28 November is Thanksgiving, a holiday that our American phriends celebrate. Today the reason to celebrate is lost to many, with it instead being a time to overeat and get some awesome shopping bargains.
Back in 1985, cartoonists Milton Caniff (Steve Canyon), Charles Schulz (Peanuts), and Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury) got together with other artists like The Phantom artist of the time Sy Barry, his brother Dan Barry on the Flash Gordon strip, Fred Fredericks on the Mandrake the Magician strip and 170+ other cartoonists to highlight a worthy cause of world hunger ironically on a day of overeating.
Some of the strips created by these artists who pooled together a common cause were dedicated to the plight with powerful messages, while others like The Phantom just added a small caption box to the ongoing at that time current newspaper story. It would have been nice to see more from the people of the strip at that time.
Afterwards, the drawings of the 175 cartoonists was collected into a book with an introduction by Garry Trudeau and a foreword by Kenny Rogers. That is a mammoth effort to collaborate between all those personalities and people, especially when you think it happened pre Internet and email. If you would like to see more of the different cartoons, we recommend this awesome URL which collects many of them.
This is not the first or even last time, the Phantom in a comic book or newspaper adventure story has stood for something. We have seen adverts to buy war bonds in the same panels as the Phantom killing invading Japanese solders and do not to forget that comic cover of the Phantom beating up a racist Nazi with a rainbow flag that saw several online attacks on Fantomen's Facebook page.
The Phantom's oath is that "I swear to devote my life to the destruction of all forms of piracy, greed, cruelty and injustice. My sons, and my sons' sons, shall follow me." Surely, world hunger is a form of injustice, however is killing a Japanese solder even in the middle of a horrible world war a form of justice?
Do we like our hero being a spokesperson for a cause or culture change or even promoting a brand? Or does it all depend on what the promotion is? Can our culture today handle anything slightly off center? Does the Phantom have to remain strictly center-aligned so it can not offend and alienate the phans with more left and or right leanings?
Would love to hear your thoughts.
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