In a huge breakthrough for Australia's Frew Publications, one of their locally commissioned stories has been published by an international comic book producer. This is the first time this has happened in Frew's 71-year history.
Hero Complex, penned by Duncan Munro, illustrated by Jeff Weigel, and published in Frew #1832, has been made available to Norwegian audiences by Egmont in issue 2 of their Nye Fantomet historier magazine, released earlier this month. The story has been rebranded with Flammens rov used as the Norwegian title; this can be translated into English as "The Prey of the Flame".
While Australian audiences are accustomed to the American-created newspaper stories and Scandinavian-created Team Fantomen stories being republished on their shores, this is the first time a story has gone back the other way.
Without doubt this marks an important step for Frew, further validating the move into broader creation of their own stories. For the benefit of audiences around the world who may soon have the opportunity to enjoy this new source of Phantom tales, as well as for the benefit of the Australian publisher who no doubt would appreciate the revenue stream, we hope that this is just the first of many stories that gets picked up by publishing houses around the globe.
As a pleasant little footnote to this post, we note that Norwegian phan, aficionado and colourist Ivan Pedersen has contributed an editorial on Phantom collecting. In his writing, Ivan is nice enough to feature ChronicleChamber's own Jermayn Parker, including photos of his collection, and also provides a little plug for this website. The English translation of this can be seen exclusively below.
Many thanks to Kristian Hellesund for his help with translating the story title, and to Ivan Pedersen for his generous contribution via writing and providing the translated editorial.
