100-Page FAKES presents: THE PHANTOM # 68

100-Page FAKES! imagines mid-1970s DC 100-Page Super Spectaculars that never were...but should have been!



FOR THOSE WHO CAME IN LATE: The Ghost Who Walks walks again!

No, of course DC Comics didn't have the rights to publish funnybooks starring Lee Falk's creation The Phantom during the original 100-Page Super Spectacular era. The Boppinverse is not subject to your trivial realities! In our altered reality here, we've already established a parallel world where DC purchased the Charlton Comics Action-Heroes (Blue Beetle, The Question, Captain Atom, Peacemaker, Judo Master, Nightshade, and company) in the '70s rather than in the '80s. And we've already transferred that Phantom license from Charlton to DC with our previous 100-Page FAKE! edition of The Phantom # 67. So today, we're just walking along that fanciful path we've previously paved for ourselves.

Don't ask! Just buy...er, READ it!

1975's The Phantom # 68 was the late artist Don Newton's second issue, with Nicola Cuti taking over the writing duties previously carried out by Joe Gill. This 100-Page FAKE! issue was already in the planning stages when Cuti passed away last week. My fondest memory of Nicola Cuti's work is E-Man, the wonderful, light-hearted superhero that he and artist Joe Staton created for Charlton in the '70s. I would dearly love to see a comprehensive series of reprints that would collect and preserve the E-Man chronicles in their entirety.

To make this real-life 1975 comic book into a 21st century fabrication, we add two more Phantom stories: one from earlier in the Charlton run (with art by the great Jim Aparo) and one from the short-lived King Comics run that preceded Charlton's acquisition of the Phantom license. As an extra treat, we throw in "Children Of Doom," the dystopian 1967 Charlton Classic written by future DC superstar Dennis O'Neil (under his "Sergius O'Shaughnessy" pseudonym) and illustrated by Pat Boyette.

The Phantom in "The Beasts Of Madame Khan," The Phantom # 68 (December 1975)
"Children Of Doom," Charlton Premiere # 2 (November 1967)
The Phantom in "The Pharaoh Phantom," The Phantom # 32 (June 1969)
The Phantom in "The Girl Phantom," The Phantom # 20 (January 1967)

For once, DC doesn't own any of this. The Phantom is copyright King Features Syndicate; the copyright for "Children Of Doom" is unknown. These are shown in sample pages here; my paid subscribers see the whole book. For those who came in late: you're not late at all. Please enjoy this expanded issue of The Phantom.

TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

Volume 1: download

Volume 2: CD or download

Volume 3: download

Volume 4: CD or download

Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio:  CD or download

Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 133 essays about 133 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).

COVER GALLERY

Comic Strip Club

I've loved comic strips since I was a little kid. While my primary panel allegiance is to comic books, there's never really been a time when I didn't peruse at least the Sunday funnies. My earliest specific memory of reading newspaper comics goes back to 1966, when I was six years old and fallin' hard for superheroes (thanks to the Batman TV series). One week, there was a Sunday Beetle Bailey strip where Sgt. Snorkel dreams that he and Beetle have become their own Dynamic Duo Fatman and Slobber, and high-camp hijinks ensue. There's no way that was my first exposure to Beetle Bailey and the rest of the popular features found in Syracuse's Sunday Herald American, but that one certainly resonated with me. And for weeks thereafter, I kept waiting for Fatman and Slobber to reappear in Beetle Bailey, but alas, it was their only appearance. I betcha they were probably erased from continuity in Crisis On Infinite Earths anyway.



In addition to Beetle Bailey, my early favorites included The Family Circus, Dennis The Menace, Blondie, Archie, Pogo, and (I think) Peanuts. I probably read Li'l Abner, too. We received the daily newspapers as well, The Post Standard in the morning and The Herald Journal in the afternoon, so I started scannin' those black-and-white strips during the week. Although I was (as noted) big into superhero comic books, I didn't really follow any syndicated adventure or dramatic strips. If memory serves, the non-comical comic strips the Syracuse papers offered at the time would have included Dick Tracy, Steve Canyon, Prince Valiant, Dondi, and The Phantom. The Phantom was the only costumed hero of the bunch--the Syracuse papers did not carry Superman or Batman--but I didn't start following the exploits of The Ghost Who Walks until later (after The Phantom [and Steve Canyon] were included as accessory identities for the Captain Action superhero doll in 1967).




In the late '60s and into the '70s, the adventure strips began to seem more attractive to me, especially The Phantom, Steve Canyon, and Rip Kirby. Aside from reprints in Peanuts paperback collections, the first older newspaper strips I ever read were the 1940s Batman and the 1929/1930s Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, both of which I discovered in the early '70s. The Batman strips had been reprinted in a few of DC Comics' 80-Page Giants in the '60s, comic books which I encountered as back issues circa...'72, or so? And a Christmas or birthday around that time brought me the hardcover volume The Collected Works Of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. Reading the adventures of the intrepid Buck Rogers influenced my own eighth-grade art project, a comic strip called Jack Mystery.



(The allure of older newspaper strips was strong, but I didn't have much opportunity [or funds] to indulge it in the '70s. I coveted a publication called The Menomonee Falls Gazette, which published a variety of comic strips, but I don't think I ever bought an issue. I started clipping and saving The Phantom strip from the Syracuse papers, I read paperback novelizations of 1930s Phantom and Flash Gordon strip continuities, and I immersed myself in a fantastic tabloid Dick Tracy one-shot published by DC Comics. I never got around to buying or reading any other vintage newspaper strip collections.)



As time wore on, there were fewer adventure or drama options to be found on the funnies pages in the Syracuse newspapers. The Phantom hung on (and it's still there today), but Rip Kirby and Steve Canyon faded away, and Dick Tracy eventually disappeared locally, too. I never developed any interest in Mark Trail or Mary Worth, though I did at least flirt with Brenda Starr, Reporter. On the humor front, of course, I was completely taken by Doonesbury, and later by Bloom County, Calvin And Hobbes and The Far Side, too. The late '70s also brought a number of new strips based on comic books--The Amazing Spider-Man, World's Greatest Superheroes, The Incredible Hulk, Conan The Barbarian, and Howard The Duck--but the ones I saw didn't grab me, and the ones I didn't see, I...um, didn't see.

Fast-forward through the '80s (something I wish I could have done in real life). When I lived in an apartment in Buffalo in the '80s, I subscribed to home delivery of The Buffalo News and continued to get my daily comic-strip fix. I cancelled when I moved back to Syracuse in '87. In 1989, I bought a house in the Syracuse suburbs. The blockbuster success of the 1989 Batman movie spawned a new syndicated Batman comic strip, ghost-written by my favorite mystery novelist Max Allan Collins and illustrated by my all-time favorite Bat-artist Marshall Rogers. The new strip would be carried in the Syracuse newspapers, and that was sufficient motivation for me to start getting home delivery of the paper again.



I thought the new Batman strip was just wonderful, but it didn't last long in the Syracuse papers. I was able to continue following it in a promo publication given away at participating comic book shops, but the strip ended entirely not long thereafter. It also appeared in a magazine called Comics Revue, which contained a great mix of new, old, comical, and straight comics. I had already been buying Comics Revue regularly (and was hooked by its reprints of the great British spy strip Modesty Blaise), but I eventually stopped getting it because issues were accumulating faster than I ever got around to reading them.



The newspaper game has changed, not for the better. There is no daily newspaper in Syracuse anymore; the Herald is long gone, and the Post now publishes a mere three days a week, with daily content posted online. I still receive home delivery on Thursdays and Sundays, but I read my comics online. Writer/artist/musician Dan Pavelich began a humor comic strip called Just Say Uncle, and it was (and remains) available on the Go Comics site. Go Comics carries a number of comic strips, including my other current favorites Dick Tracy, Pearls Before Swine, Luann, Carol Lay's essential weekly Lay Lines, Non Sequitur, Doonesbury, Fox Trot, and Jump Start, classic Tarzan, and much more. Go Comics has become my daily comics resource. It's not the same as getting a new Batman newspaper strip delivered to my home every day, but it's going to have to suffice.

TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

Fans of pop music will want to check out Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, a new pop compilation benefiting SPARK! Syracuse, the home of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. TIR'N'RR Allstars--Steve Stoeckel, Bruce Gordon, Joel Tinnel, Stacy Carson, Eytan Mirsky, Teresa Cowles, Dan Pavelich, Irene Peña, Keith Klingensmith, and Rich Firestone--offer a fantastic new version of The Kinks' classic "Waterloo Sunset." That's supplemented by eleven more tracks (plus a hidden bonus track), including previously-unreleased gems from The Click Beetles, Eytan Mirsky, Pop Co-Op, Irene Peña, Michael Slawter (covering The Posies), and The Anderson Council (covering XTC), a new remix of "Infinite Soul" by The Grip Weeds, and familiar TIRnRR Fave Raves by Vegas With Randolph, Gretchen's Wheel, The Armoires, and Pacific Soul Ltd. Oh, and that mystery bonus track? It's exquisite. You need this. You're buying it from Futureman.

(And you can still get our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, on CD from Kool Kat Musik and as a download from Futureman Records.)

Get MORE Carl! Check out the fourth and latest issue of the mighty Big Stir magazine at bigstirrecords.com/magazine

Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 100 essays (and then some) about 100 tracks, plus two bonus instrumentals, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).