The Safe in the closed room is the means by which the Unknown Commander ordinarily receives reports from, and transmits orders to, his Jungle Patrol. A light outside the door lets the Jungle Patrol know there’s something to pick up. No one in Jungle Patrol has figured how the Unknown Commander gets into a locked safe inside a locked room inside Jungle Patrol headquarters, because the convention was established by like the 1940s when superhero stuff didn’t have to be all that rigorous.
Tony DePaul, the second (named) Lee Falk in the comic strip Phantom legacy, appears to be making some changes in this. Maybe. I don’t know; all I know about forthcoming strips is what DailyCartoonist or a comic strip writer themself chooses to drop. But the text of the story, and the Unknown Commander dropping hints about wanting to be a stronger presence with the Jungle Patrol, suggest that. Maybe some shaking-up of the secret orders routine is needed.
There’s charm in the old secret — a secret tunnel under the safe that leads to a nearby dry well. But, like, there’s a 1950s story where some crooks figured out the scheme and used it to give Jungle Patrol misdirecting orders. They needed to professionalize things a little after that. It is a risk to the soufflé that is a successful superhero universe to take away the more whimsical elements, though; good luck to Tony DePaul for taking it.
(I also don’t know how this change, if it is happening, will be reflected in the other, non-comic-strip sides of The Phantom. But the different publishers of Phantom stories seem comfortable with imperfect consistency and fans seem all right with that too, so they don’t need me worrying about them.)
If you’re worried about what’s happening in Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays) and it’s after April 2024, or you want a briefing on the daily strip, there may be a useful essay at this link. Or check the light above a locked door no one but you ever enters.
The Phantom (Sundays).
5 November 2023 – 28 January 2024.
Lee Falk, the strange supernatural being from whom all Phantom phables phlow, was giving us some insight as he too discovered the current story. The Phantom figured to use his guise as Jungle Patrol heartthrob John X to beef up his guise as Jungle Patrol boss the Unknown Commander. So while visiting Jungle Patrol Headquarters he shared a story that the Unknown Commander — mysteriously silent for weeks — might have died on their last mission.
As John X, The Phantom gets permission to check the Jungle Patrol’s secret maildrop in Mawitaan. While theoretically out of town, he sneaks back in as the Unknown Commander to pick up his mail and leave orders — and not turn the signal light on. And as a guy with more money than you’d think the jungle vigilante trade would bring in, he calls some construction workers in from the city. They have work orders to renovate Jungle Patrol Headquarters. And they know they have the Unknown Commander’s word, right there in the safe, where Colonel Worubu would swear there wasn’t anything.
As Colonel Worubu can barely believe it, the construction workers tear down walls, open up windows, and soon have The Safe surrounded by beams of light. Meanwhile, back in Skull Cave, the Phantom, in his guise of The Phantom, is rehearsing a script and checking that there’s enough shadows in this dignified-library set. Diana worries about the long dialogue he has to commit to memory, and the challenge of pausing appropriately for an unseen dialogue partner. He’s confident, though.
From here, we enter my speculations. It looks like we’re being set up to have John X and the Unknown Commander perform a dialogue where the Jungle Patrol can see they’re not the same person. (This would have been so much easier if it were still possible for the Colonel to hold the speaker end of a phone up to the receiving end of another and vice-versa.) And it looks like we’re being set up to have the Unknown Commander delivering video orders from a duplicate of his Jungle Patrol headquarters, a scheme that can’t fail as long as nobody accidentally breaks the bust of William Shakespeare on his desk. But this is all my speculation and I don’t want to brag but my predictions for story strips are batting, like, 0.075 lifetime.
Next Week!
I haven’t checked in on Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. in months. We need to see how Rene Belluso’s schemes have fallen apart even more. No, more than that. I mean, way more than that even. You’ll see, soon.
Another Blog, Meanwhile 