Tuba provided today’s prompt, phantom.
When I saw today’s prompt early this morning, I said to myself, "didn’t there used to be a comic strip called The Phantom?" I checked, and not only was there a comic strip, there still is!
Like so many comic strips of the serial variety, The Phantom started in the 1930’s, 1936 to be exact, Monday, February 17, 1936 to be even more exact. Writer and creator Lee Falk had this idea for a hero who was a cross between Zorro and The Scarlet Pimpernel. He added a new wrinkle, though: the character would be immortal.
Well, he’s not completely immortal: he’s the 21st in a line that stretches all the way back to the 16th Century. His son will be the 22nd, his grandson the 23rd etc. There was a syndicated TV series called Phantom 2040, which Marvel issued in comic book form; the protagonist is the 24th Phantom.
As with so many of these serial-type comic strips that started way back when, to try and explain what it’s about and what the current story is (particularly since I’ve never read the thing on any kind of regular basis), I refer you to The Blogger’s Best Friend and Don Markstein’s Toonopedia for further information. Josh Fruhlinger, better known as The Comics Curmudgeon, occasionally features the cartoon when it affords him the opportunity to be snarky. If you’re daring enough to try and start reading the comic, in hopes that a plot will suddenly emerge, a fairly complete archive can be found here.
And, if by any chance you are (or were) an active reader of the strip, leave a comment and catch us up on it. Okay? Okay! Until next time,
The Sound of One Hand Typing 
I remember it from back in the day when I used to read the paper.
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It was always one of those comics I skipped because I had no idea what I was looking at. The chances were good you’d come in somewhere in the middle of a story line, and this was in the days before you could go online and read all the strips up to the current one and maybe find the beginning.
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Not really my thing but it must be liked by a lot of people to still be going strong.
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I think the only way a newspaper can find out the popularity of a comic is to remove it and see how many people call and demand they put it back in. I think most people just read the comics online these days…
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The Phantom is still carried in our afternoon paper. I don’t normally read it, but I get sucked into the story line every now and then.
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It was in the Sun-Times in Chicago, and I used to read it in the mornings on he bus to work. I liked all those old serial comics: The Phantom, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, Dick Tracy, Apartment 3-G, Brenda Starr, Mary Worth, Terry and the Pirates… had no idea what was going on half the time…
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