The Phantom's choice of attire

carcharion

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Why does he wear purple in jungle environment?

I'm not discussing design flaws here, for the character has been around for a long time and is well accepted that way. I'm asking about practicality.

nweathington

He wears purple because purple is a complimentary color to green, which is the predominant color in the jungle setting of The Phantom Sunday newspaper strip (with the dailies being in black-and-white). It has nothing to do with anything in the world of the Phantom, and everything to do with what will look good in print.

Flagwaver

Lee Falk originally described the costume as being gray and considered naming the character The Gray Ghost. While Americans, Australians and Canadians are familiar with the classic purple and blue costume, other countries color it differently. In Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, it is blue and red. In Italy, Turkey, France, Argentina and Brazil it is red and blue. As a traditionalist, I lean towards the purple and blue but think the gray is pretty cool.

Matt

I think that got covered in an old podcast. Something about ‘with & without pulp’ with questionable audio quality.

M

nweathington

The color of his costume didn't matter for the first three years anyway, as it only ran as a daily black-&-white at the outset. Once it was given a Sunday strip in 1939, though, a decision had to be made, and Falk did not have final say. The colorist (who most assuredly made his decision based on color theory) made that decision, and Falk was stuck with it.

In Scandinavian countries, the Phantom was blue (with red) simply because their printing presses couldn't handle purple at the time. One country didn't use purple because in their culture purple was the color of mourning; it's what they wore to funerals.

All I'm saying is that the color decisions of the costume weren't story-based in any way, shape, or form. Much later, they did retroactively "explain" that he wears purple because of an idol the original Phantom found in the jungle. Personally, I don't think they should have bothered trying to explain it away. But I guess it bugged enough people they felt like they had to offer an explanation. I mean, purple (and secondary colors in general) are typically reserved for villains, while heroes are almost always adorned in primary colors. Primary colors are called primary for a reason, after all—they are stronger colors and psychologically the strength of those colors are transferred to those who wear them (think “power ties” in the business world). Likewise, secondary colors are weaker colors and reflect that psychologically in our reactions to them. So I get why people would wonder, “Why purple?” I've thought for a long time that the orange & green combo is (at least a small) part of the reason Aquaman was treated as a second-class superhero for so long.