Sweden's Fantomen issue 9/2019 has come out and it features the results of the votes for the best adventure story for Fantomen 2018.
The best story as voted by the phans is "Spöket vid Gallows' Inn" which featured in Fantomen issue 17/2018 written by Claes Reimerthi and drawn by Heiner Bade. This is yet to published by Frew and a crude Swedish to English translation of the title would be "The Ghost at Gallows' Inn".
Second overall in the votes was Andreas Eriksson's "Blodregn' (English translation "Blood Rain") which was published in Fantomen issue 24/2018. This made news late last year as it features no fewer than eight artists: Sal Velluto, Heiner Bade, Alex Saviuk, Joan Boix, Kari Leppänen, Carlos Pedrazzini, César Spadari and Rafael Ruiz. You can read more about this issue and watch Mikael Lyck's review of the story here.
The third most voted story was an old classic story "Excalibur" ("The Legend of the Swords, Part 1: Excalibur") by Norman Worker and Jaime Vallvé. Sometimes classic stories are just that good. This was previously published in 1981 by Fantomen and nearly 40 years later it is still one of the best stories published in modern day 2018. This was published by Frew in 2007 in issue #1476.
Out of only 165 votes, a third of those votes where for these three.
Interestingly the fourth most favourite story of the year was another classic in "Flame" which features an adventure filled, romantic story of how the 9th Phantom battled slave traders and ended up marrying Flame Stanbury who was also masquerading as the Phantom. It was also originally published in 1980 and written by Norman Worker and drawn by Georges Bess. This story was published in 2003 in issue #1359.
Both "Flame" and "Excalibur" are stories that are must reads for any Frew readers who do not have these comics in their collection. No word yet when these other two stories will be published by Frew.
Other interesting notes of the results are:
- 10 stories received votes that are from the archives including the two mentioned above.
- In 2017 the best adventure story was Daily Phantom story "Farewell to the Deep Woods" by Tony DePaul and Mike Manley. The highest newspaper story to receive a vote was "The Phantom is Everywhere" by Tony DePaul and drawn by Terry Beatty and Jeff Weigel. It was 15th overall.
Below is a photo of the full results and how many votes were received for each story.
Thanks goes to Mikael Lyck for the heads up and above photo's. Did you vote?
