Phantom's not good enough for my Granddaughter.

The Phantom was both a daily comic strip and a weekly Sunday strip. The Sunday strips were originally presented in glorious full colour. But they also get printed in black and white. The strip I wanna look at today is from 1955, and it's called A Proper Husband.

The Phantom comic strips had two driving forces for drama back in the day. There were the adventure plots that the Phantom was involved in. Fighting pirates -- that sort of thing. But there was also his romance with Diana Palmer. In fact the romance with Diana was often front and centre as the spur that got him INTO adventures and strips quite often barely had the Phantom in it, for weeks on end, as we followed Diana.

So let's do that. Let's follow Diana for a few weeks, waiting for the Phantom to show up.

Hooo boy. I can already tell this is gunna be good!

Phantom at the Window: Frew #1623

What's going on with that kid's hand?

Well it's been a while since we've seen the Phantom stalking people, so let's talk about Frew #1623, and maybe add a few more images to our already legendary collage.

Maybe? Son we found *seven* new images!

Frew #1673 is Frew's 2012 Annual Special. The Annual Specials are a tradition that's been going since 1991, and this is the 21st Annual Special ever. These books are enormous -- 250-300 page comic books. The equivalent of a trade paperback, and a large one, released to news agents as a regular comic book for $11. It's frickin' awesome.

And this is my first one since getting back into Phantom last year, so I'm totally chuffed to get Frew #1623. So why don't we take a little look at it together?

The Phantom Goes To War

That "By Popular Demand" caption isn't just bull crap
like on American comics, this is the most requested
Phantom reprint of all time.

The Phantom Goes To War (also known as The Inexorables) is the sixteenth Phantom story ever published. It began on the 2nd of Febuary, 1942, only a little less than 2 months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It's a somber, violent story, and a lot of it is very out of character for Lee Falk's Phantom. It's rife with racism, hatred and even the story's hero killing. Things Falk avoided all through his career, otherwise.

The story was written entirely by Falk, and drawn by Ray Moore and (after Moore enlisted) Wilson McCoy. Falk himself enlisted while still writing the story, but never missed a single deadline, despite active service.

I guess I should start by saying that this story does not feature a Phantom at the window moment! It's mostly set outdoors, in the jungle. And it's mostly about the Phantom killing Japanese people, not peering at them through windows.

Phantom at the Window -- The Thuggees.

If you were ever to try and study the core elements that make up a Phantom story, or at least an old Lee Falk/Wilson McCoy Phantom story, I don't think you'd ever need to go further than The Thuggees. It's a story from 1949/1950, when Falk had really gotten his writing down, and knew exactly what he was doing with the character.

The tension from strip to strip is amazing. The art is flying at an almost unreasonable pace, and the whole thing is... well... it's seriously worth reading.

I got my copy in Frew #1234, but it's since been reprinted in #1496. I might need to pick up that issue too, because I think there may be some stuff missing from the #1234 printing. Oh well, even with what I think is a slightly incomplete copy of the story, why don't we have ourselves a nice hard look at a classic long-running Phantom story?