The Phantom: The Complete Newspaper Dailies, Volume One, 1936-37 -- Lee Falk and Ray Moore

The local newspaper when I was growing up didn’t carry the comic strip THE PHANTOM, so I never knew anything about the character when I was a kid. MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN, also created and written by Lee Falk, was in the Sunday paper for a while, but I didn’t know anything about the connection between the two strips and was never a Mandrake fan, anyway.

Over the years, as I learned more about comic strips, I was vaguely aware of THE PHANTOM but still hadn’t read any of the old strips. Then when I was in college, one day I went into Reader’s World, the little bookstore across the street from the campus and picked up an Avon paperback called THE STORY OF THE PHANTOM by Lee Falk, which had a nice cover by George Wilson. I knew by then that Falk created and wrote the comic strip, so it seemed like a good bet to learn more about the character.

I read that novel and loved it and wound up buying and reading all 15 books in the Avon series, which were written by Falk, Ron Goulart (as Frank S. Shawn), Basil Copper, Bruce Cassidy (as Carson Bingham), and Warren Shanahan (that may be a pseudonym, too, but if it is, I’m unaware of the actual author). Evidently, Falk actually wrote the novels attributed to him, which is a little unusual in a situation like that. Falk also wasn’t that pleased with the novels by the other authors, but I read ’em all and thoroughly enjoyed the series. I remember reading several of them while sitting on my parents’ front porch, and that was the right place for them.

So by now I knew the character, knew his back-story and some of his publication history, and as time went on I read some of the Phantom comic books (published by Charlton during that era?) and watched the Phantom movie serial with Tom Tyler playing the character.

In recent years, a publisher called Hermes Press has reprinted those novels originally published by Avon, and not only that, they’ve gone back to the character’s origins and reprinted the comic strip. I recently read the first volume, THE PHANTOM: THE COMPLETE NEWSPAPER DAILIES, VOLUME ONE: 1936-37. The first three storylines from the comic strip are included: “The Singh Brotherhood”, “The Sky Band”, and “The Diamond Hunters”.

“The Singh Brotherhood” takes a few days to introduce readers to The Phantom, but Diana Palmer, who eventually becomes the love of his life, appears right away, in the very first strip. She’s an adventuress and explorer on her way back to New York by ship with a load of valuable ambergris she’s discovered. What’s more, she’s located a veritable mother lode of ambergris on the ocean floor, the legendary graveyard of the whales. (Was Falk influenced by Tarzan movies where the bad guys always wanted to find the elephants’ graveyard? Who knows?) Mobsters target the ship, but The Phantom shows up and foils their plans. Turns out the mobsters were actually working for the evil Prince Achmed, who is part of the Singh Brotherhood, a fraternity of pirates that has raided and pillaged for hundreds of years.

This first long storyline finds The Phantom rescuing Diana numerous times, putting the kibosh on various Singh Brotherhood plans, and along the way telling Diana his origin story. The short version (most of you already know this): pirates marooned one of The Phantom’s ancestors on the island nation of Bengalla. (Wait, is it an island or somewhere on the South Asian mainland? I don’t know, and I’m not sure it matters.) The ancestor put on a mask and a costume and battled pirates as The Phantom and swore an oath that his descendants would do the same. I know there’s a timeline somewhere and The Phantom of the 1930s is the 14^th or 15^th Phantom (or something like that). Because it seems that The Phantom never dies, the natives from the jungles of Bengalla call him The Ghost Who Walks. He has a wolf named Devil as his sidekick.

Anyway, eventually The Phantom invades the secret hideout of the Singh Brotherhood and it winds up blowing up real good. But everything leads neatly into the second storyline, featuring a band of female air pirates called the Sky Band.

This storyline also involves The Phantom locating and infiltrating the hidden headquarters of the enemy. In some ways it’s a redo of the first story as The Phantom is captured and escapes, but it’s complicated by romantic rivalry between the Baroness, the leader of the Sky Band, and the beautiful Sala, her second-in-command, over the affections of The Phantom. Diana winds up playing a part in this, too.

The third storyline, “The Diamond Hunters”, definitely takes place in Africa, adding to the early confusion of where exactly all these fictional kingdoms and tribes are located. Such inconsistencies don’t bother me; I just figure The Phantom fights piracy and crime worldwide (a concept that’s really played up in the Avon novels, as I recall). A couple of prospectors stir up a war between rival tribes so they can grab a valuable diamond field. Eventually, Diana gets involved in this storyline, too, and gets kidnapped again so The Phantom has to rescue her. As the book draws to a close, the on-again, off-again love affair between The Phantom and Diana is off again . . . but we all know it won’t stay that way.

I really had a great time reading these newspaper strips. Lee Falk’s scripts are excellent, terse and well-paced and with moments of both humor and high adventure. The art by Ray Moore is great, with just enough detail and top-notch storytelling. He draws really good-looking women, too. I’ve found that some adventure strips are too repetitive when you read collections of them, but that’s not the case with these early Phantom storylines. They move right along like a well-done movie from that era. This volume is available in an e-book edition that can be read for free if you have Kindle Unlimited; that’s how I read it. Used copies of the hardcover edition are available, but they’re pricey. Later volumes in the series don’t seem to be available as e-books, only as expensive hardbacks. The jury’s still out on whether I’ll pick up any of them, but I sure enjoyed this one and if you don’t mind reading digital comics, I give it a very high recommendation.