Comics With or Without Pulp Talkback: Episode 5
Pants
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Guest Co-Host Lance Kizer assists with discussing 'Old Jungle' Sayings, Family Legacies, Legends, and the Color Purple. We give an in depth look at the Ghost Who Walks from its origins, newspaper strips, comics, novels, and live-action interpretations. Grab Devil and saddle up Hero and join in the fun as we look at the Phantom. (1:49:25)
Listen here.
Listen here.
Comments
(*For the Ghost Who Walks) :D
The Phantom was the only adventure strip my local newspaper carried (well, unless you count Mark Trail, but really, why would you?), so my friends and I all read it pretty regularly as kids. We always thought the dialogue and action were so sparse, though... a friend of mine used to joke about there being captions like "Next week: a verb!"\
Funny thing, though... we got the b&w dailies, but not the color Sundays, so none of us knew the Phantom's costume was purple until the Defenders of the Earth cartoon came out! The way it was shaded in the paper, I always sort of assumed it was red.
I was probably reading the Phantom newspaper strip before I began reading comic books, and I read it every day for many years. Your assessment that he was more a more upbeat, swashbuckling type of hero than the brooding avenger is spot on, but that was typical of the newspaper adventure heroes. In that sense he was no different than Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant, Terry Lee, or Captain Easy. You didn’t really see dark avengers in the newspapers.
It's to bad Aurora didn't release this.
The comic published by Frew is the longest runing comic book in the world (issue 1647# is out now!) Now sadly its not all new matrial, alot is reprints but most phantom works from around the world aside from the american versions (ie moonstone and dynamite ) end up here as well as new australian made stories
Phantom is huge in australia, he is up there with Spider-man Batman and Superman in peoples minds here. often appearing in skit parody shows and such.
Some of the frew run is fantastic comics, those cut out maps of the cave a in alot of these, back stories into past phantoms are here, Some really great action (Phantom vs the assasin in the swamp like arnie vs predator ) some good character studies (walker quiting the leagcay and trying to lead a normal life in new york)
Phantom is so huge over here it is one of the banes of local comic shops, as i said Frew reprints alot, and the main thing the reprint is Phantom 1# , so people find these reprints at garage sales and car boot sales think they have found a "action comics 1# or Detective comics 27, bring it in to claim there riches and get annoyed when they are told its worth nothing (they often think the clerk is trying to rob them)
I love the frew phantom,( i should mention to it is a continuation on the falk scripts of the newspaper strips, so this is the continuing stories of Lee's actual creation not reboots like moonstone or dynamite )
they are found REALLY cheap on ebay, just seach Phantom in australia and grab yourself some great cheap pulpy reads :D
Thanks,
chris
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