reprinted in Australia.

Here’s The Ghost Who Walks, with a close-up of the skullmark his ring indelibly imprints on your jaw, if you’re a criminal.

Here’s a member of the Jungle Patrol, a Bangallan crimefighting force founded by the 6th Phantom, in 1664. The Patrol has been secretly commanded by Phantoms ever since, right down to the present-day 21st Phantom.

Here’s Otanko, the thuggish strongman thwarted in 1995 and then again on my watch.

Then there’s the tale of Mikey D’Moda, a teenage mob kid caught in an underworld power struggle in Chicago. The Phantom whups bad guys left and right, straightens Mikey out, puts him on the path to good citizenship. This is Terry’s work, too.

All THIS put a smile on my face for a week, of course, as I scribbled new copy for Mike Manley and Jeff Weigel. Mike and Jeff are the talented artists who bring the Phantom to life in newspapers around the world, and online. Jeff started on the Sunday strip about a year ago, when Terry went on to new things. Here’s hoping there are plenty of creative H’s and M’s out there coming up behind us, ’cause we old guys can’t keep doing the cha-cha forever, you know.

Finally, file this under Small World, along the lines of me yakking with a fellow biker I ran into in Alaska, guy from Texas, and finding out he used to work in South America with a guy I know in Pennsylvania whose son is now married to my niece.

The deal in this case: H wrote to me as a school assignment, find a writer you like and send him or her a letter. This is in a town nowhere around here. You’d be on the road for three days to get there by car. But when I write back to H, his teacher recognizes my name. Why? Because she grew up here in Cranston, Rhode Island, and used to come to my house when she was a kid. She was friendly with Daughter #3. They went to elementary school together.

The bride, who remembers little bits of daily life down to the last detail, remembers H’s teacher when she was a child, the street she lived on, the house she lived in; remembers—by name—her mom, her grandmother, her older sister, younger brother… So that’s the latest as we row row row our boats, gently down the stream, merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream.

Tony DePaul, March 25, 2018, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA