What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? What’s with the art in The Phantom? September – December 2023

Regular Phantom weekday-strip artist Mike Manley has been ill, and has had to take time off. Sunday artist Jeff Weigel stepped in, with strips featuring his work appearing from last week on. On his blog, Phantom writer Tony DePaul reports that Bret Blevins — who’s filled in in the past — will be on the strip full time for the new stor, “to begin soon”. (It’s startling to imagine the conclusion of the Wrack And Ruin story, which has been running since 2021, but there we are.)

I don’t have any details on Manley’s condition, but DePaul does say “there’s more to come from what I hear. Not good … ” It’s not the sort of merry hint I like to bring, but that’s what we have.

After the title card, though, I should catch you up on the weekday continuity in The Phantom for mid-December 2023. If you’re interested in the separate Sunday continuity, or are reading this after about March 2024, there’s likely a more useful recap here. And if any news about Manley, or other people with The Phantom, comes across my desk I’ll share it there, too.

The Phantom (weekdays).

24 September – 16 December 2023.

My last plot recap came at the start of this segment story, “The Journey Home”. And this week begins “The Epilogue”. It’s almost suspicious in its tidiness.

The important thing about all this was getting folks back where they belong, so far as Destiny will allow it. We got some points that might set up future stories, though. First is Bangallan President Lamanda Luaga giving asylum to the prisoners freed from Gravelines. It’s a courageous move: Rhodia — any nation — would feel humiliated by such a jailbreak, and to have most or all of the freed prisoners right next door could be an irresistible temptation. The second is that Rhodia was already plotting the assassination of President Luaga. And hoped to suborn Savarna Devi into doing the murder. Rhodian Admiral Leopold Braga was scheduled to visit Devi in her cell the day of the jailbreak for her final answer. Which, from the safety of the ride home, she says would always have been no.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 27th of October, 2023. I would assume that The Phantom has passed on a warning that Rhodia is looking to assassinate President Luaga. We know he didn’t do it as the Unknown Commander of the Jungle Patrol. But he’s had a lot of time unaccounted-for on screen and we can suppose he does the things it makes sense to do.

Back at Skull Cave is Kit Junior, who it turns out had an irresistible temptation to return home. The idea came to him, turns out, the moment The Phantom stopped to listen to Mozz’s prophecy of Wrack and Ruin. Kit explains he was careful about his track, taking a path that went through Guwahati (in northeastern India), Delhi, Rome, Casablanca, Mombasa, and more, which is all the more impressive when I thought it had only been two, three days tops since this story began. But then the essential power of The Phantom is having time to get stuff done and not be exhausted at the end of it.

The Phantom briefly tries to keep Kit from talking about the Mountain City with Devi, but realizes better. In the prophecy, Devi meeting up with Kit and then murdering Inspector Jampa instigates the bombing of the Mountain City. But if Devi learns where her onetime enslaver was and succumbs to the irresistible temptation to murder him? And Kit’s nowhere on the same continent? Why would this go beyond Devi and Jampa then? And so The Phantom decides to trust in things working out like they ‘should’.

But, like someone or other said, even a miracle needs a hand. And, particularly, they have to keep Kit from being in the Mountain City anytime Devi might murder Jampa. Diana has a plan and it’s oddly matchmaker-y of her. Kit surely won’t go back to the Mountain City without seeing his sister Heloise. And Heloise won’t let him leave without meeting Kadia. And, heck, could Kadia be a potential partner for Kit Jr? So over weeks, we gather, Heloise keeps teasing that she could come home anytime, but not now, and Kit does put up with this.

Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom for the 4th of December, 2023. Can I just pause a moment to mention how adorable Devil is here? Because Devil is just so adorable here.

And for Devi — she seems to have a fine time, allowed into the world of the Bandar, and Skull Cave and all its cool stuff. And, in an echo of what she swore in Mozz’s prophecy, thinks of how she is done killing. And, last week, Kit unknowingly said something which set Devi leaving immediately. We may infer that she learned something which placed an irresistible temptation in the way of her giving up revenge. We don’t know how that’s to work out.

This Monday, the 18th, started the epilogue, Kit trying to convince Heloise that he’s leaving next weekend whether she sees him or not, Heloise calling his bluff. And Heloise wondering if she and her mother can make Kit-and-Kadia happen, in case that’s a thing that should.

Next Week!

Murder in the library! I forget whether there was in fact a library murder, but it was certainly book-themed. I’ll just check some things quickly and get back to you with Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy, all going well. See you then.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (weekdays)? Why does Mozz care when Kit Jr decided to come home? July – September 2023

The weekday story has just started the seventh and final part of the tremendous wrack-and-ruin story. It begins with Kit Junior visiting the Skull Cave and finding everybody but Mozz gone. Mozz is low-key freaked out because to get from Arunachal Pradesh, India, to Bangalla he must have set out more than a day or two ago. And this whole story has been the course of two nights, one in which Mozz lays out his prophecy and one where The Phantom acts on it. We appear to be in the morning after that second night.

In Mozz’s prophecy, told the first night, The Phantom should have been suffering from a near-fatal gunshot to his hips. Over the course of several days he reveals Kit Jr’s location to Savarna Devi, who goes to find him and meet her old enemy, Constable Jampa. If Kit Junior was already going to Skull Cave when Mozz had his vision, though, then — what did he see? It’s hard to imagine Kit Jr getting to Skull Cave, finding his father not there, and heading back home in time to meet Devi there. But how is he here, now, if that’s not what “would” have happened without Mozz’s interference?

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 22nd of September, 2023. Not sure what Mozz is more upset by, Kit Jr appearing in possible defiance of his vision or that he didn’t see having an answer in mind in case one of the Walker twins should happen to pop in. Anyway wildly speculating here but I wonder if this is going to be a chance to fill in aspects of the wrack-and-ruin prophecy elided over before, such as the collapse of Kit Sr and Diana’s marriage and Heloise’s disenchantment with The Phantom project.

So this is what has me waiting to see the new day’s installment of Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom as it’s published. Any news I get about the strip, or updates on the Sunday-continuity story, should go at this link. And sometime around December I should have an even more updated plot recap.

The Phantom (weekdays).

3 July – 23 September 2023.

Last time I checked in with the daily story, the jailbreak was all but broken. The Phantom’s done everything he can to be sure if he’s injured he dies without revealing where Kit Jr is. Savarna Devi appears to be the woman of destiny. What remaining Rhodian guards are shooting at her can’t get near hitting her. She figures, why not try shooting even more people?

The Phantom arranges for the Bandar tribe to accompany the liberated prisoners. Most of them drive to Bangalla for an asylum I’m sure won’t cause further crises. But he, Devil, Savarna, and Babudan are on their own. And the warden who’s just seen the greatest jailbreak in Gravelines history catches them. Devil, Devi, and Babudan escape untouched. The Phantom, no; he’s shot in the hip, exactly as in Mozz’s vision. The Phantom’s done everything he can to make sure he dies, since he can’t get Babudan to leave him behind.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 14th of July, 2023. I agree with The Phantom, I would be much more comfortable with one last sweep of all the bathrooms and dresser drawers to make sure nobody’s left a charging cable behind.

The weird thing is he doesn’t die. The wound is around where he expects, but it’s not as deep as it “should” be. Even without the Bandar wound powder it’s healing up. He’s able to get back to Hero, his horse, and to ride to the Bandar camp. Where, among other things, Guran’s given Diana a tea to make her sleep. Between the amnesia powder and the sleep tea he’s got a potion of dubious consent for everything. Anyway, The Phantom’s back in safe territory and isn’t dead from his wounds or in danger of revealing anything he doesn’t want to. And that, the 16th of September, finishes “Dungeons Undone”, the sixth chapter of this story.

The seventh, “The Journey Home”, began the 18th and my clickbait introduction tells you everything going on there. So now there’s not much to do but look to …

Next Week!

Telemarketing scams! A Minute Mystery! A professor who’s been in his office for eleven months now! And yet another friend of the mayor’s been murdered. Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy gets the spotlight, if my plans hold up. We’ll see.

What’s Going On In DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom (Weekdays)? Who is John X and why does Jungle Patrol care? April – June 2023

John X is yet another alias of The Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks, Kit Walker, the Unknown Commander, et cetera. Jungle Patrol cares because they know him. In a story back in 2014-15 The Phantom got a case of jungle-poison-induced amnesia. Jungle Patrol found and nursed him back to health, and gave him the placeholder John X name. The Phantom’s plot amnesia didn’t suppress his incredible physical talents, and with not much else to do, “John X” joined the Jungle Patrol.

At his induction ceremony his memory came back: he wasn’t some new patrolman. He was the Unknown Commander. So he disappeared when he could, and as the Unknown Commander left a note that John X was on special assignment. Since then, the Jungle Patrol folks have enjoyed having the mystery of what is John X doing for the Unknown Commander to agree they’ll never know. Agreeing they’ll never know who the Unknown Commander is gets old after a couple centuries. Getting hints is thrilling for them.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 29th of May, 2023. The Phantom: ‘Yeah, you gotta give them a little thrill now and then or the Jungle Patrol starts asking questions about their pay and authorization to use force and stuff.’

So this should catch you up to the end of June 2023 in Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity. If you’re interested in the separate Sunday continuity, or you’re reading this after about September 2023, there’s probably a more useful plot recap here. Thanks for joining me.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

10 April – 1 July 2023.

Way back in mid-April, The Phantom and the Bandar nation were attacking Gravelines prison. They still are. It’s a lot of prison.

The Phantom calls the Jungle Patrol. The word spreads fast that the Unknown Commander is on the phone of all things. Also that he’s in on some kind of action. The Phantom demands the analysis of the prisoner roster that he’d snagged in, reader time, 2021. He wants Jungle Patrol’s analysis of what prisoners in Gravelines are probably there on legitimate grounds. That is, things that a non-fascist state would jail someone for. I’m pleased the strip addressed the question of what to do with the people who “fairly” deserved jail. I think my argument from last time, that in a fascist state it’s impossible to be “fairly” convicted of a crime, stands. But I also understand the need in the moment to keep the situation down to freeing people not likely to make the situation more confusing.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 28th of April, 2023. I do wonder how many of the prisoners are grabbing their day clothes as they leave. I get everyone being dressed in bedshirts, but it does make the battle scenes weird in an interesting way.

So, after thrilling Jungle Patrol with the promise that John X is there, yes, it’s off to prisoner-liberation. The Phantom picks Viola Odhiambo, schoolteacher, to start with. He sets up directions for everyone not on the list of “the worst of the worst” to be freed and assist in freeing other people. Also, everyone who can pick up a gun or drive a military vehicle? They should do that. Yes, he acknowledges not everyone is able to do that, physically or emotionally.

But they will need guns to do that. The Phantom talks that sergeant, the one left in the office, into opening the armory, by pushing his head into the door. Having seen reason, the sergeant is eager to ask: is this a coup? If it is, you’ll remember I helped, right? If you win? Right?

There is a grim beat in the midst of all this merry prison-fighting. One prisoner, excited to be released, begs to be let out next. He’s described as “one of the most feared men in Gravelines”, which is not to say that he’s on the list to be left behind. Through the bars he grabs Odhiambo. Babudan slashes him with a poison-tipped arrow, killing the prisoner. I know you can hardly credibly do this sort of story bloodlessly, but it’s still a slap to the reader.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 29th of June, 2023. I hope Captain Savarna’s awareness of how much the hardcore Phantom fandom likes her isn’t going to wreck her character.

The major, the one who runs, or ran, Gravelines, calls The Phantom, promising reinforcements are on the way. The Phantom calls his bluff. He’s got the Bandar warriors with him. Also a growing cadre of former prisoners with weapons and grudges against the Rhodian government. Also Savarna Devi, who while we weren’t looking grabbed the BFG9000 and is running around like she’s got the cheat codes. Which she might: she’s filled with a sense of destiny, that somehow she will survive this night, and return to her native India. It’s a heck of a bet to make. But when the guards waste whole belts of ammunition without getting her, you see her point. She can’t get enough of this. She asks The Phantom why stop here.

Next Week!

But I stop here, for now at least. We’ll pick up The Phantom’s story in a couple months. Next week, I plan to look at Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy and see … uh … what that board game villain was up to? It was a board game villain, right? Yeah, that’s what’s in my notes. Huh. All right, we’ll see where this is going.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (weekdays)? Are tribesmen really going to conquer a prison? January – April 2023

Well, not only tribesmen. Women are there too. But yes, the current story in Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity, has the Bandar tribe’s warriors attacking Gravelines. It’s the maximum security prison for fascist Rhodia. Tony DePaul has tried to make this a fairer fight. The prison’s a lousy posting. The already-lousy posting got a heap of new, under-trained soldiers. This is the consequence of cracking down after The Phantom broke The Trusted One out of the prison. And the Bandar have numerical superiority.

And most important, the battle is bonkers. Militias don’t attack maximum security prisons. It’s not something the prison guards could train for. The Bandar don’t even battle “correctly”, refusing to pick up the loot boxes the Gravelines guards drop when they’re killed. So there’s reasons to think Gravelines would be too confused to make a sensible response. Still, have to admit, I’d have to put my money on Gravelines. Except that the Bandars’ battle plan is being improvised and lead by The Phantom, which counts for a lot.

Tony Depaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 18th of February, 2023. This has got me wondering what actual prisons have in mind against mass assaults. I have to figure their training is built more around a riot inside the grounds and maybe a couple vehicles trying to crash the gates. Conceivably a helicopter grabbing someone out of the exercise area.

So this should catch you up to mid-April 2023 in The Phantom’s weekday continuity. If you’re interested in the Sunday continuity, or if you’re reading this after about July 2023, there’s likely a more useful essay at this link. Thanks for reading.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

16 January – 8 April 2023.

The Phantom, having relied on Mozz’s prophecy of wrack-and-ruin like a strategy guide, is still breaking Savarna Devi out of Gravelines. And then the whole Bandar nation rolls in as backup. Their poison-tipped arrows are great ways to kill the tower guards. Savarna, not one to escape quietly, grabs some heavy weapons to blow up the tower and alarm everyone. The Phantom wonders if this is Mozz’s prophecy, for all he’s worked to subvert it, will happen in substance anyway.

But also: how different could things go? And realizing he has considerable surprise, and numbers, and the chance encounter’s started anyway … why not do something really crazy? Why not try and get everybody out of Gravelines? Is that maybe the reason Mozz had his vision of wrack-and-ruin, and was set in motion to change that?

Tony Depaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 10th of February, 2023. A thing that’s gone unexplored is: granted there are many prisoners kept there for acknowledging transgendered people have rights and that abortion is a necessity and other truths fascists can’t tolerate. But aren’t there surely people who are there for legitimate reasons, like the serial murder of sex workers? There’s hardly time to examine everyone and I realized it doesn’t matter. One hallmark of fascism is the disregard of truth in favor of power. In that condition no court judgement — which is, ideally, a determination of truth — can be legitimate. Even the guilty have to be treated as having been framed.

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And so, with the 13th of February, we begin ‘Dungeons Undone’, the sixth part of this story since it began in May of 2021(!). It is about the assault on Gravelines. With a few interludes checking in on Diana Walker, who’s staying, along with Bandar non-combatants, on the Bangalla side of the border. Babudan, leading the warriors into Rhodia, secured her promise to stay in safe territory. He warned he could only keep one Walker safe and if he had to choose, he’d protect her. So she waits and thinks of what she read in the Chronicle of Mozz.

What she read was enough to tell Guran of the need to send as many people as possible to support her husband. Which is how he has a militia on hand to make this assault. He’s optimistic enough. He’s sure the prison guard morale is so low that they’ll declare they didn’t sign up to be poisoned by hundreds(?) of bow-wielding jungle-dwellers. And The Phantom can’t keep Savarna from blowing up stuff. Some of this is of clear tactical use, like the power plant. Some is targets of opportunity. Some is just, she set an egg in the microwave for ten minutes. All in the service of confusing Gravelines’s forces.

And they are confused. As mentioned in my preamble, the attack doesn’t make sense, at least by the standards they expect. The warden, lacking power and communications in the command center, decides to find the leader of the attack himself. He leaves behind a sergenat with orders to guard the command post with his life.

Tony Depaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 6th of April, 2023. You have to admire The Phantom’s strength of will that he is not just breaking up laughing right now because, goodness but this is funny-ridiculous. And, you know, he is the costumed superhero who’s delighted at being a superhero. I guess he’s saving it for the Chronicle-writing.

The warden doesn’t find The Phantom because, you know that saying, he finds you. Or The Phantom finds the sergeant and the sergeant figures yeah, he doesn’t have to do this. The lieutenant calls his boss, and The Phantom urges the warden to set down his weapons, order as many of his men as he can get to do the same, and leave.

It’s transpired this week, so a little outside my scope here, that The Phantom is calling in the Jungle Patrol too. This makes some good sense, as the Jungle Patrol has modern equipment and could arrange, say, the air evacuation of hundreds(?) of Gravelines prisoners. On the other hand, as angry as Rhodia would (reasonably!) be at the Bandar attack, to have the Jungle Patrol join in will not make things better.

Next Week!

I’m shuffling up the order of these strips a little. So that brings me, sooner than otherwise expected, with … a guy who’s way too into Monopoly? I, too, am eager to know what’s going on in Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy and with luck will tell you in a week.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (weekdays)? Where did the Bandar cavalry come from? October 2022 – January 2023

From Bandar. Do try to keep up.

For those who came in late: The Phantom, in his escape from Gravelines Prison, saw “the Bandar nation” ride out of the mists to save him and Savarna Devi. The question is how they knew where to be. This hasn’t been explicitly answered but we can surmise. Mozz the Prophet finished telling The Phantom of the wrack-and-ruin he foresaw. When finished, The Phantom took Mozz’s Chronicle and set it in the catacomb reserved for his body. Mozz had deceived The Phantom: what he seemed to read from was not his text of his prophecy, but one of The Phantom’s own Chronicles. Somehow the prophet was able to anticipate that The Phantom wouldn’t check which volume he was setting on the shelves and which he was hiding. We last saw Diana Walker reading Mozz’s Chronicle. I have a suspicion what dots we’re meant to connect.

And for the Word of God, or at least the author, about the strip, you couldn’t do better than Tony DePaul’s recent essay discussing the writing and his plans. Also explaining a controversial choice in the writing. And that there was a controversy.

So this essay should catch you up to mid-January 2023 in Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom (Weekdays). If you’re reading this after about April 2023, or you’re interested in the separate Sunday continuity, there is likely a more useful plot recap for you here.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

17 October 2022 – 14 January 2023.

Having heard Mozz’s prophecy of how rescuing Savarna Devi from Gravelines Prison will destroy his family, The Ghost Who Walks sets out anyway. He’s making some changes from the prophecy, though. He’s setting out a couple days later, for one thing. He’s accompanied by Devil, his wolf. He’s setting out with the knowledge of the prophecy. He’s setting out with all the self-ruining confidence of a guy who’s crammed every strategy guide before playing the game for the first time. It’s a fun energy to read, as he keeps trying to remember what comes next and doubting that he could know. Also in the delight he takes in, he thinks, outwitting Fate. One great side of The Phantom is he’s basically happy. His glee at being clever is infectious.

One thing he does know: in the prophecy he reveals to Devi the critical information — the location of Jampa, who killed her family and enslaved her as a child — in a post-surgical daze. So he figures all he has to do is not get shot. That was already part of the plan. Further planning: if he does get shot, he has to not have a post-surgical daze. So he drops in on Dr Fajah Kimathi, a veterinarian who in Mozz’s vision performs the operation that saves his life. And here we get controversy.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 27th of October, 2022. I know this may look unfair but the veterinarian’s husband here has been known to collect stamps.

The Phantom’s intention is to warn the doctor that she must not save his life, if she’s pressed by Savarna Devi to do emergency surgery on him. He does this by waking the doctor and her husband in the middle of the night. And holding his guns on them. That is, on people who not only haven’t done anything objectionable yet, but who would in the prophecy do heroic service to him. Tony DePaul explains his understanding of The Phantom’s thoughts in the essay above. I agree with DePaul. The Phantom figures conspicuously holstering his guns he shows he chooses not to be the threat a masked man breaking into their house is. I also think The Phantom’s wrong. Waking someone while holding guns on them does not put them in a more agreeable mood however much you put the guns away. But that is part of the fun of The Phantom. He has blind spots. Here, that people he knows through hearing of Mozz’s vision don’t know who he is or what he’s on about. (Although they’ve got to suspect this is The Phantom of regional lore.)

With that done successfully-ish, The Phantom figures how to get into Gravelines. Hijacking a truck in worked well enough in the vision, so he does that again. And he fights his way up to Savarna’s cell. Before breaking her out he stops to ask her something. In Mozz’s vision this was whether she was done with vengeance. She said she was, a claim The Phantom (now, in the present) decides was a lie.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 15th of December, 2022. From here Devi goes on trying to push The Phantom towards the “original” course of events, the one that gets him shot on the road to that veterinarian’s. But that’s also what looks all the time like the sensible path for them. The Phantom does some wrangling with whether this is Fate trying to force things back into line, and it’s a fair thing for him to wonder.

I’m not sure that’s fair. I think it plausible she sincerely believed she was done with vengeance. Learning where Constable Jampa was presented an irresistible temptation. Now The Phantom asks a question to make super-sure he doesn’t let slip Jampa’s location: if he’s shot does she promise to leave him behind? She says she will, which we know from her thought balloon is a lie. I love this irony.

We get a haunting moment in this of other prisoners, possibly also on death row, begging for The Phantom to release them instead. It’s hard to give a fair reason The Phantom should not rescue them. He knows Devi can help fight their way back out, but that doesn’t mean the others don’t deserve rescue.

To the breakout. Devi sees no reason not to grab an armored vehicle and shoot their way out. The Phantom knows. It’s gunning their way out through the well-defended roads that gets him shot. But then how to get out instead?

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 11th of January, 2023. Won’t fib; this is one of those Crowning Moments of Awesome they talk about on TV Tropes. I had wondered why the Jungle Patrol couldn’t be used to break Devi, and others, out of Gravelines, although I suppose they have an institutional structure ironically more vulnerable than the Bandar people do. While the Jungle Patrol may operate across national borders, Bangalla can be pressured to cut off headquarters’s water and electricity.

Devil, who wasn’t there in Mozz’s vision, has an answer. He guides The Phantom off to the mists where, as said in the introduction here, the Bandar nation has come. The Gravelines guards may be ready to handle one or two people with machine guns. Dozens of people with poison-tipped arrows, though? That’s something they can’t even imagine is coming. And the best part is there’s no way an evil state like Rhodia will retaliate against the Bandar people for crossing the border and attacking a maximum-security prison. (I snark. I’m sure DePaul has put some thought into how Rhodia might answer this.) And this is where we stand as of the second week of January, 2023.

Next Week!

I get a break! It’s one of the Sunday-only strips. And oh, I get to be angry about this for a change! Next week find out why I’m mad at Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant. If all goes well.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? Why are we seeing the death of The Phantom? August – October 2022

OK so, once again I am asking people to get this straight: the Phantom is the man who cannot die. If we see what looks like him dying, it’s because that is not what we’re seeing.

Which is, indirectly, a key point in a lovely essay Tony DePaul published recently. In The Death of the 21st Phantom DePaul explains why this was a story he needed to write, and get into print, now rather than later. One core insight is that the whole run of the comic strip — 86 years now — we have been seeing the same Kit Walker, Phantom. 21st of his line, in the comic strip continuity. And that he has not died tells us of a choice the writers of the comic strip have collectively made: he is not going to die on-screen in the comic strip.

But we can’t know when the comic strip will die. Not that there’s any specific reason that this strip should end. But the newspaper industry is near failure under the relentless assault of vulture capitalists. It’s hard to imagine most comic strips surviving its last collapse. And from these insights DePaul discusses why he wanted to spend so much time on an imaginary story … if it is imaginary. Also with some thoughts about what went into it, including confirmation about the role an earlier story served for this. It’s also a really good summary of where this quite long story has gotten, to the point that I’m not sure I have anything to add but typos. We’ll see.

My goal, though, is to get you up to speed on Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity, as of mid-October 2022. If you’re reading this after December 2022, or you’re interested in the Sunday strips, or news about the comic strip breaks, you may find a more useful essay here. Or, you know, that X-Band Phantom podcast, they talk about the comic strip a lot, and several times a month.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

1 August – 15 October 2022.

Last time I checked in we were still watching Mozz recount his prophecy of The Phantom’s ruin to The Phantom. This despite Mozz letting The Phantom — and us — know that he would deceive if that’s what was needed to save him from ruin. To that end Mozz had coaxed The Phantom into letting him write his own Chronicle. Mozz’s Chronicle would look like The Phantom’s own Chronicles of his and his ancestors’ adventures, and be kept in the Skull Cave like them.

Chronicle book in hand, Mozz tells of a dire future. The Phantom, seeking his son — who’s become a guerilla leader in northern India — is mistaken for an assassin. Manju, Kit Junior’s trusted partner, now an expert sniper, finds the already-wounded Kit Senior and shoots him through the chest. And shoots his eyeglasses off. A mysterious figure demands he stand, and The Phantom looks up and — we the readers see his face, unconcealed by sunglasses or a mask or even deep shade. It’s stunning.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 15th of August, 2022. I’m not sure it’s wise for me to share this since now that you’ve seen The Phantom’s face you’re going to die. I mean, I guess you were probably going to anyway so that maybe doesn’t spoil your plans but it’s a rude thing for me to do to you.

Tony DePaul confirms that this has never happened in the strip before. Not only does nobody in The Phantom universe see The Phantom’s eyes, but none of us readers outside have seen it either. Even for an imaginary story — and after he’s taken a fatal wound — it feels illicit.

The demand to stand came from the 20th Phantom, appearing — with all the Phantoms before him — before the dying man’s eyes. The spectral voices promise he was the 21st Phantom. He staggers back to his feet, to Manju’s shock and amazement. She will conclude that he’s the one assassin who could have killed Kit Junior. Manju’s not so awed as to not shoot him again. But he’s all right with embracing this end.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 27th of August, 2022. Tony DePaul points out that in the final panel you can see a skull in Diana’s hair, a touch that’s entirely Mike Manley’s brilliance.

Manju and the soldiers with her bury him. She toasts him, even, when she gets back to camp, and shows Kit Junior souvenirs taken from the dead man. They’re the Phantom’s rings, the “Good Mark” ring with the four swords and the “Skull Mark” ring with you-know-what. Kit Junior recognizes this, and has Manju take him to his father’s grave, without saying who it was she killed. He says a regretful farewell and … what else is there to do? Die, similarly, in a year’s time, tells Mozz, his body left unburied in some valley of the Nyamjang Chu river (in Tibet and India).

And this concludes his prophecy. The Phantom, eager to get on to saving Savarna Devi from Gravelines Prison — the mission that started this wrack-and-ruin — promises it’ll be different. For one, he’ll bring Devil, his wolf, with him, something not done in the prophecy. And he knows what will happen if Savarna learns that her former enslaver Jampa is the constable who butts heads with Kit Junior’s mentor Kyabje Dorje.

The Phantom takes the Chronicle that Mozz held, as he read, to keep his promise to set it in Skull Cave for all tim. He intends a trick, to keep his wife or Guran or anyone else reading it, and so inters it in the burial vault reserved for him. And, confident he’s outwitted fate, he rides off to Gravelines.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 29th of September, 2022. This isn’t a thought that could fit naturally in my essay, so I’ll stuff it here. I was surprised to realize that the Phantom we’re currently reading is the same one since 1936. I would have bet money that there would have been at least one on-screen transition from the Original to a New Phantom, plausibly either in the 70s or 80s as comics took a different representation of emotional truths, or in the 90s when a lot of characters tried to reboot and refresh into edgier forms. (Remember ‘Electric Superman’?) I’m fortunate nobody had ever come up to me and said, “Hey, Joseph, do you feel like betting five bucks against my ten that the Phantom introduced in 1936 had at some point in the comic strip continuity died and passed his mantle on to the Phantom we’re currently reading in today of, oh, let’s say 2004? Does 2004 sound like a good year for this bet?”

Diana is aware that Mozz has been writing a Chronicle. But Mozz is sworn to not say a word of his prophecy. His silence when Diana asks about it fires her curiosity. And, wordlessly, enters Skull Cave and takes his Chronicle off the shelves. He had handed The Phantom a different Chronicle, confident this would trick The Phantom. One may think he was lucky that The Phantom didn’t leaf through the book to make sure what we was hiding in the vault. But if there’s any character we can say will know what someone else will or won’t do in a situation, it is Mozz.

Anyway, Diana starts to read Mozz’s Chronicle. Her learning of Mozz’s prophecy of The Phantom’s death was enough to avert it in The Curse of Old Man Mozz. Could history repeat itself? Mozz claims he doesn’t know. And with that, the 1st of October, the story Phantom’s End, 261st daily continuity story, concludes.

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Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 7th of October, 2022. “Settle down, Devil, it’s just the Now That’s What I Call 80s Heavy Metal album I had delivered.”

The current story, conclusion to this project, The Breakout, began the 3rd of October. The Phantom’s resolved to rescue Savarna, despite Mozz’s warnings. And to avert everything he’s foreseen. At his campsite, he’s revisited by the flaming skeletal ghost of his ancestors, last seen in the Llongo forest in a hallucinatory vision. The Phantom isn’t intimidated by this now-familiar portent of doom, though. So that’s something.

Next Week!

We relax a bit from all this heavy talk about prophecy and supernatural visions with some witch-burning. Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant gets my attention in a week, if all goes as has been foreseen. We’ll see.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? Did Captain Savarna have kids with The Phantom? May – July 2022

That is the surface implication of the 24th of June’s strip. We see The Phantom, about to go to North India to search for his estranged son again, kissing goodbye to a quite pregnant Savarna Devi. This is normal dramatic shorthand for someone bidding farewell to their spouse. Mozz tells us that this is the last time The Phantom will see the Deep Woods. However, Mozz has warned The Phantom that he would lie about his prophecy to keep The Phantom from bringing wrack and ruin to his line. And he’s thought, to himself where only we can see it, that he has to, now. Of course he may have thought that to deceive us but I don’t expect the comic strip to operate on quite that level of narrative experimentation.

Yet a theme of the Imaginary Story going on in Tony DePaul and Mike Manley and Bret Blevins and Scott Cohn’s The Phantom weekday continuity has been paying attention to what is said versus what is implied. So let’s all slowly come to understand Mozz, and DePaul, in not going beyond what the evidence is.

This should get you up to speed on The Phantom weekday continuity for early August, 2022. If you’re interested in the separate Sunday continuity, or you’re reading this after about October 2022, a more useful essay may be at this link. I hope this is a useful essay anyway.

Also, let me sort out the art credits. Mike Manley was, and is again, the regular artist for the strip. During Manley’s recent health problems Bret Blevins and Scott Cohn took over art duties. Scott Cohn has been good enough to share his art on his DeviantArt gallery, for those who’d like to see the striking uncolorized originals. (Daily comic strips are, for obscure reasons, colorized by people generally not working with the original artists.)

The Phantom (Weekdays).

16 May – 30 July 2022.

The current story, the midpoint of DePaul’s massive project, has Mozz telling the story of Phantom’s End. This is his grim prophecy of what happens should Kit Walker, as he plans, go to Gravelines prison to save Captain Savarna Devi from death row. Complicating any recap of this is that we cannot trust Mozz.

Previously in the prophecy, The Phantom rescues Savarna from Gravelines, he’s wounded. While delirious he reveals that Kit Junior is in the Mountain City, somewhere in Arunachal Pradesh, India. And that the local constable is the man who’d enslaved the young Savarna and killed her family. She journeys to the Mountain City and kills him. Understandable but a terrible mistake. The unnamed Northern Invaders see the murder of the constable, their man in town, as provocation. When they can’t assassinate monastery leader Kyabje Dorje or his understudy Kit Junior they bomb the city into ruin. In the disaster Kit Junior takes the phone from a person he couldn’t save and calls his parents.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 27th of May, 2022. Kit Junior makes a fair case, that between this and the experiences of the 11th and the 16th Phantoms — who had also trained at the same monastery, and whose reincarnation Kit Jr presented himself as being — he was aimed at this. It also seems it would be remarkable if he were the first in over twenty generations of Walkers to want to go away from the direct main line of the family business. But there’s a lot of room for side stories we haven’t seen yet.

He explains he can’t be the 22nd Phantom. His life, he knows now, has lead him to be here and to protect these people. And hangs up, going to his new life alongside Manju, daughter of the tea shop keeper. The Phantom goes to India to seek him out, but that whole legend of how you don’t find The Phantom, he finds you works against him. All he can find is the tea shop keeper, who won’t help someone she fairly suspects of being sent by Jampa’s friends. She begs out of this drama, but asks that if he finds Kit Junior that he send Manju home. It’s like that all over, and The Phantom’s first search for his son fails.

With this failure, Kit Senior’s home life falls apart. Diana leaves the Deep Woods; Heloise leaves for the United States, too, eventually never to tell her children of The Phantom. Sometime later, Savarna finds a broken, brooding Phantom. That there is this clear legend that no one finds The Phantom, he finds you, suggests this is where Mozz starts falsifying his prophecy. If “falsifying a prophecy” is a meaningful concept. But Savarna is an exceptional person, and acknowledges in text that she might be the only one who’s ever looked long enough.

Tony DePaul, Bret Blevins, and Scott Cohn’s The Phantom for the 28th of June, 2022. I mean, she is literally the lone survivor of a pirate attack that killed her family and shipmates who devoted her life to saving others from similar fates. The only piece her life is missing from the story of Christopher Walker, the First Phantom, is swearing the Oath of the Skull. In Mozz’s prophecy, Savarna swears off vengeance and — perhaps — she lives up to it after killing Jampa. The 1st Phantom’s oath swore vengeance against the pirates who’d killed his shipmates, and that vengeance was dropped after he did kill those pirates.

Years later, The Phantom leaves for another trip to India, hoping to reunite Kit Junior with his mother and sister. He bids farewell to Savarna, never see the Deep Woods again, says Mozz. But we learn he’s not the last Phantom; merely the last of the Walkers to be The Phantom. Savarna’s descendants take up that role. It’s a twist I hadn’t thought of, but that’s obvious in hindsight, to split the Walker line from the Phantom line. It’s another of many steps the strip has taken to diffuse the colonialist white-savior stuff baked into the premise, too. It’s also got an interesting metatext. In the comic, Bangalla had started out as a vaguely located South/Southeast Asian land before becoming a vaguely located East African land. This adds to how Savarna’s life echoes without imitating The Phantom Origin Story. I imagine that’s the sort of happy coincidence you can arrange when you have ninety years of backstory that fans have got pretty well indexed for you. It’s still a neat bit of business to line up.

The Phantom’s second trip to India gets much closer to Kit Junior, and (as promised by Mozz), “in a manner of speaking … he finds you”. If we can trust Mozz on this point. But now Kit Junior is a respected, loved, skilled guerilla leader. His fighters suspect, with reason, that The Phantom is another would-be assassin. The Phantom enters the landscape where he encountered the flaming skeleton of his dead father in 2020’s story The Llongo Forest. Before he can nope out of there he comes under fire, from gunmen in at least three positions. This isn’t too much for The Phantom, but it’s a close-run thing. He hopes to stall until nightfall when he can escape.

Tony DePaul and Scott Cohn’s The Phantom for the 21st of July, 2022. THe second panel was the funniest comic the day of publication. Possibly that whole week. Also a reminder of what a wonderful vein of gallows humor American pop culture lost when the Service Comedy stopped really being a thing.

Kit Junior’s soldiers ask him for help with this extraordinary man, who can’t be shot but who can hit everything he tries to. He doesn’t recognize his father’s signature. He hasn’t got the time to divert from planning an operation for the next day. But he can spare Manju, now a very effective sniper. Her fire can pin him down. With a half-hour until sunset, someone hits Kit Walker Senior, fracturing his leg. Things look rather dire for The Ghost Who Walks, must say.

Next Week!

I’m sad to say we have no more Morgan Le Fay, and Comics Kingdom still has not fixed their web site so Sunday pages are visible without going to extra effort. But I’ll recap almost three months of Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant, if things go as I hope. See you then.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? Is anything real happening in The Phantom? February – May 2022

For most of the last year Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom weekday continuity has been an imaginary story. A story of how the current, 21st, Phantom could die. It’s Tony DePaul’s chance to tell a story that probably couldn’t be done in-continuity. Not with how much The Phantom Publishing Empire sprawls, even if King Features Syndicate were brave enough to let the star of its … fourth-oldest(?) … comic strip die. (Barney Google, Popeye, and Blondie are older; any others? Not counting Katzenjammer Kids as it’s no longer in production.)

So almost all these events have been Mozz’s vision of how, if The Phantom rescues Savarna Devi from death row, incredible disaster follows. The death of the 21st Phantom, but also of the whole line of The Phantom. But “actual” things have happened. The Phantom’s told Diana that Captain Savarna is in Gravelines Prison, and that he means to get her out before she’s executed. Diana agrees this is the only thing to do. (Savarna was key to breaking Diana Walker out of Gravelines, in a story that ran eighteen months, from 2009 to 2011.)

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 26th of April, 2022. Mozz’s certainty that he hasn’t done enough yet has yet to be explained. Savarna learning where Jampa was, but not why he must not be killed, relied on several contingencies. I’m sure DePaul has some reason in mind that Mozz’s scenario — which started with events that have already been avoided — is still a menace.

Mozz insists on another day or two to finish his chronicle, one to be kept with the Phantom Chronicles. He snipes at The Phantom for telling Diana where Savarna is, spotting it as a way to get himself pushed to free Savarna whether or not that’s wise. And he admits to himself (and the reader) that holding The Phantom back is essential to saving him, and that “Deception must be the banner I fight under”. How that turns out, I don’t know yet. Tony DePaul wrote back in February that he had the current chapter — 23 weeks, stretching from the 18th of April through the 24th of September — scripted. This story, Phantom’s End, sees the Ghost Who Walks die, in prophecy. And that there are three more chapters to follow that.

So this should get you up to speed on The Phantom, weekday continuity, for mid-May of 2022. For the Sunday continuity, or if you’re reading this after about August 2022, a more relevant plot recap may be here. That link is also good in case I get any news about the strip.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

28 February – 14 May 2022.

Last time, in my recaps, Mozz had shown Captain Savarna Devi killing Chief Constable Jampa. This in revenge for Jampa, decades earlier, killing her family and stealing her family’s ship and enslaving her. Though Jampa’s not much loved, he is a “keystone” figure, as Kyabje Dorje — head of the Nyamjang Chu monastery where Kit Junior studies — describes. Invaders from the unnamed North, whom Kyabje had been holding off, take the killing of Jampa as provocation. Kyabje and Kit Junior beat back their assassins easily. They’re helpless to fend off the aerial bombardment a week later, one that kills Kyabje, and many people in the mountain city.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 12th of May, 2022. The color adds to this, but even without, this is an amazing daily strip, with incredible power in that last panel. It sells this as the moment Kit Junior became a different person.

Also killed, Mozz explains, is the part of Kit Junior that would make a Phantom: his youth, his generosity, his goodness. He becomes a legend, commander of guerrilla forces “on a disputed frontier”, killing many to avenge the murdered city.

Heloise, Mozz explains, refuses to become the 22nd Phantom. Something not yet revealed causes Kadia to kill herself. Between the pain of that, and of Kit Junior’s turn away from the Deep Woods, she rejects The Phantom legacy. She leaves for the United States, never telling her children of the Deep Woods or the Phantom or any of this. Diana Walker leaves, takin a permanent post in New York City, refusing to be part of The Phantom’s life anymore.

And in what apparently is to be Phantom’s End — begun as promised the 18th of April — The Phantom journeys into Asia to confront his son-gone-wrong. And it somehow connects to the strange hallucinatory landscape where The Phantom faced a demon-image of his own father. This in the 2020 story of The Llongo Forest.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 9th of April, 2022. Wait, this is another strip where the second panel is shorter then the first and third, but overlaps it left to right … is this a flash forward or … you know, I’m writing this after midnight, I need to let go and allow the story to happen. Sorry.

A hallmark of this story has been how it’s told out of order. Not just that it’s The Phantom hearing Mozz’s prophecy. But we get pieces of the prophecy and then come back to fill them in. Hearing the fact of Kadia’s suicide, for example. Mozz writing out how The 21st Phantom’s body is buried. The mountain city being bombed, seen first from Kit Walker’s perspective months ago (our time) and now from Diana Walker’s this week. The Phantom’s campaign for governor falling apart when he’s found in a love nest with a “singer”. I’ve tried to untangle that, as my mission is the draining of all storytelling to leave a list of events behind. But if you find the story confusing between now and my next plot recap, I recommend re-reading in blocks of a week or a month at a time. And looking to see where DePaul has said what happened, and whether the story is fleshing that out. If a major event seems to have been written off in a single panel, there’s reason to think the strip will come back to that.

Next Week!

Will Prince Valiant overcome his greatest menace yet: the Comics Kingdom redesign that makes the Sunday strips illegible if you have an actual computer and read the strips on your Favorites page? Oh, also Morgan Le Fey? We’ll find out as I recap Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant. Unless Comics Kingdom cancels my subscription because I will not stop complaining about their lousy redesign and even worse customer support.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? Why is Savarna trying to destroy The Phantom? December 2021 – February 2022

She’s not. It would never occur to her to try. But once you start the avalanche you can’t tell — you know, I mentioned how of course Terry Beatty, of Rex Morgan M.D., was not trying to upstage me. This in providing a good succinct plot recap right as my plot recap was ready to post. While Beatty might be aware of my existence, there is a story comics creator who I know does know I’m around. Tony DePaul himself posted a good, clear recap of the current daily storyline for The Phantom.

It’s worth the read, first for understanding the writer’s intentions. Also for learning bits about the specific mechanics of writing these stories. Like, what does the script look like? How far ahead are stories written? (As DePaul and his collaborators do things, at least; I imagine every writing team develops their own workflow.) How does a story like this, meant to stretch into a third calendar year, get made?

So that and this should catch you up on Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity, through the end of February 2022. If you’re interested in the Sunday continuity, or are reading this after about May 2022, a more useful recap is likely at this link. And, if you’re interested in my explanations of mathematics terms, my glossary project’s resumed over on my other blog. Should have a fresh post up tomorrow, too. Now, let’s talk comics.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

13 December 2021 – 26 February 2022.

I’m not sure what I can add to Tony DePaul’s own summary. My perspective and misunderstandings, I suppose. Still, here goes. In the prophecy of Old Man Mozz, The Phantom successfully breaks Savarna Devi out of death row in Gravelines Prison. But he’s badly wounded, and while the veterinarian they find is able to stitch him together, it’s not over. The Phantom gets a fever, one lasting for days, and in his delusional state he says something catastrophic, that sends Savarna away.

This may all seem like it’s taking a while to get done. Fair enough. But we are seeing what’s meant to be a plausible way that The Phantom — a legacy of five centuries — crashes apart. It’s something that’s survived twenty generations of changing world. Of Phantoms (mostly) dying in action. It’s grown supportive structures, like the Jungle Patrol, that would carry on of their own inertia as long as possible. I quipped in my previous recap of the Sunday strips that The Phantom has to spend about 412 days a year keeping up with ceremonial tasks. He spends a lot of time gluing these structures together. But in exchange, those structures glue The Phantom, the institution, together. It will need a lot to wreck all that. So it has to be something that’s big and complicated and messy.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 13th of January, 2022. I suppose this shows that The Phantom did not know about Jampa’s past with the India Voyager. If he had, he would likely have realized that, in his fever, he said something that let Savarna know where Jampa was.

Savarna’s headed for the Himalayas, and the monastery where Kit Junior, the presumptive 22nd Phantom, is studying. He’s very much not ready yet; he’s not even trying to conceal his face from people. And he’s been thinking how happy he is nobody like Guran, from his pre-monastery life, has appeared, as they would have the news his father died. Then Savarna, from his pre-monastery life, appears, and he’s happy to see her. (I saw some snarking about this inconsistency. Granted it may be inconsistent, but it’s inconsistent in a way normal people are.)

She arrives the week of the 17th of January. That’s when we begin the story/chapter titled Death in the Himalayas. They meet over tea. She explains she’s there for something that needs doing, and something she thought she was finished with. Before The Phantom broke her out of Gravelines he had her swear to be done with revenge. While The Phantom healed, she thought how she was done with killing. And now …

Chief Constable Jampa enters the teahouse. She confronts him. That’s too soft a phrasing. She shoots him. She knows him. Nineteen years ago pirates killed her father, master of the original India Voyager. And her brother. It set her on her campaign of vigilante anti-piracy and anti-fascism. Leading the pirates? That same Jampa. As a girl she was able to scald him, and escape, almost drowning as she does. It makes her life story — and her relentlessness in this point — much clearer.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 19th of February, 2022. This is part of the ten-day sequence done entirely silent. That’s a massive technical challenge. And, as you can see, visually striking: as this unfolds even the panel borders fall apart, turning rough and sketchy in the flashbacks, and falling into diagonals for the non-flashback moments. They finally righted themselves this week, as Savarna declares her father and brother avenged.

You may ask how it is Jampa ended up a chief constable in a remote Himalayan village. Well, how is it Kit Junior ended up in the same place? And, if you’ll let me build a castle on some sky, it might not be coincidence. Years ago we got a line that Kit Junior perceived his tutor Kyabje Dorje to be a Phantom-like superhero. Why might Chief Constable Jampa not be that superhero’s nemesis? It might even say why Kit Senior sent his son there rather than, say, to understudy with The Locust or somebody. (Probably not. Kit Senior was sending Chief Constable Jampa money for reports about his son. Diana Walker called Jampa a good man, a blow to her ability to judge character on slender evidence. On the other hand, I thought that mention of Jampa was just Kit Senior distracting Diana and Guran from Mozz’s prophecy. Now, I see DePaul introducing Jampa to this story before his big death scene.)

But this is where we’ve gotten. Savarna, in an understandable fury, has found Kit Junior and shot the chief constable of this Indian village. The Phantom, unaware of this, is returning home. … Or so foresees Old Man Mozz.

Where does The Phantom, who’s learning all this as we are, go from here? Not my place to say. DePaul was good enough to share that this chapter, Death In The Himalayas, is to end the 16th of April. The next chapter, Phantom’s End, is to run 23 weeks. I calculate that to be the 18th of April through to the 24th of September. And then … three more chapters, he estimates, before this is all done. Quite the project.

Next Week!

Saxon invaders besiege Londinium, and all Prince Valiant has to defend himself is whatever he and Morgan Le Fay can whip up! Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant gets a couple hundred words of explanation, again, if things go to plan. We’ll see.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (weekdays)? Is The Phantom about to die? April – June 2021

Don’t be silly; The Phantom is immortal. That’s, like, the second thing you learn about the comic, after how he’s called The Ghost Who Walks. But yeah, there has been a lot of foreshadowing the end of the current Phantom’s life. It’s been like this for several years now, but the current story is hitting it hard.

This should catch you up on Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom to the end of June 2021 in the weekday continuity. If you’re looking for the Sunday continuity, or if you’re reading this after about September 2021, or any news breaks out you may find a more useful essay here.

Over on my mathematics blog I have not yet resumed reading comics regularly. But I am about to start this year’s A-to-Z, in which I explain mathematics terms. If you’d like to suggest topics, please, let me know. I love seeing what people suggest.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

5 April – 26 June 2021.

I last checked in near the end of an encounter with “Towns Ellerbee”. The Phantom used that false name. Under it he helped The Trusted Man sneak through Gravelines Prison and free his boss and friend Ernesto Salinas. Salinas tries pondering the mystery of who Towns Ellerbee could be, and finally turns to anagarms. The name translates to “Be Well Ernesto”, a thing I totally would have gotten if I’d thought to pick out proper names.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 24th of April, 2021. Not to brag of my own anagram prowess but I’m able to work out most Jumble panels if the target word is not ‘OBJECT’. For whatever reason scrambled versions of ‘OBJECT’ throw me. I think it’s my natural assumption that if there’s a ‘J’ it probably starts the word that throws me.

That story, Then Came Towns Ellerbee, ended the 24th of April, with a dedication: “In Memory of the Trusted Man, Tarquino Felix Flores, 1978 – 2019”. Tony DePaul’s blog gives some insight into this “friend and long-time Phantom fan from Mexico”. DePaul’s blog includes photographs of Flores both out and in his costume as lucha libre wrestler El Dentista.

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The 26th of April began the 257th Phantom daily story, Hello the Himalayas. Once again after a fairly long (26 week) and action-filled story we got a short (4 week) reflective one. Heloise Walker comes to the Deep Woods, into the Phantom’s Cave, and into even the Chronicle Chamber. And there she writes a letter that she knows she’s “not supposed to be writing” to her brother Kit Junior. She writes of being afraid to sleep, traumatized by nightmares of the night she captured Eric “The Nomad” Sahara. And that she has been trying to reason where exactly Kit Junior is.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 17th of May, 2021. I do agree with Heloise Walker’s reasoning here. A major crisis is not the time to be fiddling over weird, elliptic clues. Especially from someone like the 21st Phantom, who’s always got about eighteen layers of deceit and secret identities going on.

The Phantom had placed him in secrecy in the Himalayas somewhere, ahead of his anticipated and foiled death in The Curse Of Old Man Mozz. Heloise, thinking it’s daft that nobody knows how to find Kit Junior in case something happens to The Phantom, tried to work out where her brother is. She’s confident she’s figured out what Himalayan monastery he’s at. And she closes up the letter, and seals it, and conceals it within the Chronicle Chamber. With the 22nd of May, this story ends.

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The next and current story began the 24th of May. It’s titled To Wrack And Ruin at Gravelines. And it sees the return of Captain Savarna. She’s the oceangoing vigilante whose private gunboat shelled Gravelines Prison to help free Diana Walker from it. We haven’t seen her for several years, I believe since before the contract dispute that threatened to see Tony DePaul leave the comic strip.

The story opens with Colonel Worubu meeting the Unknown Commander of the Jungle Patrol. Part of the raid that got Salinas out of Gravelines Prison was a database of who was being held there. Many are dissidents, opponents of Rhodia’s fascist government. But, Worubu concedes, there are some people there on legitimate grounds. His example is this Indian-national woman who killed nine flag-rank naval officers and four aviators. Even granting that fascists are better off being dead, you can’t fault a government executing someone for that.

The Phantom knows about this. Savarna had killed the Rhodian naval officers who’d sunk her India Voyager II. They were retaliating for her shelling the prison to free Diana Palmer. The Phantom sets his plans to go back to Gravelines and free her, and regrets how this would have been easier if it weren’t right after Salinas’s escape.

Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom for the 17th of June, 2021. I’m inclined to agree that it’s a foolish move to go back to Gravelines, like, days after breaking out Salinas. On the other hand, they’re probably still working out their assessment of what security failures happened and why, so their procedures might be all a mess right now. Hey, when doing security assessments around Bangalla, how much time is spent arguing whether a threat is The Phantom versus whether it’s something mortals can affect? The Ghost Who Walks has got to be a great excuse for mediocre people to explain why their security isn’t.

Old Man Mozz stops him. Mozz shares a sketch from one of his visions. It’s the hallucination-setting of the story The Llongo Forest. In that vision a spirit presenting as The Phantom’s father warned the Ghost was Walking into oblivion. This as penalty for having not died in The Curse Of Old Man Mozz. The warning said he was now without “the right to lie in the crypt of the Phantoms”.

Now Mozz offers similar warnings: if he interferes with Savarna’s fate, The Phantom’s body will lie in that Llongo Forest doom. And Kit Junior will never return from the Himalayas. And will never be the 22nd Phantom. He even promises that “the journey of the Walkers in this land … will end”.

That doesn’t sound good, no. But even granting that this is happening in a world where prophetic visions happen? I notice Old Man Mozz hasn’t warned that The Phantom will die from this. Nor has he quite said there won’t be a 22nd Phantom. Still, between Old Man Mozz, The Phantom himself, and Heloise Walker, there’s a lot of people with grim visions of what’s to come.

Next Week!

Did Gawain make it past that jousting cheater? Did Valiant escape Lord Hallam’s henchmen? Did we get a successful reorganization of extremely-early-feudal England? I’ll say when I check in with Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant, next week, if plans work out.