Classic Comic Strips Part 1: Intro & the Phantom

I'm a big comics nerd. My gateway to comics was probably reruns of the 1960's Spider-Man cartoon and Batman TV series along with VHS tapes of a handful of Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons. So my earliest comics were the typical mix of superheroes, Archie, and other cartoon faves Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures and Sonic the Hedgehog. In my hometown newspaper I discovered the comics page and still remember when the Sunday edition had multiple comics pages in full colour. On those pages my favourites would have been Calvin and Hobbes, and Garfield. So this is the concise-yet-still-rambling secret origin of Inverse Square's love of comics.

In this post I specifically want to address the earliest version of the form: newspaper comic strips.  I have a rough idea to take a semi-chronological tour through my hobby/fandom so this seems like a good place to start.  I could go on at length about the origins of editorial comics which eventually gave rise to the comic strip as we know it but other people have done a much better job of it than I ever could so I'll leave it at that. I intend to focus on my favourites rather than a history and perhaps try to figure out why I like the ones I do.



Probably the first classic comic strip I became interested in was "The Phantom" by Lee Falk soon to be joined by a bevy of artists over the years. And my awareness of that character came first from TV again. As a child of the late 80's I was blessed with a plethora of cartoons to binge on Saturday mornings some awesome, some terrible, some mediocre but still enjoyable to an impressionable youngster. "Defenders of the Earth" was one such cartoon which teamed-up King Features comic strip heroes The Phantom, Flash Gordon (more on him later), Mandrake the Magician (and Lothar too) plus their kids because cartoons are for kids don't ya know. Anyway from the cartoon, to the incredibly bizarre action figure, to the 1996 film starring Billy Zane, the Phantom was a minimal presence in my childhood but never quite disappeared from my mind.

As I started seriously collecting comics I got my hands on a few gems from Charlton's Phantom series under beautifully painted covers by the late Don Newton. So I kept digging, discovered Moonstone's Phantom graphic novels and series but I never really had much luck finding original comic strips beyond a few scattered throughout the 'net. That is until Hermes Press began releasing hardcover reprints of the original strips in chronological order. Huzzah!

Well sort of. There are some great stories in those early days and I find it fascinating to see how the character evolved as Falk made decisions about setting and forged the skeleton of the character. But they are very much a product of their time and the style of narrative and dialogue can get tiresome, plus the unfortunate reality of old-timey racism rears its ugly head on occasion.  Now to be fair, the pacing of the strip is due to the fact that each three to four panel instalment was meant to be read one a day not months' worth of strips at a time.  As for the art, well for someone who loves comics as much as I do I know very little about art.  My artistic aptitude is so acute I studied chemistry in university, so I don't really have a large knowledge base or much vocabulary with which to discuss art. But I knows what I likes and the art on the Phantom newspaper strips that I've read has been very workman-like I would say. It doesn't feel like Kit Walker is going to leap off the page and sock me with his skull ring, but it does tell the story effectively and cleanly.  In the strips I've read (a small fraction of the Phantom's nearly 80 year history to be sure) the art has been by Ray Moore and later Wilson McCoy. These two men drew the strip throughout the 40's and 50's and so were responsible for laying the foundation of the Phantom's world, even as the location of Bangalla/Bengalla/Bengali fluctuated from India to Africa.

The Phantom is one of my favourite comic strip characters even though I probably have enjoyed his comic book adventures more than his original comic strip.  His place in comics history is assured given his status as one the earliest costumed heroes but Lee Falk gave him an interesting milieu that separated him from his urban-bound successors and has evolved with the times to become much more respectful of the indigenous peoples of his fictional homeland. The best way to sum up I suppose is:

Long live the "Ghost who Walks!"

Stay tuned for the next instalment which will take us from the wilds of Africa to King Arthur's court!