12 October 2020 many Phantom phans awoke to read the news that long time Team Fantomen artist César Spadari had sadly passed away.
César Aurelio Spadari was born in 1938 and originated from Argentina. Since 1987 he had drawn the Phantom for the Team Fantomen comic book with 93 stories and a handful of covers in the 30 plus years that followed.
Many of these stories had been published around the world in Australia, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Russia, Hungary, Brazil, Estonia among others.
Many modern Phantom phans would have grown up and admired his work through out the 1990s and 2000s. He was one of the few Phantom artists whose work looked as great in a colour Team Fantomen comic as in the black and white Frew comic.
To demonstrate his popularity among phans, he won best cover twice in 1992 and 2000 (both for Fantomet and Fantomen) and won the best adventure seven times. These polls were all voted by the reading public. Below is a list of the stories.
Fantomen (Sweden)
2001: "The Prodigal Son"
2003: "My Darling Pirate"
2004: "Son of the Pirate Queen"
2014: "Death of a Pirate Queen"
Fantomet (Norway)
1992: "The Wolf is Coming"
2002: "In A Strange Land, Part 2"
2003: "My Darling Pirate"
2004: "Son of the Pirate Queen"
2014: "Death of a Pirate Queen"
In talking to his colleagues from Team Fantomen and other artists, they always had nice words to say about Cesar and his art style. Not much is known about Cesar but if you listen to past X-Band: The Phantom Podcast's, Antonio Lemos and David Bishop had more to say about their relationships with the artist that may shed more light on him for those interested.
We have included a gallery of some of his covers along with some interior pages in both colour and black and white.
Thank you César Spadari for your work on our hero and our thoughts are with his family and loved ones who are mourning his lost at this difficult period of time.
A huge thank you to his previous assistant Percy Ochoa for the news and informing us.
