WHAT a whirlwind lately. Lots of travel between here and Vermont. Got back home last evening. I owe you a report on the latest there, but first a word on Phantom’s End, the Wrack and Ruin chapter that wrapped up while I was gone Saturday.
This is longish and of interest to Phantom phans, all others be warned. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at: why this story? why now? why are we watching the Phantom die?
In August, the Phantom was shot down by Manju, a young woman in Arunachal Pradesh, India. Had the fates gone in a slightly different direction, instead of the Phantom’s killer Manju might have become the mother of his grandchildren; the mother of a 23rd Phantom yet to be.
For those who came in late, here’s what’s going on:
The Wrack and Ruin saga started sixteen months ago, on May 24, 2021. The Phantom sets out to free Savarna Devi from Gravelines Prison. There, on the trail to the Rhodian frontier, Old Man Mozz stops the Phantom to warn him of a vision he’s had: if Savarna goes free, the Walker line of Phantoms will end. If he tries to free Savarna, the Phantom will be shot by a Rhodian soldier and in a fever he’ll say something to Savarna that leads her to go to India where the Phantom’s son is studying. There, Savarna will gun down the city’s chief constable, an enemy she’s been searching for ever since she was a child slave held aboard a ship he had hijacked. The Phantom’s son will be implicated in that revenge killing, a foreign power will bomb the city, innocent people will die, and Kit the younger will devote his life to a Himalayan guerrilla war, ever seeking vengeance for his dead friends, his dead tutor and the lost city. In the words of Mozz, the Phantom’s son will become everything a Phantom must never be.
Kit’s disappearance wrecks the Walker family. Diana leaves the Phantom. Heloise wants nothing to do with her father or the legend. Wrack and Ruin all around—and from what?—the Phantom in bold action to save a life.
Finally, the Phantom tries to set all things right again by going to India to search for Kit. And there, in that search, he loses his life in a fight with the militia his son commands.
A case of mistaken identity.
After the fact, Kit Walker finds out his people had cornered and killed the Phantom.
Whether you’ve followed the strip for six years or 60 years, you’re aware that the concept Lee Falk created has a rather death-charged foundation under it. The slaughter of a ship’s crew at sea leaves a sole survivor. He washes up on a remote shore in East Africa. Some days later, on that shore, he finds the corpse of the man he saw kill his father in the fight for the ship.
On the skull of his father’s killer, the survivor dedicates his life to fighting piracy, greed, injustice, cruelty in all its forms.
He becomes the 1st Phantom, dies violently in that role, and 19 of his descendants follow. They all meet a bloody end in the fight against evil.
Until we get to the 21st Phantom. Ever since he came on the scene in 1936, readers, some with anticipation, many more with dread, have wondered if and when he’ll meet the fate of his ancestors.
In keeping with our theme, you’re aware the craft is ending—dying if you like. The craft of writing and drawing comics for newspaper syndication has been going away for two generations now, going by slow degrees. It’s not unreasonable to foresee that one day, a day more likely sooner than later, the craft will be a thing of the past.
So as the writer, how do you get ahead of that?
For years now I’ve been thinking the way to do it is to write a story that puts the death of the 21st Phantom in the reader’s hip pocket; a story that creates a track-switching device that activates itself under certain conditions. The way to do that, I thought then and think now, is to show his death in a secondary timeline, one that may or may not ultimately become his present experience in the Phantom universe.
That’s what this story does, the Wrack and Ruin saga. Because here’s the thing: when the strip is canceled, when it goes the way of Flash Gordon, Terry and the Pirates, Johnny Hazard, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, Secret Agent X-9, Buz Sawyer, all the great adventure strips of old, you can bet it’ll go without notice and the lore will be left hanging. It’ll be left incomplete. What happened to the Phantom? Did he die? How did he die?
Well, now you know. This is how.
What I set out to do in the Wrack and Ruin saga is to create a way of thinking about the Phantom’s death; to tell the story of the Phantom ending without him ending, and without us being there to see him end in a present timeline we won’t be permitted to witness.
It’s been on my mind for quite a few years, and, in recent weeks, with entire newspaper chains canceling their entire comics lineup, News Corp in Australia, Lee Newspapers here in the States, I’ve been wondering whether I hadn’t come awfully close to putting off this story just a bit too long.
Let’s say in The Breakout, the new chapter that started today, the Phantom manages to spring Savarna from Gravelines Prison without getting shot. In the Mozz prophecy, that wound was the root of all the catastrophes that followed. It’s what sent Savarna to India to kill Chief Constable Jampa. (We dealt with that in this space last winter.)
It’s what caused a foreign aggressor to attack the Mountain City.
It’s what separates the Phantom’s son from the legend and sends him into a foreign war that is his doom.
So in The Breakout, let’s say the Phantom, armed with what he knows of the Mozz prophecy, manages to avoid getting shot at Gravelines. I’m not saying he does or he doesn’t; but if he somehow does manage to steer the prophecy off course, doesn’t go out of his head with fever, doesn’t say anything that sends Savarna off to kill Jampa, the Phantom, in that event, seems likely to go on to other adventures, no?
That suits me. I hope it suits you. But it doesn’t change what’s happening to the craft. So when the strip is ultimately canceled, as one day canceled it will be, here’s where we are.
No matter what happens at Gravelines as The Breakout unfolds, the Phantom’s death in India remains out there, waiting to happen, by a chain of events other than the one Mozz has seen.
The old guy said as much in the strip published last Thursday.
Like Mozz, we’re left to hold these two possibilities in mind. But this much is certain: if you wake up one day to find the strip is no more, this is what happened.
Maybe it went away on a cliffhanger Saturday, this Phantom story told in newspapers around the world since 1936. Maybe it went away on an obscure Wednesday. But now there’s no one writing that the Phantom’s alive, no one drawing his continuing adventures on the hero’s journey.
If, after fighting evil seven days a week for 86 years, he’s no longer out there, where is he?
He’s here.
The prophecy, in its own good time, came true.
Five years ago, when you saw the Phantom looking over his shoulder with a vague unease, he might as well have been thinking of newspaper stock watchers, syndication bean counters, readers’ changing habits, the generations rolling on as they will.
In the event I might be wrong about the strip, wrong about the Phantom living on borrowed time, consider this alternative:
Let’s say when the world turns, and turns again, and Mike Manley and Jeff Weigel and I are all haunting our urns in due course, the Phantom’s owners, be it King Features Syndicate or Gannett, that thing that devours newspaper assets and spits out the bones, let’s say, in defiance of all the odds we can see from here, the Phantom’s owners want to spend money paying writers and artists to keep the Phantom alive—alive for whatever reason; maybe they think having the strip in current production is good for merchandising, good for selling TV and movie options. I’m not persuaded, but let’s say they are.
Well, in that case, you know where the 21st Phantom is: he’s out there doing whatever it is they have him doing. The prophecy timeline never became his present timeline.
He is, in that case, not here.
The Phantom’s not under this pile of rocks because there’s been no silencing of the canon, no abrupt end, no narrative emergency of the sort I’ve felt a need to prepare for. In that case, do not break glass; do not reach for that final lore-rounding death Mike and I have just shown you.
If the strip goes on, the reader can credibly believe that when Mozz revealed the prophecy to Diana, as you saw him do last Wednesday…
… he will have somehow knocked the Phantom’s fate off course for the better. The Phantom is not shot to death in India.
Without getting overly meta about it, you see the meaning behind the imagery: an unmarked grave in a far country, lost to time. If the strip disappears one day, the Phantom disappeared one day. You saw it with your own eyes in a prophecy timeline, one that, upon cancellation, became the present timeline all by itself.
Phantom’s End has primed it to do so.
I’m not about to pretend the business isn’t going away when it clearly is. If you need a bystander on this death watch, dear reader, someone to go along to get along, dress up the 1970’s pap that Falk phoned in while mostly busy on other matters, rewrite you The Tale of the Gooley-Gooley Witch nineteen different ways, I’m not your man.
At this time in the life and death of the business model, I felt it was my responsibility—my privilege—to grapple with the Phantom’s final days head-on. For a couple of decades now I’ve been entrusted with a beloved character read around the world by millions at the height of the craft. If the strip goes away, that’s bad. What, then, has happened to the character? Clearly the answer must be: Nothing good.
Or so I posit.
It must be said, too, that Falk influenced me on the Mozz prophecy, insofar as Mozz doesn’t see the 21st Phantom interred in the Crypt of the Phantoms.
Falk could have put him there in the 1950s. He could have put a 22nd Phantom in the crypt in the 1980s. Why didn’t he?
Unless I’m reading my own inclination as his, I think Falk recognized that the 21st Phantom is uniquely the Phantom; he’s not just another cut-out figure in a 21-Phantom lineup. So, no, he doesn’t pass into history in the same way as his 20 forebears. As long as someone’s writing the strip and someone’s drawing it, the 21st Phantom is alive and well in the eternal present of his prime.
I think that was Falk saying this isn’t the death-charged universe it appears to be. There’s a little bit of immortality at its core. The 21st Phantom doesn’t uphold the legend—he is the legend. Ghost Who Walks… Man Who Cannot Die.
A bit of an aside here that comes to mind just now: the Wrack and Ruin saga had to happen in the daily strip rather than the Sunday, if only because the Sunday is where we lean more toward the fantasy tradition Falk established. It’s the natural home for stories with more magic in them, tales that require a greater suspension of disbelief, The Fire Peak Tribe, The Visitor, and the story Jeff and I are working on now, Return to the Temple of the Gods.
Part of that is simply a function of how much space we can open up for Sunday art.
In the daily strip, where space is so much tighter, we lean more toward realism (insofar as a strip about a hero in purple tights can be real.) Real in the sense that in the Wrack and Ruin saga the Phantom is fully subject to the human condition. He acts as a moral agent in the flawed ways that separate real people from… comic book characters?
So the daily side it was to be, and the powers of Old Man Mozz would be the narrative device. Mozz would place the 21st Phantom at a moral crossroads and we’d tell the story of the Phantom’s death without killing him off in the present timeline.
In 2017 I wrote a test run on the concept in a story called The Curse of Old Man Mozz. In that tale, Mozz warned of a lethal set of circumstances gathering around the Phantom.
In the end, the prophecy proved out; it was dead-nuts on. Mozz saw things happening exactly as they would: a coward, the weakest man in a criminal gang, one who hid instead of fighting the Phantom, would shoot him in the back when the fight was over.
Even the Phantom felt his time had come.
The Phantom mops up the gang, drops scores of badasses in their tracks…
In the end it was only a clever ruse by Diana that changed the outcome by putting Babudan and his deadly bow at the would-be death scene with the Phantom.
Back at Skull Cave, Diana knows she’s meddled with forces no one understands. Not even Mozz.
That test run did two things that bear today on the Wrack and Ruin saga: It showed that Mozz accurately sees events that have yet to happen, and that small changes along the way can knock those trajectories off course. Or maybe not. Maybe fate simply won’t allow it. We don’t know. Maybe fate will insist on correcting itself to deliver the Phantom to the same destination. That’s what keeps the prophecy timeline in play as we move on into other storylines.
Instead of Diana trying to alter the Phantom’s fate through Babudan, this time it’s Mozz trying to alter it through Diana.
Even Mozz doesn’t know if the deception he’s engaged in can succeed.
The old seer’s wily, but honestly so. A year ago, when Mozz stopped the Phantom on the trail to Gravelines, he put him on notice that deception was a tool he was willing to use.
Here, three chapters ago, Mozz gave you a look at the need to hold the prophecy timeline in a perpetual state of possibility. When Mozz said all time, he meant all time; when he said final record, he meant final record.
So then came a chapter break, and the deception theme resumed, and with it a grand bargain. the Phantom will put Savarna’s rescue on hold if Mozz will agree not to do what he was about to do: tell his prophecy tale to others.
A close reader will wonder… why that middle panel? Why doesn’t Mozz answer immediately?
Because he’s formulating his deception. By panel 3 he knows exactly how he’ll get what he wants. “Not a word” is how.
But a mere deception is within his grasp and he has seized it! The Phantom doesn’t know that.
As of today’s strip he still doesn’t know.
So that was a year ago.
By April of this year, Mozz has recorded his prophecy. And here he speaks of deception again.
When Mozz takes a Chronicle from the shelf, we take it for the one he wrote; the one we saw him place on the shelf the night before.
It’s not.
And so the tale of the Phantom’s death unfolds…
Manju’s first shot finds the Phantom at long range.
Note the dark glasses coming off, the “mask” of his everyday alter ego, Walker* (*for the Ghost Who Walks). Here and there a few sharp readers picked up on what that meant: they knew they were going to see the Phantom’s unmasked face for the first time in 86 years.
Shot through the right lung, he lies unconscious for a while, then tries to stand.
He hallucinates his ancestors commanding him to stand; or, if you happen to have a metaphysical outlook on this life and others, you may choose to see his ancestors as really there. And here we see his unmasked face for the first time.
Mike and I had a conversation about eye color. He felt strongly they should be blue. I wasn’t strongly against it, so… there you have it—the Phantom has had blue eyes all these years.
Though fatally wounded, he will, of course, stand. It’s the Phantom way. He means to face his unseen killer for the coup de gras.
He knows his death has come at the hands of an unknown. Not one of the notorious villains he’s battled over the years.
And the thing you have to love about the Phantom is his optimism. He sees things in their best light right to the end. At least he knows that, true to his oath, he’ll die a Phantom’s death.
His final thought, naturally, must be of Diana. Forget for a moment that he fathered twins with Savarna after Diana left him. (The Phantom, alone in the Deep Woods, is, after all, still a man.)
Notice how Mike put a death head in Diana’s hair as the Phantom’s consciousness fades to black. Virtually no one saw it on the first day it appeared.
That wasn’t in the script. It was just another brilliant bit of inspiration that Mike never fails to bring to the work.
So the agreement has been concluded: the Phantom postponed his rescue of Savarna, returned to the Deep Woods with Mozz, gave him time to write his Chronicle, and now the Phantom will ride off to free Savarna.
Remember when the Phantom said he was going to put one over on Mozz?
As the Phantom rides off to free Savarna, Mozz, too, keeps to the letter of their bargain.
So that was where we were two days ago, Saturday, October 1, 2022. With that chapter behind us, Phantom’s End, here’s how it all falls out: If and when the Phantom strip is canceled, that is, if the character’s owners stop paying writers and artists to keep the lore alive, the reader will know their hero’s fate could not be changed. The reader will know that while the machinations of Mozz may have changed some things, changed them by arming the Phantom with knowledge of the prophecy, by delaying his arrival at Gravelines, perhaps by passing the Chronicle of Mozz to Diana—they did not succeed in bringing about the ultimate outcome Mozz wanted.
The prophecy will have come true. The Phantom will have gone to India to search for his son.
His death will have happened in the off-panel space of Phantom stories left untold. He will have died in strips never written, drawn or published.
Phantom’s End will have happened in exactly the way the Mozz prophecy said it would; as you saw it happen in the strips published in July and August. That’s the only end-of-lore conclusion that makes any sense.
Phantom’s End is how the Phantom ends if and when his owners end him.
At the same time, the story hangs together in the here and now. Or it will when the final chapters are written. You can read this story in a vacuum and it stands up; doesn’t matter what happens or doesn’t happen at the head office.
Now that you’ve seen the Phantom die, understand that this is a good thing.
It’s a good thing because if the strip continues—he doesn’t die this way.
He doesn’t die at all. He remains in action, in the eternal present he’s inhabited since 1936.
I expect these two possibilities to exist side by side for years to come, if years is what we have. This death you saw will always be out there somewhere, in abeyance, until such time as the decision is made for us and one timeline becomes the other.
Now that the template of his death is in the record, we’re likely to revisit it from time to time; in dreams, I imagine, or in conversation among the characters who know the prophecy. It’ll be seen from different perspectives. And notwithstanding what I said about the Sunday strip and how it’s not the daily strip, I want Jeff to have his shot at drawing the Phantom’s death as well.
As for the Chronicle of Mozz, it’s a work in progress. The old coot will likely keep working on it, precisely because Phantom’s End does remain a possible outcome in an unpublished present.
I’ll keep you informed on what Mozz is up to. I suspect he may choose to write of the adventures of Kit and Manju in the Himalayan war, either before the Phantom’s death or in that single year remaining to Kit afterwards. And Mozz may write of Savarna’s life in the Deep Woods, where, as a single mother, she raises the Phantom’s second set of twins, the first generation of the Devi line of Phantoms.
Do keep this in mind: the two possible outcomes now hanging in the balance—delight if the strip continues, dismay should it not—are possible only because Mozz sees unerringly and because what he sees unerringly is not necessarily inevitable. Anyone who can’t hold that paradox in mind is going to be vexed and hopelessly lost on this timeline-hopping thing Mike and I have been up to.
This past week, you saw Mozz trying to change the Phantom’s future by doing the same thing that changed it once before in The Curse of Old Man Mozz. Because what Mozz sees is a curse and a burden to him, he’s maneuvered to break his word to the Phantom and reveal the prophecy to Diana.
The question is: what does Diana potentially change now that she enters the narrative as a moral agent? Maybe everything, maybe nothing. Or maybe things will just seem to have changed at first; maybe the Phantom will make it to the end of The Breakout alive, but ultimately his destination remains the same: an unmarked grave in the faraway wilderness of Lostphanistan.
Some of these threads will play out in the chapters remaining in the Wrack and Ruin saga, maybe three chapters to go, I think. And you’ll see them at work in the stories that follow. If they follow. And for as long as they may follow.
Tony DePaul, October 3, 2022, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
Tony: Just wanted to take a few seconds to say that this story was finally published in Norway this week in a beautiful, big paperback. I have read almost every Phantom story ever written by Falk and the Scandinavian production (as well as every story you’ve written), it is possible this might be the finest, most sophisticated of the character’s history. An astonishing achievement! I love how the Phantom’s inherent goodness may become his downfall, and even with what Mozz reveals to him, he still can’t stop himself from saving his old friend from prison, it seems a fitting, poetic “ending.” I am glad I managed to wait this long to read it to actually get the experience of this collected edition. Well done.
That’s it exactly, Paul. The Phantom does what he thinks is right even if it puts everything at stake, his life, his marriage, his son’s destiny. It was an interesting story to work on. I’ll write more on this line of continuity as time goes on.
How did you happen to find this post? Nowadays, it seems, things are forgotten almost as soon as they’re written. This one is fairly vintage, over 2 years old.
Thanks for replying Tony! I like to think I have a pretty good memory (my wife strongly disagrees!), and came across this post via ChronicleChamber.com two years ago, delayed reading it then in fear of spoilers but recalled its existence after finishing the adventure. Truly a fascinating “commentary track” to the episode.
Jeez, you’re organized, Paul. For safekeeping, we’ll give you the nuclear codes for the next four years.
Your comment inspired me to make it easier for readers to find what they most like to read here, so I’ve created The Phantom, a new category on the home-page sidebar. I could remember, off the top of my head, eight posts about the Phantom over the last several years. I hope to find the rest but… I kind of dread having to look through and recategorize all my posts back to the beginning. I’ve been scribbling this nonsense way too long.
While I was at it, I also created a category called Public Affairs, given that I fully intend to think an occasional MAGA critique out loud between now and 2028. I have plenty of Trump voters among my friends. Given that I value their friendship, I want to make it easy for them to find what they like here at the Nickels, which also means making it easy to avoid material that may tend to accelerate them (as will events, inevitably, I believe) toward the buyers’-remorse horizon.
Showing of Phantom’s eyes is not at all justified. Few things are to be continued as mystery. The best sketch for old man Mozz was drawn by Sir Sy Barry. Why didn’t you copied from there? End of 21st Phantom is not digested. After all, we all grew up reading the stories of 21st Phantom.
Sorry I didn’t see your message right away. I was on the road in Canada, just arrived home.
Well, about the eyes: Have we seen them? I’m not persuaded that we have. Given the artifice of the dual-timeline narrative, if the lore doesn’t come to an end, then, no, we haven’t. Kit the younger never disappeared in Arunachal Pradesh, thus the Phantom never went there to search for him; the Phantom was never shot down by Kit’s girlfriend, Manju, and we never saw his eyes.
About Mozz: Sy Barry is indeed the Phantom artist that all others are measured against. That said, Mike and Jeff are among the very best to carry the lore forward in the post-Barry era. Is there a particular Sy Barry image you have in mind? If so, please send me the publication date, I’ll take a look.
I come to the party late and I didn’t bring chips. This was such a great read. I’m so glad I found this and grateful that you took the time to write this. You putting everything in context was a godsend. I hope the Phantom is able to continue, but “ending the strip without ending the strip” is brilliant. Again thank you and Mike Manley for telling the tale that needs to be told before it is too late.
Thank you, Bill. I’ll forward your comment to Mike.
The insight you’ve provided here is fascinating reading. I’ve been following The Phantom since the mid-70s. Yes; the world is changing, and I don’t think it’s for the better. Too many these days just don’t have the patience to watch and follow stories like this unfold over the span of several months. I also suspect too many in the newspaper biz have no idea how to effectively make the jump to the internet paradigm.
I do hope, tho, that we all will be able to continue reading his exploits well into the future.
Thank you!
It’s true, Jon. The gag-a-day strips took over a long time ago, and here we are with the Phantom, still bucking the trend by asking readers to invest their attention for the long haul. Thanks for the good word on the Nickels and for hanging in there on the Wrack and Ruin journey.
How does everyone feel about Kit not being interested in becoming the 22nd Phantom?
I kind of love the idea — I know this lineage thing is part of the character’s mythos, but it’s the one thing I have an issue with. It’s what makes the character a pre-modern hero, the idea that they are following a path that was selected for them.
The Phantom is a pre-modern hero! 🙂 That’s his charm. I think it explains how and why the strip has somehow defied the odds for the last 30 or 40 years. And it likely explains why the occasional New Coke (by Moonstone, et al) never finds a sustainable audience.
This is always the question: what’s outdated and must go and what’s foundational and mustn’t be messed with?
Over time, some things in the canon have clearly needed to change. Falk saw that, if a bit late. The colonial stink is gone, the Phantom as jungle lawgiver. Nowadays he’s in the culture as opposed to over it. He’s quite reliant on the Bandar. They make it possible for him to do the things he does, maintain the illusion. But the family succession is an easy call for me, Nikolas: I wouldn’t dare try to coax that stick out of this jenga pile.
About Kit: he would otherwise be keen to carry on the family legend; it’s why he was so eager to go to the Himalayas in the footsteps of the 11th and 16th Phantoms (The Twins’ Futures, 2015-16). But the intervening experience he had there, the bombing of the mountain city, the death of Kyabje Dorje, those things really derailed the way he thinks. You see it in the subtext of the September 15 strip, where Kit says things should have turned out differently but “I can’t do anything about that now.”
Of course he can do something about it: he can disenthrall himself from the bloodlust, bring his old man’s body home to Bangalla and swear the oath as the 22nd Phantom. But he’s too damaged to see that.
Thank you for the very comprehensive update, I along with many others of my generation will hate to see the Phantom disappear. I follow via a comicskingdom subscription as it saves me from hunting for a paper that still carries comics.
This is an interesting tale with I suspect many more twists ahead of us.
On a side note if time ever permits a tale of Kit and Heloise learning to fly, drive and use weapons as part of their future could be an interesting tale.
Thanks again for the time and effort you put into telling a great story
I don’t care for the culture at Comics Kingdom but the service itself is definitely a good value; it’s inexpensive and you get access to more newspaper comics than anyone would ever have time to read. I have no idea whether CK alone can support keeping the Phantom strip in production, but at some point we’re bound to find out. Thanks for reading, Norbert.
An excellently written piece — but, I feel I must correct a couple of things:
First, you wrote, “…when the strip is canceled, when it goes the way of Flash Gordon, Terry and the Pirates, Johnny Hazard, Steve Roper, Mike Nomad, Secret Agent X-9, Buz Sawyer, all the great adventure strips of old…”
You listed Steve Roper and Mike Nomad as separate strips, when clearly, they were not. It was titled “Steve Roper & Mike Nomad”. (Originally, it was called simply “Steve Roper”; later on, they added Mike Nomad’s name to the title, and remained that way until the strip was cancelled.)
And second, you showed a panel that said that the Lee Enterprises line of newspapers were “cancelling comic strips”. The panel makes it sound like they wouldn’t have comic strips at all, but that just isn’t the case. They ARE going to have comic strips, just not the ones from Comics Kingdom. They have switched to Andrews-McMeel/Universal, or GoComics.
Right on both counts, thank you. I read the Steve Roper strip in the Philadelphia Bulletin as a kid, and at some point they did start calling it Steve Roper and Mike Nomad. Mike Nomad was the coolest guy still wearing a crew cut in the late 60s. And he rode motorcycles! That had my full attention.
I am sure we will see you riding up the mountains in Arunachal someday…Ladakh is another place for bikers to have fun in the mountains…do keep us posted so we can catch up with you 🙂
I did want to ask you this Tony…any specific reason for placing his ‘probable’ death in India ? Is it because the legend started in India ( Falk placed it in eastern India before correcting and moving it to Africa)
I kind of liked the nonspecific geography of the early strips but it was definitely a little weird. Wait a minute, uh, pygmies in…? where are we? the East Indian Ocean somewhere?
I think I picked Arunachal Pradesh only because it was cool to have Kit go on a real journey for his education, an adventure, somewhere seriously far from home, somewhere exotic and quite foreign from anything he was familiar with in East Africa. And I have motorcycling friends in the region who ride up north en masse to make the point this is India, not China. Who knows, maybe before I’m dust I still have time to ride up to Arunachal Pradesh with them for general biker-type misbehavior, you know… hoot & holler, moon the Chinese border guards… I definitely would like to see Assam, Nagaland, that whole region before I’m washed up.
Might have gotten there by now had not life taken the lymphoma twist three years ago in the Arctic. I have to admit, that did quite a thorough job on me in the ass-kicking department.
Although it was not intentional, I love the ‘meta’ aspect of The Phantom dying in one of the countries where the comic is most revered. Great story, probably one of the greatest ever in the strip’s history, and great analysis here. Thank you!
Thanks, Nikolas. Glad you’re enjoying the story. India made sense, too, because of the Savarna connection, obviously; Jampa could have holed up anywhere in the world, I suppose, but, his native land, Savarna’s native land, as far inland as possible, far removed from the scene of his crimes… It all seemed to fit.
Wow. This was a great read Tony. Amazing to see how much thought you put in behind writing these stories (while at the same time continuing your many other engagements and ‘adventures’). I think all those complaining should read this article..it should help to clear their misconceptions!
Yes..it is sad to see the comic strip being removed from the newspapers but maybe they will come back someday in digital form (as editorial cartoons have). Let’s be optimistic. Like Phantom!
Glad to know you’re enjoying the Phantom strips and the Nickels, Amir. I’m going to try to get around to a construction update from Vermont later this week.
Nothing to add to the comments and compliments that no doubt already have you blushing or groaning. Many thanks for this summary… I’m sure many current commenters will refer to it for years.
No worries, nor blushing, nor groaning 🙂 Thanks for reading.
Here’s hoping the Phantom lives on for many more years. What’s happening to newspapers today is so sad.
We ink-stained wretches are challenged to become pixel-stained wretches, Ellie 🙂
Very clever and engaging storytelling. As a definite Phantom phan I hope there will be many new adventures to follow, of course, but this brilliantly allows closure if it becomes necessary. Thanks for the very detailed explanation of the reasons for the different story paths, looking forward to see how it shapes out.
Thanks, Bill. I don’t write about the Phantom often but whenever I do I’m surprised to hear from even non-phans who read it to the end and are interested enough to ask questions. The process seems to grab them, not necessarily the lore.
You did it, Tony. Amazing, incredible, epic. It all came together. It has been worth the effort to keep up with the story.
Now we get to see, for as long as the strip shall run, I guess, a possibly different future.
I believe this is like our own lives. We know they will end sooner or later, we just don’t know how and when. Sometimes illness gives us hints. Kit has seen a scenario.
It’s no doubt the deepest, most nuanced story I have read in over 60 years of reading comic strips. Kudos! We shall see what comes next.
Next Week: New Adventure as the Phantom makes the real journey to Gravelines.
Very true, Joe, we all see those scenarios opening up and closing. Have definitely seen that on the motorcycling front where something close happens and holy moley that was two paths diverging in a wood! 🙂 Happy to come out on this path.
Thanks for sticking with the story, and for the vote of confidence in chapters yet to be.
Wonderful Tony, this will be a real Phantom treasure for decades to come. So many highlights has come from your pen since you took over the strip. Still I remember one of the very best Phantom adventures written, the epic JOHN X, drawn by Paul Ryan. This story has been collected in comic books both in Australia, Norway and Sweden, luckily enough. It has the same atmosphere and adventurous mood you will find in Falk & Barrys classics BULLETS’ TOWN (1966) THE TRIAL OF PATROLMAN ZOKKO (1973). In October Egmont will release a Phantom yearbook in Norway with the exciting and unusual DePaul/Manley story THE LLONGO FOREST. The legend continues…
Thanks, Jostein. Keep The Llongo Forest in mind in the weeks ahead.
This was such a great read.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: part of my love for this strip is that I get to read your work. It is always a sincere pleasure, and I have no doubt that I’ll get to enjoy more of your writings beyond the life of The Phantom. Whenever that end may be, I am happy to see it through.
Thanks, Ryan. In a parallel universe the production design on the 1996 Phantom movie was geared toward adults and not selling happy meals to 8-year-olds. It became a franchise, knocked the sour old Dark Knight out of his adolescent funk and off the pinnacle of the Box Office pig pile. Humbled by the example of a real hero, Bruce Wayne checked his anger at the door and went on to lead a quiet life, made the world a better place finding homes for orphaned hedgehogs or whatever. Ah, if only.
Tony, that is all pretty damned epic. I hope to see more from The Phantom and you for a very long time.
Thank you, Brad. A few minutes ago I had email from India about a possible plan to publish the story as a trade paperback. It would be an easier read in big bites, for sure.
Yes, India has a long history of Phantom & Mandrake publication both in newspapers & in comics. Allow me to tell the world at large that I have in my collection EVERY SINGLE phantom & Mandrake comics published in India so far in Hindi or English language, starting with the very first Indrajal comics published back in 1964, followed by Diamond comics, Egmont Imagination India, Euro Books, & presently Shakti Comics & Regal Publishers, both releasing phantom stories written by Tony DePaul. I already have all issues of Shakti & Regal, including Regal’s “Python TPB”. So whenever Shakti or Regal will publish the current Phantom story in India, rest assured that it will reach my home ASAP.
Wow! You’re a collector’s collector, Abhinav. If I were a collector all my stuff would have coffee rings on it or get left out in the rain. I’m hard on possessions.
Thanks Tony.
Many questions answered for me. I lament adventures of the live phantom…
Thanks for your honesty.
Thanks for reading, Tim. Glad it served to shine a little light into the otherwise dark corners of what I had in mind.
So many other things need to get done this week I knew if I didn’t get this thing written this morning it wouldn’t get done. Headed back to VT by Friday at the latest.
Thanks very much for taking the time and trouble to write this. It’s sad that the business of comic strips, especially Sunday editions, is coming to an end, but such is the way of the world. Writers and artists have already been adapting to the digital world for some time, and I suspect some version of the art form will find a way to survive in that universe. History isn’t a straight line that moves in one direction; it’s kind of a spiral that touches the same points as it makes its circular motions. I remember fondly my childhood, when my parents would get three Sunday papers and I started following The Phantom in the Washington Post.
I did see the death head in Diana’s hair; great Easter egg by Manley!
If there is a Phantom film, I hope you’re involved in it.
Thanks for following the strip, Stephen.
A film, well… not impossible but highly unlikely. Maybe TV? Either way, I’ll read about it in the trades like everybody else. Hearst/KFS is a closed book even to those of us on the payroll. Their story is that they typically are bound by NDA’s with option holders.
Greetings, Mr DePaul.
I’m Abhinav from India, a long time Phantom and Mandrake fan.
For me the highlight of your post is this–
“It must be said, too, that Falk influenced me on the Mozz prophecy, insofar as Mozz doesn’t see the 21st Phantom interred in the Crypt of the Phantoms.
Falk could have put him there in the 1950s. He could have put a 22nd Phantom in the crypt in the 1980s. Why didn’t he?
Unless I’m reading my own inclination as his, I think Falk recognized that the 21st Phantom is uniquely the Phantom; he’s not just another cut-out figure in a 21-Phantom lineup. So, no, he doesn’t pass into history in the same way as his 20 forebears. As long as someone’s writing the strip and someone’s drawing it, the 21st Phantom is alive and well in the eternal present of his prime.
I think that was Falk saying this isn’t the death-charged universe it appears to be. There’s a little bit of immortality at its core. The 21st Phantom doesn’t uphold the legend—he is the legend. Ghost Who Walks… Man Who Cannot Die.”
You’ve written my exact thoughts here. Yes, for me, the 21st Phantom is “our” Phantom (as Falk himself described him many times), he is the only Phantom that truly matters to me, riding on Hero with Devil at his side & maybe Fraka flying overhead. I’ve been reading newspaper strips & comics since decades now, & as long as it’s about “our” 21st Phantom, I’ll definitely keep reading the Phantom.
I remember him using that term as well, Abhinav. From 1936 to 1999, even when Falk wrote about previous Phantoms and their adventures, it generally had to do with some effect handed down to the 21st Phantom. Falk definitely saw 21 as the center that all other aspects of the lore would revolve around.
You’re right, Mr DePaul.
Now, a little off topic request. It’s been a while since we met Fraka, Phantom’s falcon gifted to him by the little people, in a Phantom story. Do think about writing a story featuring Fraka in it.
This is how I see… the pygmies chanting….. THE PHANTOM IS DEAD.. LONG LIVE THE PHANTOM