In an age where super-heroic, costumed characters bestride the multi-media world, there is one who has gone somewhat under the radar. The Phantom was one of the first costumed crime-fighters to gain an adult, as well as juvenile, following. However, he seems to lurk in the forgotten corners of our collective memories. Ian Millsted explores the jungles of Bangalla to unearth the secrets of… The Phantom…

Jerry Lewis famously became more popular in France than he had been in his native United States of America. Britain’s own Norman Wisdom had a mass following in Communist era Albania (and I bet they still like him more than Liam Neeson, after those Taken movies). The Phantom went one better. Although he has maintained a level of popularity in the USA, it has been in Sweden and Australia that the character has had its greatest success.

My own first sight of The Phantom was reading a weekly comic strip in the local paper, The Essex Chronicle, that my parents had delivered each week. Most weeks the only reason for looking at the Chronicle was the cricket page and to see what was on at the cinema and then, ‘Pow’! Out of nowhere it started to run a full page of comic strips.

One was a serial of the Disney version of Swiss Family Robinson, another I don’t recall but top of the page was The Phantom. I may have seen pictures of The Phantom before, but I’d never read any actual stories. What my local paper was printing were the Sunday pages. The traditional pattern for comic strips syndicated in the USA was that from Monday to Saturday they would publish a single tier, usually three panel, strip but on Sundays they would print a larger, two-tier comic. The Sunday comic would often stand alone from the daily strip and offered more room for the adventure strips to develop their story, albeit still limited when compared to comic books. None of that mattered to me at the time. I just loved the idea of a costumed adventurer operating in a jungle setting where anything seemed to be possible.