DO KEEP this on the QT. I don’t like to write much here about the Phantom strip I scribble for King Features Syndicate in New York. Don’t want to draw the trolls from the company’s web site over here to my living room.
This seems worth a mention, though, and might be of general interest: Mike Manley and I just finished up ten consecutive days of pure sequential art!
For ten days, we published no dialogue in the strip, no text narration, just the art.
It was a first in the 86-year history of the strip, our attempt to tell part of the story through an appeal to our readers’ visual literacy alone.
Yesterday’s strip was the first to resume dialogue after this little experiment we did.
The previous ten days had happened between these two panels.
In that interval, we slowed down time to visually tell the backstory between these two characters. In images without words, we told the reader why Savarna pulled the trigger.
Before I show you the art, here’s a little background to get you oriented: Much of the action in this story takes place in a prophecy told by Old Man Mozz. Whether that prophecy or a variation thereof comes to pass will depend on whether the Phantom goes ahead with his plan to free Savarna Devi from her prison cell in Rhodia, a fascist state on Bangalla’s border.
Well hell yeah he’s going to free her! He won’t let Savarna die no matter how dire the prophecy. He’ll get her out and deal with the consequences later. The Phantom’s an optimist; he’ll trust in his ability to somehow alter his destiny for the better.
His optimism is one of the things I love about writing this character. If he were just another troubled, brooding bore, the Batman, the Punisher, I’d have zero interest.
The story we’re telling began on May 24 last year and easily has another year to run, likely more. I’m writing it on a serial basis, staying one chapter ahead of where Mike is at the drawing board.
The first chapter, To Wrack and Ruin at Gravelines, ran for 22 weeks in our subscribing newspapers around the world. The Chronicle of Old Man Mozz ran 12 weeks, and now we find ourselves in the middle of chapter three, Death in the Himalayas. That’ll wind up on April 16. Then we’re on to Phantom’s End, 23 weeks, the chapter where the Phantom’s life ends in the prophecy.
That one’s written, ready to go when Mike needs it. After that I have three more chapters in mind before the saga winds up.
By the time we’re done, it’ll be another first in Phantom lore: the longest-ever daily story since 1936, when Lee Falk inaugurated this venture of ours.
In the prophecy, Savarna’s grateful to the Phantom for springing her from prison, so much so she resolves to turn over a new leaf, to stop taking homicidal revenge on those who have wronged her.
Kit Walker, the Phantom’s son, pops in at a teahouse in a remote mountain city in India. He’s been studying there for a few years with the warrior-scholar Kyabje Dorje. There, Kit sees a woman he recognizes from his youth—Savarna Devi!
We’ve led the reader to believe Savarna’s in town to kill Kit. Her unknown motive is in something the Phantom said to her in Rhodia. He was out of his head at the time, burning up with a fever due to an infected gunshot wound he had sustained at Gravelines.
That’s true, what Mozz just said. Freeing Savarna does destroy the Phantom’s son—just not in the way the Phantom’s thinking about the nature of the threat Savarna may pose. There are many more steps between cause and effect and Mozz is the only one who knows them all.
The Phantom’s a smart man but doesn’t always see what’s what, that’s another thing that makes him a fun character to write. He has no special powers, he’s just a man. He does the best he can acting on incomplete knowledge. The human condition right there.
That said, he gets this one right, just by instinct, but prophecy-wise he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know yet.
You might say he came up with the right answer but to the wrong question.
She turns up in the Himalayas packing heat…
So we think this is the end of young Kit, but then…
Jampa’s been around since a story we published in 2016. He’s a lawman but one with a criminal past, as the reader will soon learn.
Note how Savarna keeps her eyes down when she bellows at Jampa. The reader won’t find out why until the February 12 strip.
This middle panel, when Savarna finally looks up at Jampa—so well done. Everything turns in that look. Jampa doesn’t know it yet but he’s a dead man.
So here’s where we slow down time and go to a place of instantaneous thought where there’s no time for words. The next ten days happen in the time it takes for a single gunshot to sound and a man to fall to the floor.
In that visual space, we see inside Savarna’s head and learn why she journeyed all the way from Africa to shoot Jampa.
This strip below, see her head down? Now we know she had learned that behavior as a child terrorized by criminals. When Savarna shouts a challenge to Jampa 19 years later, she reverts for a moment to this defensive childhood behavior.
Back in real time now. Everything that happened above transpired in the space between these two panels we published yesterday.
Today’s strip…
Way more than I meant to say…
What I really should be doing this evening is re-reading the book on the sinking of the Langley, February 28, 1942. I promised you last time I’d write something about it for this coming Monday.
That said, if you’re not insufferably bored with the Phantom yet, I’ll close with a look at the process, show you a few screenshots of my script so you can see what Mike was working from.
I always learn something new about writing when I see how an artist interprets text. You see where they make the smartest possible compromises on composition, space, and still tell the story effectively.
This is what you see with the pros, I mean to say! Mike on the Monday-through-Saturday Phantom strip, Jeff Weigel on our Sunday narrative.
So that’s how we do it! Lee Falk wrote the strip for 63 years, until his death in 1999, whereupon King Features handed it off to me. Dunno if I’ll write it until I’m 87, as Falk did, but hey, it’s still nothing but fun.
If it felt like work I would have quit years ago.
Tony DePaul, February 24, 2022, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
Great to see the behind the scenes and see how the artist interpret the writer.
Great story
Thanks, Erik. I don’t write much about the Phantom here. That’s an older post you ran across, three months back, I think.
Oddly enough, I think I’m going to write something about the Phantom here tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Considering I am from Assam, which is neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh; this plot line gives a surreal feeling.
Ah, well, surreal does lie on a spectrum. Hopefully it’s a good surreal, Neeraj. Do you follow the strip online or in the Assam Tribune? A friend of mine in Guwahati tells me the story in the paper is some months behind the online narrative. Am I right in thinking that Tribune readers are just now seeing Savarna turn up in the Himalayan city where Kit Walker lives?
As a longtime fan of Tibet and the Himalayas (never been to Arunachal Pradesh, though), this aspect is what got me reading the strip a few years ago. Yes, some aspects are goofy or puzzling (what the hell is Kit Jr. studying? has he joined the Hare Krishna?), but it’s all in good fun, and I can see that you guys have done some research. Of course Africa has a similar history of romantic representation. Anyway, I look forward to seeing where you take all this!
Ah, well, since every Phantom’s a man of the world, Kit’s clearly studying everything! The wisdom of the ages!
Good thing he has no line of communication home during his sojourn in Arunachal Pradesh. Surely he’d slack off if he knew he’s never going to be the 22nd Phantom. At least according to Mozz.
Tony – Though I often snark on the strip (though not at CK.), I want you to know that I have, in fact been enjoying the strip immensely and think you are making wonderful use of Mike’s skills. Reading your script gave me an added layer of pleasure as you described young Jampa’s sartorial preferences as a wife-beater rather than an A-Shirt. It says a lot about what you’re portraying and I’m sure that Mike picked up on it.
I also really appreciate your unwillingness to cater to the bid for clicks that CK encourages. It’s destructive of community and of storytelling. I actually pay for membership there, despite the horrible site design and frequent downtime because I know that it helps to support the talent. Thanks again for your good work.
Thanks, Rich. Especially for being a paying reader. That said, way too little of the $$ makes its way to the creators. Artists are working on rates set 20 years ago. You might know that Mike draws and inks two daily strips for King, the Phantom and Judge Parker. Less well known is that he teaches, publishes a magazine, is busy with commissions. He typically files his Phantom art at 3 or 4 in the morning. It’s a tough job putting a living together in the sunset of the craft. He merits respect but doesn’t get much.
Writers, that’s a different story. Writers can be lazy and cheat their way through, push work onto the artist. If I didn’t care I could file eight pages of copy to cover the 23-week Phantom’s End chapter, nobody would ever say anything. I’ll file 80 pages instead for Mike to labor over in the wee hours.
I don’t blame the guy for losing patience with the class clowns on CK. Can’t understand why he even checks in there, I haven’t in probably 15 years.
Thanks for hanging in with the story, Rich.
What an amazing treat you just served up for us Tony! And what amazing interpretation by Mike!
Thanks, Vincent. I’ve been meaning to ask whether you read the strip online or in print nowadays. The last I knew the Sunday strip was still published in the Kenya edition of The Nation, though Peter Mwaura, its public editor, is not a fan to put it mildly.
Bravo!
Thanks for posting all that fantastic work, Tony. You and Mike certainly click as a duo and it is all absolutely top notch stuff. Keep going until you’re 88 at least!
Thanks for the good word, Kevin. Mike will appreciate kudos from a fellow artist. I know for a fact he’s a fan of your Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow movie. I’m sure I watch it a few times a year. Never gets old!
What a great behind-the-scenes tour. The opposite of the cliche about how a bill becomes a law (how the sausage is made). Your own remarkable story-telling, put into writing and transformed into visual art.
Thanks, Brian. It’s great fun to write for Mike and Jeff. They care so much about the character, the lore, and whether it’ll still be around for us to pass on. What a kick it would have been to do this back in the heyday when newspapers were everywhere, competing only with radio. Millions of people around the world could tell you all about the Phantom. Falk had acres of space every day, four big panels.
For me, it’s fun to look for the little artistic touches that aren’t scripted: Savarna spills her cup of tea when she shouts a challenge to Jampa, the terror of her childhood; Jampa’s shadow falls across the child Savarna as she sleeps under the sink in the ship’s galley; Savarna’s shadow, in turn, falls across Jampa as she creeps up to brand him with the wok.
It’s a treasure hunt every day to me.
Glad you are planning on writing the strip for many more years – you have me on the edge of my chair as I read the strip first thing most mornings (Been following since 2004 and the “Murders in Central Park”). With the series called “Phantom’s End”, the name causes me some angst.
Like all Phantoms, he dies well.
Strike that: Especially well.
One of those commenters let me know this was here. I loved seeing all those strips in sequence. And I’m enjoying Savarna a lot.
Ah, well… sorry to hear that. Not Savarna, the other thing. I’ll never understand why the Phantom’s owners don’t care to run the premier Phantom site in the world. They’d rather count clicks while morons stir the pot. But that’s the media business in an attention economy where even negative attention has shareholder value. Maybe that’s mostly what has shareholder value.
Good thing I’m not a shareholder. 🙂 Just barely a stakeholder.
Couldn’t agree more about the sequence reading. We’re so tight on space every daily strip is really just half a strip. We publish the daily yarn six days a week but I think of it as three strips per week.
Tony, Love your missives. Time for another meet-up!
Long overdue! Thanks for following the scribble, Ellen.
Great to read this Tony..I always wait for you to write more about Phantom in this newsletter. Don’t worry about the trolls..they wont worry you here.
Also I am happy to see a story based close to India.I really wish you would do some stories based in (or around India) as Falk took so much of his early inspiration from India.
And obviously Phantom has a huge following here (currently we have 2 publishers printing Phantom comics in India)
Regards
Amir
New Delhi
India
Thanks, Amir. I’ve been following the news about Shakti and Regal on the Chronicle Chamber site in Australia. Encouraging! It seems the lore will go on.
I was interviewed recently by Ankit Mitra, for Regal. They’re publishing (next month, I think?) a trade paperback on the collected Chatu stories.
Thanks for writing, Amir. Good to hear from you.
Wonderful. Look forward to reading it and also look forward to reading more about Phantom in your newsletter – 🙂
Utterly fantastic Tony, words cannot describe how in awe I am of your visualizing skills, and that Mike can put your thoughts and words into ink on paper. The teamwork is inspiring.
Greatly appreciate your sharing the background work flow that goes into the final telling of the story.
Hey, amigo! You must be hailing me from Mexico. The last I knew you weren’t nearly within striking distance of Houston yet. I’ve got to get back on the road myself, can’t wait.
My granddaughter enjoyed your report on the close-up whale watching. Will post the link below for others to see.
https://www.ridingthehorizon.com/2022/02/february-in-baja-part-vii-san-ignacio.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
It’s great fun to see all the panels sequentially and read the scripts (a first!) as well. I like the concept of the story but I’m waiting to see how the Phantom, forewarned as he is, changes his fate and that of all the players.
Please! No spoilers at NOTM!
Keep up the good work!
There will be lots to talk about when the tale’s told. Interpretation is everything.
Awesome
Keep up the good work Tony
Plastering, painting, plumbing, scribbling, wrenching… gonna…
Super fun to see how the cake is made. You three are a great team.
Thanks, Brad. Are we still in the Houston Chronicle? I seem to think not. Most of our papers are overseas now.
Fantastic work, Tony. Years ago my local Ft. Lauderdale paper took the Phantom, Dick Tracy and Spider Man out of our comics and replaced them with what I would consider now weak “woke” strips with little content.
Shortly after that happened, I was moonlighting in a local restaurant as a pianist with a small band playing adult contemporary music. A writer from the Sun Sentinel approached us at the end of the night, he was there to review the place and liked the band.
When he announced that he was from the Sun Sentinel I jumped all over him about removing my hero the Phantom and Spidey from the paper. The guy ran away! LOL I lost track of the Phantom for years until I discovered the strip online. First thing I read every day. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Phantom, Dick Tracy and the web slinger all in one fell swoop…
Well, at least they weren’t singling out the Phantom. As the Mafia hitman says when he gives you two in the hat, “Nothing personal…”