Yes. Mike Manley was able to return from illness to illustrating Judge Parker … I lost track of just when. Sometime recently. His first Phantom strips appear to be coming in next week, after this story, “The Chain (2024)”, wraps up. For the last several months Bret Blevins has had artistic duties, and even credit, on the daily strip.
So if you are reading after about September 2024, or want to read about the separate Sunday continuity, all my posts about Tony DePaul and Bret Blevins and Mike Manley and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Weekdays) should be at this link. If you find one that’s not mentioned under that tag, please let me know. Now on to recapping the plot, which is a handful of events easy to get down if you’re ignoring all mood and atmosphere and such.
The Phantom (Weekdays).
11 March – 1 June 2024.
After chuckling at Phantom 21’s dream of a recap of “The Chain (1953)”, and not telling Diana Walker about “The Jungle Trek” (2006), Kit Junior was headed in to Mawitaan to see his sister. But something kept pulling him back to The Dad Who Walks.
But Dad Phantom will get to that in a moment. He noticed something subtle, a light in the forest too small for a campfire or a headlight or anything anyone good could be up to. And that matches these tire tracks he’d noticed, too smooth to be used by any vehicle up to anything good. It’s smuggling poachers, badly lost from Mark Trail, sneaking Llongo archaeological treasures out of the jungle. Kit Jr didn’t put these together until The Phantom pointed out the clues, a pleasantly subtle note that he isn’t ready to be a The Phantom yet.
But he’s much of the way there. On his way to freeing a captive Llongo, he gets to fight a smuggling poacher with Devil’s help. And he gives his father every Phantom’s heart’s deepest desire, working one of those Old Jungle Sayings (in this case, “Phantom rough on roughnecks”) into dialogue. Quite effective night’s work, rounding up a bunch of people who, as the saying goes, don’t see why they should have to pay for a crime someone else noticed.
In the afterglow of a good night’s punching Kit Jr opens up about what’s freaking him out. He had a nightmare, about being the one who breaks the chain of Walkers as The Phantom. (And so the title gets its second meaning. I didn’t minor in English for nothing, or at all. I’m self-taught and I think it shows.) He instead becomes this … vigilante, so obsessed with revenge for something that he becomes an outright war criminal, mass-murdering prisoners. He woke terrified, fearing he was losing his link to his Phantom heritage, and had to rush home — just at the moment that Mozz stopped The Phantom on the way to Gravelines Prison, the start of the Wrack-and-Ruin story. He can’t believe he travelled seven thousand kilometers because of a bad dream. I share this, have trouble believing he travelled from North India to the Deep Woods in a day myself. Maybe I missed a day or two of the Wrack-and-Ruin narrative.
But this is how the story ends, with The Phantom wondering what force would give Kit Junior a dream that matches Mozz’s prophecy of the death of the Walker line, and give it then. If Fate is trying to undo Mozz’s meddling, why do this? If Kit Jr will become The African, a vigilante killed in some remote nowhere, why “warn” him? Why send him away from the Mountain City at the moment that — we assume but do not know — Savarna Devi kills Constable Jampa? And there’s no answers, just the recognition that knowing the future doesn’t mean you know anything useful.
Next Week!
Alley Oop and companions are trapped in a time loop that ends with the Earth blown up! How many times will it repeat before someone remembers they have a time machine and should be able to go to before the loop starts, maybe stop all this nonsense form happening? We’ll see what happens in Mike Curtis, Charles Ettinger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy one week from now, more or less. (They’re actually out of the time loop, but I’ll take any transitions I can get.)
Another Blog, Meanwhile 