Does a ghost need technology? JD takes a look at technology in The Phantom’s world. The internet. Television. Digital media and penicillin. All things that, in today’s world, are taken completely for granted. It wasn’t that long ago that television was seen as evil, penicillin as a dangerous drug. Heck, in your parents (or perhaps your grandparents) day rock and roll was the music of the Devil. As the world grows older and more sophisticated, so does its technologies. Society is built upon and gauged by the power of its technology, even an individual’s place in that society depends on what gadgets and gizmos they possess. A man with an MP3 player is quite hip, where as the man down the road still lugging around a Walkman is considered old school. In a world built upon and fascinated by technology, isn’t it only natural that our comic heroes would also move with the times? Although The Phantom has always been set in the time of which the strip/comic was written, technology seems to be one aspect of the world the Ghost Who Walks doesn’t have a handle on. In even the most recent of stories, the Phantom still has that huge “talking box” set up in the Skull Cave. Surely, he would receive better coverage and service, (not to mention greater convenience), if he set himself up with a satellite phone? Why not use satellite internet with an encrypted e-mail account for contacting the Jungle Patrol rather than traipse up and down the poisoned well all the time? The idea of modern technology in a Phantom story is one of controversy. On one hand, some Phans feel that a modern hero should be equipped with modern technologies. On the other, other Phans seem opposed to the idea of a “teched-up” Phantom and would rather see him clamber up and down that well. The Poisoned Well is probably not a good example in the “new vs old” argument as it has been a staple of Phantom mythos for as long as any Phans can remember and some things should not be changed. Hitting a “send” button just isn’t anywhere near as cool. This seems to be where much of the fear of a techno-Phantom comes from – the fear that adding technology to the story will eliminate many of the classic aspects of the character and his mythology. But, would this actually happen? Phans who are pro-technology argue that it is simply common sense to outfit the Phantom with a few modern gadgets. In the Marvel three-issue mini-series, which came out in 1996, the 22nd Phantom sported an almost completely re-designed costume. It was made from Kevlar body armour, had infrared lenses in the mask, as well as a device in the costumes’ wristbands that allowed the Phantom to hack safe combinations. While the safe-hacker might be going a little too far (the smallest ones in real life are the size of a brick) the armour and infrared do make sense. The Phantom is regularly shot at, hazards of the job. Surely, it’s only common sense to have as much protection as possible. Body armour would also strengthen the legend of The Man Who Cannot Die. If a villain shoots the Phantom in the chest and our hero barely flinches, imagine the impression that’s going to be made. Add to that the fact that one of the Phantom’s favourite tricks is to turn off the lights and take out enemies under cover of darkness and you can see where the infrared lenses would come in handy. …does it change the Phantom’s character? While some would argue that it doesn’t (that technology would simply give our hero an extra “leg up” over the villains) others would argue that yes, it does change the character considerably. With the “traditional” Phantom, we put his ability to see in the dark and come out of a firefight unscathed down to his years of jungle training – something that no other comic hero has. Wouldn’t such technologies as those mentioned above destroy the need for that training and make him just another muscle-bound guy in purple tights? If the Phantom’s jungle training defines him wouldn’t technologies that basically provide these abilities without the training completely defeat the purpose of the Phantom in the first place – that of a jungle bred hero? If they did, however, the character would still retain his legacy so would it in fact be that great a decimation of the hero? So what of technology in the field? In a world where digital crime is escalating rapidly, should the Phantom not have access to computers, the internet and databases? Should he perhaps not have knowledge of computer tech and wizardry along the lines of programming, hacking and encryption to help him in his fight against evil? In the recent story Death In Cyberspace (Frew #1442); the Phantom is thrust into a digital world not dissimilar to that found in The Matrix. The same rules seem to apply – reality can be bent and twisted as the user sees fit. While this is a very new style of story for The Phantom, it is not one out of sync with today’s world. People are able to build digital environments that are limited only by their imaginations. One needs only to look at the video games such as the fantasy series and its fantastical, yet quite possible worlds. Games recently released on Microsoft’s new console the X-Box 360 show how closely that digital reality mirrors our world. When you consider that only ten or fifteen years ago Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Brothers were the hottest games on the shelf you can see how fast digital reality has progressed. As anyone how has read the manga Ghost In The Shell or seen the film based upon it will know people are beginning to notice how much digital reality is taking the place of “real” reality. In these stories, reality and the digital world intertwine at every juncture, sometimes indistinguishably so. More and more we hear of people having digital experiences – digital meetings, digital concerts, digital television, digital radio, digital dating, even digital sex. It is not uncommon today for people to have a digital relationship that leads to marriage and a life together. In a world that ventures into the digital realm so often, is it not acceptable for a comic hero such as The Phantom to expand on such them Even considering the above, as well as society’s shift toward digital entertainment and digital living, the question remains – does a Phantom exploring and having digital experiences stay true to the character Lee Falk created some 70 years ago? Some would say no, others would argue that it is a natural evolution of a character who has always reflected his audience and the world they live in. The Phantom is actually quite problematic when trying to move him into a technologically dominated age. While other heroes such as Iron Man and Spider-Man lend themselves well to such themes, (they both have something of a sci-fi quality) the Phantom has always been very much a pulp hero. A character that was created in the more “innocent” time of the 1930s perhaps does not segue as easily to a digital world. Pulp heroes are generally detectives, mysterious “old school” heroes, not techno babbling demi-Gods such as Neo fromThe Matrix. The most technologically advanced we have seen the Phantom was in the animated series Phantom 2040. As with the Marvel mini-series, many of the hero’s gadgets made perfect sense. He’s known as The Ghost Who Walks so an invisibility suit is not only a nice stealth device, but also it’s really going to play up that legend. The best aspect of however was that it proved there is a place for the Phantom in a futuristic, technology driven world. In the series, the Phantom fought for environmental preservation against the backdrop of the evil Madison Empire and its industrial filth. Perhaps the best course to take is that of compromise, such as Moonstone has done in their Phantom stories. Moonstone’s Phantom is obviously a modern day hero, the themes of Moonstone’s books dealing with modern day life such as the world’s current fear of terrorism. The technology of Moonstone’s books is unmistakably modern day with the most high tech equipment we’ve seen coming in the form of gliding suits used by the Sky Band in Ben Raab’s The Aviatrix. However, suits similar to this do exist in today’s world. Moonstone has kept the Phantoms pulp quality, the hero has yet to use any teched up gizmos himself. He remains as dashing, handsome, adventurous and heroic (not to mention cheeky) as in any Falk tale and it works perfectly in a contemporary 2006 setting. Perhaps a techno-Phantom is something we will see one day when technology again jumps to amazing heights. Perhaps digital reality does have its place in Phantom stories. As time goes on, the Phantom will progress with it, as he’s always done. When our own technology amazes us every single day, imagine how amazing the stories based upon it could be. #Marvel #LeeFalk #Moonstone #Phantom2040

In 1980 Norman Worker and Kari Leppanen began a trilogy of stories featuring the First Phantom that began with a tale of the origins of the "Phantom" name and ended with one of the greatest battles in military history - the Siege of Malta. Encompassing The Treasure from Rhoads (Fantomen 6/1980, Frew #1734), Duel in Venice (Fantomen 9/1986, Frew #937 & 1741) and The Battle on Malta (Fantomen 10/1986, Frew #938, 1125 & 1742), having read the original Frew publications of Duel and Battle when I was but a young phan, this "Malta Trilogy" is one that had always stuck with me. So, when I met my now-girlfriend and she told me of her Maltese heritage I, of course, excitedly told her about these Phantom stories. Smiling, she promised me that she would show me around Malta some day and that we'd follow in the First Phantom's footsteps. Well, I've recently returned from that very journey. For those who came in late, Malta is an archipelago located just off the coast of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea. It has one of the most coloured histories of perhaps any country in the world. While Battle on Malta focuses on the Ottoman invasion of the island in 1565 the country has actually been invaded many, many times from the First Punic War of 264BC through to World War II when the country was heavily bombed by Nazi forces. The reason for all this turmoil, and this is true for the battles seen in Worker and Leppanen's trilogy, is that the island sits in a hugely tactically adventitious location. In the first part of the trilogy we see the First Phantom's cousin, Simon, tasked by the Grand Master of the Order of the Nights of St. John to find their lost treasure. This treasure sadly is a fictional creation of Worker and clearly a device in order to get the First Phantom into the mix. However, as most of you probably know the Order was indeed a real organisation created around 1023. A Catholic military order, their purpose was to provide medical aid to those coming from the Holy Land and they did indeed operate from Rhoads, over which they had sovereignty. While not named in the story, the Grand Master at this time was probably Juan de Homedes y Coscon. At the conclusion of the story the Phantom dons a suite of armour of the Knights to do battle with the Suliman the Cruel, the fictional villain of the piece. After Suliman's defeat both the First Phantom and Simon are knighted. Notable here is the accuracy with which Leppane illustrates the armour of the Knights, matching it almost exactly to its real world counterpart. Duel in Venice is where things really start to kick off, however. While the animosity between the First Phantom, Henri and his mother is all of course fictional, the background of the Siege of Malta is very much based upon fact. Fort St. Elmo was the first to fall to the Ottomans, as depicted in the story. The story states that by the 19th of June, 1565 St. Elmo was in ruins, but in fact it was more likely to have been earlier that month that the fort was destroyed. On the 27th of May, the Ottoman army bombarded the Fort with three dozen guns for a week straight, all but reducing it to rubble. Even so, then Grand Master Jean Parisot de Valette, who was 70 at the time, ordered the surviving troops to stay in the Fort until, on the 23rd of June, the Ottoman army finally took it, killing all who remained inside. From here the action moves onto the final days of the Siege, with the First Phantom joining the battle at Fort St. Angelo in Battle on Malta. While not much of the actual Fort is shown in the comic, the real life structure is incredibly impressive. Covering an area of 140,000 square feet it was originally built during medieval times as a castle and then rebuilt by the Knights as a bastioned fort and served as their headquarters during the Siege. In an interesting side note, the Fort was garrisoned by the British from 1800 to 1979 as a stone frigate which they referred to as HMS Egmont. As depicted in the story, Fort St. Angelo held out against the invaders although the First Phantom is mortally wounded in the fighting. At this moment in reality backup from Sicilian soldiers arrived, falling on the retreating Ottoman soldiers and slaughtering them. Malta had survived the invasion both in Worker's story and in real life. The Ottomans never again attempted to invade Malta. The Siege of Malta is a fascinating period of history, made even more so because of our hero's part in it. Many of the areas mentioned in the Worker's Malta trilogy can still be visited today, and many of the characters were actual people. Malta is a place covered in history, there is not a corner of the island nation you can turn around that does not have some important link to the past. Present Day Fort St. Elmo Present Day Fort St. Angelo

As we reported a little while ago Hermes Press have now officially announced their plans to reprint the entire Avon series of Phantom paperbacks. In a post on Facebook the company has revealed further details of the forthcoming set. The first volume of the set, The Story of The Phantom: The Ghost Who Walks, is due for release in August of this year with further volumes releasing every other month (so October, December, February 2017 and so on). The press release confirms that the beautiful George Wilson painted covers will remain. Indeed, looking at the cover of the first volume it looks to be an exact facsimile of the original novel save for the Hermes Press logo. The press release also confirms that the series will be paperback just as with the original releases and will be priced at $14.99 US each. No information was given about the forthcoming box to house all of the various volumes, but that may not be revealed until closer to the end of the series run. Once it is revealed, however, you can be sure to find the information here! #HermesPress #AvonBooks

The majority of phans will be aware of the Defenders of the Earth video game that was released for various home computers in 1990 and, of course, the arguably more famous Phantom 2040 game released for the Sega Mega Drive, Sega Game Gear and Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995. But did you know that the Phantom almost had a third console outing, along with fellow Lee Falk creation Mandrake the Magician, in 2003? In the world of video games it is not uncommon for games to begin being developed only to be unceremoniously cancelled and never heard from again. Indeed, some games reach a near complete state with only the smallest of fine tuning left before the plug is pulled. The stories behind these cancelled games are many and varied but always fascinating. To help uncover the secrets of these two games, ChronicleChamber contacted Sebastiano Mandala, one of the founders of Italian video game design studio 7th Sense Studios who were tasked with developing the games. Sometime before the later half of 2003 a small French video game publishing company called Microids had acquired the video game licence for The Phantom and Mandrake from King Features Syndicate. Microids hired 7th Sense Studios to develop games out of the two licenses which were planned to be released on Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance system in 2003. 7th Sense had worked previously with Microids on Game Boy Colour (the Advance’s predecessor) titles The Fish Files and The New Addams Family Series, both of which had been received well. “[The Game Boy Advance] was a natural evolution for us, since we were already Nintendo devs and we [had] worked on [the Game Boy Colour],” Mandala explains. However, Microids didn’t really know what to do with the properties. “They were quite clueless [about what they wanted, but] they were trusting us anyway.” Development of The Phantom: Ghost Who Walks and Mandrake the Magician: Shadow of the Vehme was fairly quick, in all taking only 8 months. This was partially due to both games running on the same game engine. Mandala says that while the team had heard of the Phantom, they weren’t really familiar with either of the characters. “At that time we knew that Phantom was still famous only in Australia, otherwise basically no one really remembered the character. We knew the characters by name, but we didn't know the comics, so we weren't really fans, however KFS sent [us] a lot of material so we did enough research to develop the storyline and game design. ” While the two games shared the same engine, they had slight variances in game play to suit the characters. The Phantom, for example, would have been an action-adventure game while Mandrake would see the top hat wearing magician use his powers of illusion rather than weapons to subdue foes and feature stealth elements. On his Projects page game coder Maciej Sinilo notes that Mandrake introduced some particular hurdles. "Mandrake was a little bit more complicated [than the Phantom] because of his unique spells (he couldn't use a machine gun :). He could, for example, summon his astral body and sneak around in this form, walk through the walls etc." Sinilo’s website offers some more interesting tidbits about the games such as the game engine having the ability to have up to 10 non-playable characters on screen at once with no hint of impact of performance - something rather impressive for the time -, and a scene in which an “Indiana Jones style stone [chased] the hero in one of the dungeons.” We presume this hero would have been The Phantom. Going over the two games’ design documents reveals further differences between the two games. Obviously the main difference between the two from a gameplay perspective is the story. The Phantom’s story revolves around a plot to destroy a pharmaceutical company that has set up research labs in the jungle. When one of the labs is sabotaged and explodes, killing a young Bandar tribesman, the Phantom is asked to investigate by the young man’s father leading to a mystery involving industrial sabotage and ancient evil. Mandrake's story, interestingly and perhaps appropriately, is set during World War II and sees Mandrake investigate the murder of an old friend. This friend happens to be an archaeologist who has discovered some ancient objects of power which, of course, the Nazi’s want for themselves. His investigation sees Mandrake travel all over the world in his search for the truth. The games’ engine was robust enough to allow the two titles to embrace the two character’s differences. As previously mentioned Mandrake would not use guns in his game, but rather various spells and abilities to subdue foes. While the Phantom could use guns (or hand-to-hand combat if the player wished) the developers cleverly had human enemies drop to their knees and surrender once they had taken enough damage. While surrendered the Phantom can question these enemies to gather information to aid him in his mission. While it is possible to kill a surrendered enemy the game would penalise the player for doing so. This is a very clever way of embracing the Phantom’s “do not kill” philosophy in a way that makes sense within the game. For his own part, Mandrake had a similar ability, although he would hypnotise subdued enemies to gather information. A strong part of both games is exploration and both titles present a slightly different way of doing this. The Phantom is able to enter a “stealth mode” which sees the character crouching and sneaking around the villains’ base, just as in the comics. Mandrake, on the other hand, has the ability to become invisible, however, any kind of attack or interaction on Mandrake’s part would break this spell. The Astral Body which Sinilo mentions would allow Mandrake to pass through walls, but he can not attack in this form. Further, Mandrake’s physical body would be left defenceless in this form so players would need to use it warily. While development of the two titles ran smoothly, the worst happened at the 11th hour. Just as the games were being made ready for release Microids declared bankruptcy. Due to being tied up with Microids this also spelled the end for 7th Sense. So, exactly what condition were the games left in after they had been abandoned? According to Mandala, they were at least in a playable state. “I think the games were good enough, but surely not gems. I wasn't very happy with the art, but the games were nice. They had to be made both in 8 months and there were only around 10 people working on them.” Although the games may have never been made available commercially, hope is not lost for those who might wish to play them. ROMs of the games do exist, so all one needs is a Game Boy Advance emulator to play them on your home computer. The games were never translated from 7th Sense’s native Italian, however, making them quite hard to play for those who don’t speak Italian due to the games’ emphasis on story. Still, you can have a bit of a play around within the first area of both games without too much trouble and get a decent idea of the games. In playing the ROMs, after the impressive intro screens to each game, it easy to see what Mandala meant when he said he was not happy with the art. While the game’s environments do look quite nice, the character sprites appear rather rough and pixelated, as if unfinished. While Mandrake seems to fare better, the Phantom, perhaps due to the single colour of his costume, looks quite bland. Strangely, it also feels as if he gets lost amongst the green visuals of the Deep Woods, something one would not expect a purple-clad character to do. Indeed, the graphics seen in-game appear far inferior to the examples given in the design documents. Mandala explains this in part by saying due to the time constraints of development the team opted for prerendered 3D art rather than the preferred pixel art that was more commonly used. However, where the game does shine is in its music. The music in both games feels suited to the character it is based upon. The Phantom’s soundtrack mixes jungle drums with rock while Mandrake’s soundtrack is suitably mysterious. The sound effects, too, are good during the small amount of the game I was able to play. While I can’t say how all the various game elements and character abilities fare over the course of the games, during the short amount I was able to play everything seemed to work and flow well for the most part. The isometric perspective makes movement a little tricky; I found I had a bit of trouble when engaging enemies and trying to have my hero face exactly the right direction while attacking. Still, this may be due to paying the game on a wireless XBox 360 controller via my computer rather than the actual GBA hardware, although I did use the 360’s d-pad which is superior to the one found on the GBA. Regardless, the true revelation here is the fact that so much material on these games - as well as playable ROM dumps of the games themselves - actually exist. It is extremely exciting to be able discover so much about these games for which, until recently, all we had were a few screenshots and arbitrary information thanks to Unseen64. It is a shame that these games never saw release as they show a lot of promise. It is arguable that in the early 2000’s they may not have sold well, but sales do not always reflect the quality of a product. Either way, a piece of Phantom and Mandrake history previously shrouded in mystery has been uncovered and that is incredibly exciting! ChronicleChamber would like to thank Sebastiano Mandala for his help with this research and providing all the game documents and ROMs. Design Documents, Screenshots and ROMs. Sebastiano has kindly given ChronicleChamber copies of the design documents, a series of screenshots and concept sketches as well as the ROM dumps of each game for phans to enjoy. All of this can be downloaded from the below link. When using the Game Boy Advance emulator, VisualBoy Advance, you may wish to configure the game's controls by going to Options > Joypad > Configure > 1. These documents have been uploaded to the Phantom Preservation Project. #Nintendo #GameBoyAdvance #Downloads #Mandrake #Games

The hugely successful line of Pop Vinyl collectible figures from Funko has featured figures of everyone from movie stars to sports heroes, from Elvis Presley to Howard the Duck. Well finally, the Ghost Who Walks is getting the Pop treatment, and the figure is available for pre-order now! Due out in August this year, the Phantom Pop can be pre-ordered now from PopCultcha for $16.99AU. It would be a good idea to pre-order if this is something you’re interested in as the Funko Pops have a large following of collectors in their own right so you won’t only have Phantom phans to contend with. Also, Funko tends to retire their Pop figures after a time so it’s worth getting in and grabbing these while you can. While there aren’t any images of the figure available above the one we’ve included at the top of the post, if you are unfamiliar with Pop Vinyls you can be safe in the knowledge that they are all very well sculpted and of a high quality. Needless to say though, we’ll give you our full opinions on the figure on X-Band once it’s released! #PopVinyl #Popcultcha

Limitless Visions has just put up on their website a Phantom Limited Edition Box Set. The set contains a “Moonlight” design Phantom shirt as well as one of the purple 3-inch figures, all in a nice big box. The set ranges from $59.95AU to $62.95AU, most probably depending on the shirt size ordered. The set is limited to only 150 worldwide. We’ve also had confirmation from Limitless that the Jawbreaker design we told you about earlier will be appearing on their store soon. Also in that story we mentioned the Man Who Can Not Die t-shirt design that could be pre-ordered via Previews. At the time of the story no image of the design was available, however, the Previews listing has been updated with an image of the design which you can also see below. So, who's going to be getting these? #Clothing #LimitlessVisions

Aussie collectibles store Popcultcha has two new Phantom collectibles to go alongside their soon-to-be-released 12″ statue. As with the aforementioned statue, the two new items come courtesy of Ikon Collectables. The two items are a very cool looking Phantom bobblehead and a heat changing coffee mug (those things seem to be all the rage nowadays) which retail for $34.99 and $12.99 respectively and are both available to be pre-orderd. The mug is due out this December, right in time for Christmas, which the bobblehead is due in February next year. Checkout Popcultcha’s full range of Phantom products HERE. Thanks to Will Dorrington for the heads up on this. #IkonCollectables #Popcultcha

ComicShelf.com has reported that the Internet Archive has made available early Phantom and Mandrake strips, as well as the un-aired Mandrake and Phantom TV-pilots from the 1960s. The Mandrake content features 90 pages of strips as well as the stories The Cobra and The Weird Bank Robberies. The Phantom content is much more extensive, including issues from Gold Key and Harvey Hits. You can see a full list of available content, as well as download it, from The Internet Archive. Thanks to Ben DeHaan for this info. #Mandrake #GoldKey #HarveyHits

It’s almost Supanova time again and that means another ChronicleChamber phan Gathering! Each year at the Supanova pop culture convention in Sydney, Australia plans from all over the country gather together to share their love for the Ghost Who Walks. This year is of course no different and the convention is less than a week away! The details for the Sydney convention are as follows; June 19-21 Sydney Showground, Olympic Park Yes, the convention runs for three days, however the phans will be getting together on the Saturday (20th). There are several ticket options, so take a look to see which you’d like to get. Phantom artist Terry Beatty will be a guest at the con so the plan is for phans to gather at his table at 1pm. From there they will go for lunch, have a catch up and fight over who is going to buy what collectibles. You don’t have to buy a ticket to join the Gathering (just meet us outside the con for food) but you will if you wish to enter the convention. We hope to see many of you there. Even if you’ve not been before feel free to come and join in the fun! #Supanova #TerryBeatty

Turning 80 is a big deal, but it’s an even bigger deal if you’re a fictional character. Not many franchises last ten or twenty years let alone 80 and many media outlets are celebrating our purple-clad hero doing just that! King Features Syndicate, the owners of The Phantom, have released their own press release celebrating the hero’s 80th. The article goes over the hero’s history, his creation and his enduring appeal the world over. Secondly, we have an article from Australian paper The Advertiser, which you can read below. We’ll keep you updated with any future articles while the world continues to celebrate. #80th #KingFeaturesSyndicate

You may remember a little while ago on episode #28 of X-Band we mentioned that an Indian pop culture store was selling some cool Phantom posters. Well, that store now has available cool Phantom t-shirts as well! The store, called Entertainment Store, has put up several Phantom t-shirt designs recently. One appears to be a design previously used by Kasual Friday, but as far as we can tell the rest are original. All of the shirts are going for Rs.649 (roughly $14AU/9.80US) however, unfortunately, the store does not offer international shipping so you may need to see if a fellow phan in India can act as middle man for you. You can see all of the designs and purchase the shirts HERE. #Clothing #KasualFriday

The Border Mail, the local newspaper for Albury-Wodonga, has featured a story in today’s edition looking at Bradley Peach’s Phantom exhibition, Enter the Phantom. The story, which can be seen on the Border Mail website, features a short interview with Bradley as well as details about the exhibition. Many of them belong to Jindera collector Brad Peach — including the submarine used in the 1996 Billy Zane movie, The Phantom; Slam Evil, as well as a few examples of Phantom with an Aussie twist. “I’ve had a guy come and have his photograph taken in the submarine just because Catherine Zeta Jones had been in it,” Mr Peach said. For full details on the upcoming exhibition, check out all the Enter the Phantom related stories on ChronicleChamber. #BradleyPeach #BillyZane #1996movie

Australian company Ikon Collectables is set to release a brand new, limited edition Phantom statue in December this year. The statue, which is available to pre-order from Aussie collectibles site PopCultcha.com.au, sells for $129.99AU with free shipping within Australia! The statue is made of poly-resin and stands at 12″ (31cm) tall. The full description from PopCultcha’s site is a follows: From the Jungle of Bangalla, The Ghost Who Walks comes to life in this meticulously detailed statue. Beautifully hand painted and highly limited in numbers, Ikon Collectables have created a piece for Lee Falk to be proud of, with this representation of his legendary character, The Phantom™ : The Man Who Cannot Die. Standing just over 12 inches tall (31cm) and crafted from poly-resin, the 21st Phantom is an imposing sight. Sworn to devote his life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty and injustice, The Phantom™ is the perfect piece to keep watch over your collection. Exactly how limited “highly limited” means in unknown, but it’s a fine looking statue so well for nabbing if you’re interested in such things. PopCultcha does offer international shipping so those who aren’t fortunate enough to live in Australia will still be able to order at statue. Below you can see several photos of the statue, but there are many more on PopCultcha’s site. So, will you be getting this statue? Let us know in the comments below! Thanks to Michael Rowe for bringing this to our attention via PhantomCollector.

Fred Fredericks, know to many as the artist of Mandrake the Magician from 1965 through to 2002, sadly passed away on the 10th of March this year. A true legend of the comics field, Fredericks also inked The Phantom Sunday strips from 1995 to 2000 before deciding to concentrate just on Mandrake. After Lee Falk’s death in 1999, Fredericks wrote as well as drew the Mandrake strips through to the strip’s end in 2002. Retiring in 2013, Fredericks leaves behind him an illustrious career and legions of fans. One such fan, Frank Throne, has written a beautiful tribute to Fredericks which can be seen on the The Comics Journal website. #FredFredericks #Mandrake

The latest Phantom edition to be offered by Hermes Press is set to be huge! Measuring in at almost 18×13 inches (45.72x33cm) the book will collect the first six Phantom stories by Lee Falk and Ray Moore in their original half-page Sunday section format! Due for release in December of this year, the book is currently available on Amazon for $88.36 US or BookDepository for $124.25AU. It will be limited to 1,000 copies. #HermesPress #LeeFalk #RayMoore