What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Was there a point to that whole Sunday Phantom story? May – August 2023

Of course there was. There was soaking in an interesting place. There was seeing aspects of The Phantom’s world, and lore, that we hadn’t. It didn’t lead to a big dramatic battle royale, no. Nor the destruction of a lost world, like you’d see in a 20th-century movie about a Dr Moreau-esque city.

As will sometimes happen, Tony DePaul put in his thoughts ahead of my scheduled article. By more than a month this time, though. I can focus all my paranoia on Terry Beatty and Rex Morgan, M.D. instead. Among the things he discussed, in early July, about this, was how Diana’s presence alters the course of what The Phantom discovers. And how storytelling in The Phantom has changed from the days of Lee Falk. He also makes explicit something that I had wondered about. The Phantom has always been a superhero series, and so has always been a fantasy about someone who has the time to deal with stuff.

But it’s also been a more literal sort of fantasy, especially in the Sunday strips. In the Lee Falk days the Sunday Phantom was always running into, if the recent run of vintage strips on Comics Kingdom are a guide, unusually tall people. My mind may be blurring this with The Phantom’s sister strip Mandrake, which has also had a long run of giants in its vintage Sunday strips. But then both the Sunday and the weekday Vintage Phantom stories are about giants scamming the villagers.

This isn’t the first time even Tony DePaul has put nonhumans into the strip. There was a sequence … I want to say around 2010 … with the Ghost Who Walks transplanting some amphibian humanoids to the safety of a more remote island. But putting so much time and attention on the subject does make it easier to bring back later, should a story be able to use them well. And, as DePaul notes in his essay, this also serves as a chance to retire the Bandar amnesia powder. The stuff doesn’t always work and it screws up someone’s life when it doesn’t. So as easy a way as it is to clean up loose ends, DePaul’s Phantom now has reason not to use it.

This all should catch you up to mid-August 2023 in Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays). Plot summaries for the daily strip, and a more up-to-date one for the Sunday strip if you’re reading after about November 2023, should be at this link. Now back to the Almost Humans for a bit.

The Phantom (Sundays).

21 May – 13 August 2023.

The Phantom’s and Diana Walker’s long journey into the underground world of the Almost Humans reached its goal. Mina Braun has overcome the Bandar amnesia powder from her 2005 (reader time) excursion to this area. It was hard. Besides clouding her mind, The Phantom stole the physical evidence — her grandfather’s World War II-era diaries — that could lead anyone back.

Braun wants to stay in The Domain. She considers herself to be doing good scientific work, even if she can’t imagine telling the outside world about it. The outside world wasn’t all that accepting of her half-remembered experiences from this place before anyway. The Phantom, convinced Braun is there by her own choice, accepts all this. He wants only to map out the locations of all known exits to The Domain. At some point someone is liable to try visiting the location of the viral video where Dr Meier got mauled. He should know how to get there. The Phantom also leaves Braun directions on where to mail a letter if she gets into trouble. Diana points out how if Braun could get a letter out from The Domain, she could probably get herself out from the trouble. This is true, but, what else is there to do?

Tony Depaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom for the 11th of June, 2023. I don’t know why Mina Braun is crediting The Phantom and Diana with her being a scientist again. When we first see Braun she’s gathering vegetables. But Teydra insists consistently that Braun wants to be where she is. And there is much to learn from studying what people eat and how they get food. Much of this story is told in inference, so perhaps we’re to take that The Phantom and Diana’s fuss elevated Braun’s standing. But it does seem like not much time passed between meeting Braun in the fields and going to dinner. Thanking The Phantom, I get, in the roundabout way that if he hadn’t brought her home she couldn’t have got back here. I can’t figure Diana’s role. Maybe she figures The Phantom does everything with Diana.

Meanwhile, Teydra convinces The Council that The Phantom may be the Champion Of Old. The one who fought and survived a ferocious battle centuries ago, one that the Third Phantom did his best to underplay in The Phantom Chronicles. The Council rules that The Phantom will be welcome in their city. But also they’re going to try working out whether he is the still-living Champion of Old. This was resolved in one of the top-row, “throwaway” panels. So it’ll need reintroduction should Teydra and her city feature in a story again. It’ll probably be the lede question for one of these What’s Going On In The Phantom essays.

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The current story began the 23rd of July. It’s set sometime after the events we’re seeing in the daily strip, a rare explicit relative dating. The mysterious John X is back, and has news for Colonel Woruba.

Once again and not at all suspiciously Tony DePaul shares his thoughts about John X. This is another secret identity The Phantom developed, during a (weekday) story in 2015 where he joined the Jungle Patrol while amnesiac. The story, DePaul teases, is going to be all about misdirection. DePaul does confirm that this is the real John X/Phantom and not an impersonator, though, a possibility I’d considered. The story’s planned to be something like 39 weeks in all, but the last quarter isn’t yet written. Things may change.

John X’s news is about the Unknown Commander, the guise The Phantom takes to secretly run the Jungle Patrol. It’s that “we may have lost” the Unknown Commander as part of the impromptu raid on Gravelines Prison.

It’s several interesting misdirections. We readers know The Unknown Commander is right there. Why would The Phantom want the Jungle Patrol to believe the commander was dead? How does the Jungle Patrol handled succession in their Unknown Commander, who’s been unseen for four hundred years now? And why is the title of the story “The Commander Will See You Now”? The answers come from people or from time, take your choice which you prefer.

Next Week!

Terry Beatty will have a wonderful Sunday panel explaining three months’ worth of Rex Morgan, M.D. just in time for me to scrap 850 words writing about it! Watch it unfold here! I don’t mind!