When Charlton Comics took over the USA The Phantom comic book series launched by Gold Key Comics and continued by King Comics they decided to omit issue #29 altogether and start afresh with issue #30. The last issue published by King Comics was #28. However as you will find out, King Comics had issue 29 and 30 already planned.
Thanks to some research from phans and comic devotes we can present what issue #29 may have looked like if King Comics continued with their series. Attached is a video presentation of a fan made comic with the intended cover and the contents of Charlton #35.
Thanks to phan Howard Gesbeck he has shared with us the original artwork that is in his collection of the approved covers for issue 29 and 30 which you can see attached. The left images are the line art and the right is the colour overlay.
The cover for issue 29 is a replication of a scene from the Sy Barry and Lee Falk story "The Great Webs of Spidera" however research shows that maybe the story originally intended for issue 29 was the Bill Harris and Bill Lignante story "The Ghost Tribe" which was then published in Charlton issue 35. You can see this in the video above.
The main piece of evidence for this is that the Mexican comic El Fantasma #63 published in 1972 features the cover design. You can see this comic cover to the right.
It is worth noting that this cover art has never been used elsewhere. How the Colmex publishers got their hands on this artwork is perhaps lost to history.
You will also notice that they coloured the background blue while the approved artwork (above) had a yellow background.
In this Mexican comic, the story published is the Bill Harris and Bill Lignante story "The Ghost Tribe".
However it makes me wonder why they would use imagery from the "The Great Webs of Spidera" story for a different story? Could there have been a Bill Lignante recreation of this story in the works?
Eagle eyed phans may also remember the cover for King Comics issue 28 which also features artwork from a scene of the same "The Great Webs of Spidera" story.
Could "The Ghost Tribe" story have been used for issue 30 instead? Again we may never know but hopefully the information presented here will help solve the question about the missing issue 29 and then at the same time ask even more questions.
Thanks must go to a bunch of phans who have helped compiled information and imagery for this article and video. In no particular order, Howard Gesbeck who owns the artwork. Swaroop Chand who hunted down the fan created copy of King 29 for us to video and others like Jon Cookson, Guy Poissant, and David Budds,
