Last week some eagle eyed phans may have seen news that Dolmen Publishing over in Spain will be picking up a Phantom License and republishing some classic Phantom stories. Unlike Hermes and Serbia and like their Turkish counterparts they will be starting off with Sy Barry's reign in 1961.
Majority of these stories have not been seen in Spain for almost 40 years. In fact apart from a hardcover reprint of stories in 2005, Spain hasn't seen any Phantom publications since the mid 1990's which is a whole generation who have missed out on the Phantom. It is good to see the Phantom back!
Dolmen Publishing have a rich history of publishing classic strip heroes like Prince Valiant, Flash Gordon and Johnny Hazard. For the Mandrake phans, they will also be publishing Mandrake at the same time.
The first book will be Hardcover and 200 pages with 186 of comics alone with two or three strips per page and sold for a reasonable 30 euros (roughly $50AU). Plans from the editor is that they will release 2-3 per year. No word yet on if it will be in landscape format like Hermes or on the cover art but when we do know more, so will you.
All material will be translated with no editing but some restoring where needed from KFS archives which will I assume will be similar format that we have seen from Jim Shepherd's Frew days.
Also which is exciting for the purists that if the Sy Barry releases are popular they will go back to the Ray Moore Dailies.
As we get more information from the publisher and if available to purchase for the completists, we will publish here.
While we are talking about new publishers we have been informed by our latest podcast guest of ANOTHER new publisher that has not seen the Phantom published in their country also since the mid to late 1990's. How exciting is this? Stay tuned to the podcast feed as this podcast will hit the airwaves in a week or so.
Thank you to Andreas and Ivan for the spot and Rafael Marin the editor for the information.
