Originally released as part of wave 1.0, this highly anticipated set is now also available for pre ordering on the back off wave 1.0 and wave 1.5 pre orders being sent out. You can pre order the figure here Keen eager fans will notice the different colour with this being a gray (grey) colour along with Hero the horse. Hero is fully poseable and comes with his western-style saddle and a horse stand for display. What pose are you looking forward to creating with Hero? The price is $55US (+Postage) which is roughly $50Euros, $75AU, 1,400 Indian Rupee's, 500 Swedish Kronas and 475 Norwegian Kronas. The pre order is only available until the end of April. If you are going to wait and buy these from a comic book or another shop, you may want to look at the following link, which highlight's some shops from around the world that is stocking Boss Fight Studio figurines. Make sure you keep track of our website or social media for all the latest on future Boss Fight Studio figurines plus anything else Phantom related.

Inkspot is an ongoing magazine by the Australian Cartoonists Association who do a great job focusing on the Australian comic/cartoon creators. Their latest issues features a magnificent Glenn Lumsden design on the front cover but also part one of a interview with the Frew creator. He was the comic book artist winner for the 2021 Stanley Award. Full list of award winners and nominees can be found here. Thanks to phan Trevor Clark, he has sent us the cover and also the first page of the interview. To read the full interview, we suggest supporting the organisation and buying your own copy. You can find their website here and or their Facebook page here. You can of course listen to Glenn Lumsden who joined us on X-Band: The Phantom Podcast #193. Thanks to Trevor Clark for the update and the scan.

On March 11th the highly anticipated video game WWE 2K22 was released. This is 2K's first major wrestling game release since the critically slammed WWE 2K20 which was released in late 2019. 2K have used their ensuring time very well, taking the time to develop a brand new wrestling game that takes advantage of the capabilities of the current generation of gaming consoles, with vast improvements to the game's graphics and gameplay that is in depth for the hardcore gamer but also approachable for the first timer or casual gamer. So what does this have to do with The Phantom? I hear you ask... Well this year's cover superstar is Rey Mysterio , a 30+ year veteran who has been a mainstay of the major wrestling promotions since the mid- 90s. Rey is often credited with popularising the Mexican style of wrestling, Lucha Libre, for a world wide audience. An important and popular element of Lucha Libre is the wrestler's mask. The mask defines a wrestler's identity and assists them in creating their persona so that they can stand out from the crowd. This feature was explored by Tony De Paul in his Mexico's Phantom storyline from 2011-2012. Over his career Rey has often incorporated popular culture references into his mask and costume. One of these first references was at WCW's 1997 Halloween Havoc where Rey battled Eddie Guerrero in a Mask vs Cruiserweight Title Match . His costume for this match was influenced heavily by the recently released Phantom movie starring Billy Zane. WWE 2K22 has a number of different game modes, but a mainstay for a number of years has been Showcase mode, where players get to take the role of the cover superstar and play through important matches and moments from the wrestler's career. For this year's showcase, players begin Rey's career with his 1997 Halloween Havoc match in the full Phantom kit, and it looks superb! Another feature of the 2K series of wrestling games is the ability to create your own superstar. With The Phantom costume featuring in the game, upon a successful completion of the opening Showcase match, as well as meeting all of the match's objectives, you then get access to the costume in the creation suite! Over the years there have often been a plethora of superhero and pop culture characters that the creator community have shared with others, but creations of our purple clad hero have been noticeably lacking. Now with Rey's Phantom costume being available, this may give creators a decent head start in creating their own Phantom wrestler to take on the big bodied bruisers of the WWE on their own Road to Wrestlemania. This is not the first time that Rey's Phantom kit has appeared in a video game, with the costume being an optional attire in 1998's WCW vs NWO Revenge game on the N64. So are you part of the niche group of phans who are also into watching professional wrestling and playing video games? Will WWE 2K22 make it into your video game library? Does the prospect of having 'Phantom" style options get you excited to try your hand in the Creation Suite? We'd love to see what you come up with! Happy Phantoming! (Here is 4 mins of gameplay of the Halloween Havoc Showcase match featuring the Phantom inspired attire)

Mikael Lyck from Chronicle Chamber reviews the latest Fantomen issue - 2022/6-7 which features the following stories: "Rök över Bengali" ("Smoke over Bengali") by Bernd Frenz and Heiner Bade "Hamnråttorna" ("The Wharf Rats") by Lee Falk, George Olesen & Fred Fredericks The third cover this year with art from Luca Erbatta, this gives him a lead in the amount of Fantomen covers so far for year 2022. Lots of movement in the cover and the buggy is almost photorealistic but there is something in this cover that makes me like it less then his regular ones. Last time I felt so many others thought the exact opposite so it is most likely that this is an art style that is not a fit for me but great for others. The main story “Smoke over Bengali” is written by a new Phantom creator, Bernd Frenz and art is done by Team Fantomen veteran Heiner Bade. You can learn more about Bernd Frenz in this interview were Jermayn chatted with him. Bade does great landscape, background and items. But I am not super fond of the way he draws humans. The story has a base in reality where logging corporations cut down trees illegally and turn them into coal since it is not checked the same way as planks. The story holds up but in my opinion not something that will win story of the year. There is a French side comic called "The Red Pirate" that covers more than half the pages of the comic book and then we finish up with another Phantom story. "The Wharf Rats", not the Falk, Barry one from 1962 but the remake done in 1999 by George Olesen and Fred Fredericks. The art is uneven, some panels look as good as Barry, almost as they were traced and others do not look as good. Preview of the next issue promises the next part of the 22nd Phantom saga and a side comic. All Fantomen reviews will be included in our monthly X-Band: The Phantom Podcasts. You can find out more at our website and or subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos

Fantomen 6-7/2022 is out March 10 2022 and it features a new writer Bernd Frenz, some may remember Bernd for his interview about Heiner Bade that was published on our website. You can read the interview here. To learn more about Bernd, please read on... Chronicle Chamber: Welcome, thanks for joining us. Please tell us about your history with the Phantom. Bernd Frenz: As you know, in 2014 I did an interview with Fantomen artist Heiner Bade, who until then was pretty much unknown in Germany. At that time I was mainly interested in Heiner, because he is one of the few German artists who have continuously published realistic comics over decades. I was able to track Heiner down via the Fantomen editor Mikael Sol, who then sent me two Fantomen issues that had just been published. One issue contained "Cyclops" (Fantomen 8/2014), a story by Heiner Bade, and the other "The New France" (Fantomen 17/2014) drawn by Kari Leppänen. I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by both stories. My previous experience with Phantom books was borrowing them from friends as a child. I myself was and am primarily a fan of Franco-Belgian comics, the kind of comics that are published in Fantomen as secondary stories. In terms of superheroes, I grew up with Marvel and DC comic books, and there primarily with heroes like Spiderman and Batman. It wasn't until I delved deeper for the interview with Heiner that I realized how complex The Phantom actually is, and what narrative possibilities this character offers through its long line of ancestors. The whole thing fascinated me so much that I continued to explore the topic even after the interview with Heiner was published. First of all, I got myself quite a few Fantomen stories, and since I can't read Swedish, I had to look to the Frew issues for that. Unfortunately, it's not cheap to look around for very specific numbers in Australia, because Australian postage is so terribly expensive. But I still managed to buy some issues with stories drawn by Heiner Bade, Kari Leppänen and Jean-Yves Mitton. After reading the first Frew issues, I realized that the Swedish Phantom Comics could completely convince me also in terms of content. Thanks to the internet I was able to get deeper and deeper into the Phantom Cosmos. (We're talking about a period of several years here.) In the end, this led to me writing an article about The Phantom for the respected German comics journal Reddition in 2020, which was subtitled "A classic superhero with modern unique characteristics" for good reason. It was the first professional article in German to examine Lee Falk's character and his narrative possibilities so comprehensively. CC: Can you tell us more about your relationship with Heiner Bade. BF: After immersing into the Phantom, I contacted Heiner Bade again. This quickly led to a whole series of phone calls, as it became apparent that we had a lot to say to each other. Since I had already been working as a professional novelist and comics writer for over twenty years, there were also aspects that were new and interesting to Heiner. CC: How did it Happen that you two would collaborate together? BF: At some point Heiner said that he would like to work directly with an writer who he could simply call if he was unclear about something in the manuscript, and therefore suggested that I could write a story for him. Of course I didn't turn down the opportunity he gave me, because in Germany there aren't too many possibilities for writing realistic comic stories for a mainly adult readership. What made it different was that he wanted to surprise Mikael Sol with the finished story, which was a bit scary to me from the start, but Heiner said that wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, in retrospect it turned out that the idea wasn't so clever after all. Heiner emailed the finished comic to Mikael Sol at the very moment when he had just handed in his resignation at Egmont. It then took a while until the new editor, Jacob Habinc to get back in touch with us. The other change was that plots for new stories have to be submitted to King Features in advance for review. Fortunately, it turned out that our story still met all the points necessary for approval. CC: Can you tell us what the story is about? BF: It is about illegal cutting of tropical forests. The special thing about it is that the felled trees are processed into charcoal, and can thus be exported without any problems, although the export of tropical woods is strictly prohibited. It may sound absurd, but unfortunately it is a sad reality. The idea came as at the time when I was thinking about a plot, a corresponding documentary was shown on German TV. I immediately thought to myself that this is a form of white-collar crime that I can guarantee has never appeared in a The Phantom story before. Heiner was also enthusiastic about the idea, so I immediately started working on the story. However, it was important to me to embed the theme in a fast-paced plot that contains many classic Phantom elements like Hero and Devil playing key roles in the story. At the same time, there is no doubt that the plot is set in the current present with the Phantom using a captured quad to track his opponents which was used as the front cover of the comic by Luca Erbetta. CC: That sounds so cool. Thank you for your time and anything else you want to say to the readers? BF: With the amount of time I spent researching and reading the Phantom comics, it became completely immersed in the world of The Phantom and I hope it will transfer to the readers. Heiner Bade was impressed with my story, and he has been familiar with the character for over forty years I am reasonably optimistic the phans will also enjoy this story. CC: I am sure phans will enjoy the story, again thanks for your time. If you want to re-read the interview with Heiner Bade. Go here "The Phantom of Hamburg - Fantomen Veteran Artist Heiner Bade". Our review of the comic will be out this week.

Great news for everyone who pre ordered with Boss Fight Studio's confirming that all orders are being or have been shipped. The demand has been so great that we have been told it has taken 3+ weeks to ship all orders and they even have had to hire extra employees to send them all out. If you have not pre ordered, expect them to be hitting comic books stores and other shops inside the next month. If you want to order from a shop, we suggest visiting this page as we list known shops who will stock these around the world. Charlie Curtis from USA, has already received his and posted them in the flesh on social media. A video review will be posted by Chronicle Chamber when someone from the team gets theirs. Boss Fight Studio have also announced in 2022 they will be releasing their Wave 1.5 range, plus the 3 inch figurines and 5" Retro 'Power Stars' Figurine Range. You can find out more about them including their proposed release dates with the links below.

On Kari Leppanen's website he talks about his new story he is working on called "Phantom Canoe" written by David Bishop. Those phans with good memories would remember that David in his X-Band: The Phantom Podcast chat with us talked of this story as one that was originally rejected almost 20 years ago. Read Kari's article here. With Claes Reimerthi passing, Team Fantomen had to find replacement writers and we can confirm that David is one of two returning authors. If you listen to the below podcast from the 50 minute mark he talks about this Phantom Canoe story but also two other stories he was writing including the Phantom coming back to Australia and a sequel to a 2014 Team Fantomen story titled "Citadel of Death" written by David Bishop, with art by Alex Saviuk. This story featured Kim Soon joining the Jungle Patrol. It seems this story wont feature the Phantom but will feature the 17th Phantoms twin sister Julie Walker. What may surprise some is that the Phantom canoe legend is based on actual events on 31 May 1886. We recommend everyone have a click of this link and learn something new. Below is a portrait sheet of all the main characters in the story which is an extra requirement for stories to be created by either Team Fantomen, Frew and others.

Mikael Lyck from Chronicle Chamber reviews the latest Fantomen issue - 2022/5 which features the following stories: "Ondskans totem" ("The Totem of Evil") by Joan Boix "Terroristerna" ("The Terrorists") by Lee Falk and Sy Barry A great cover by Luca Erbatta. On the editorial page we read that this is the first Phantom story written by Joan Boix after many stories he has done art for. The phantomwiki gets a shout out with the feature to see the latest issues from around the world. The main story art and story by Joan, "Onskans Totem", ("The Totem of Evil") I have some mixed thoughts about this one, it is about this totem showing up right outside the Bandar village while the Phantom is occupied elsewhere. When the Bandar wakes up the totem opens up and soldiers come out. It has some cool action but a few things do not make any sense. Why did the soldiers bother with getting a totem to the Bandar village and how did they know where the village was? Second story "The Terrorists" by Falk and Barry. A typical Barry story, beautiful art, some fun parts and a bit of overuse of the twins in my opinion. Then we have information about the vote for best cover, I have written an article about that on Chronicle chamber that you should check out! (Link here) Next issue will feature another new Team Fantomen story, this also written by a new creator! Bernd Frenz and Heiner Bade have done a story called "Smoke over Bengali". [Editors Note: We will find out more about Bernd soon] Backing up the new story will be an old newspaper story "The Wharf Rats", not the original but the remake done by George Olesen and Fred Fredericks out of Falk's old script. Then we will see a new side comic. All Fantomen reviews will be included in our monthly X-Band: The Phantom Podcasts. You can find out more at our website and or subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos

91:an (pronounced "nitti ettan") has released their next comic which is a tribute to the late Claes Reimerthi. This is the third tribute an Egmont comic has paid tribute to Claes - the other three are Fantomen 21/2021 (our review), Agent X9 10/2021 and now 91:an 5/2022. The cover and tribute drawing in 91:an 5/2022 is by Jonny Nordlund (Frew & Egmont artist - read more about him here). Among many comics by Claes, it includes the comic "Lilla Fridolf" which Claes created with Hans Lindahl. This is the third tribute issue to Claes, each representing different aspects of his career. We have also been informed that their is another tribute book coming out soon produced by Seriefrämjandet (The Swedish Association of Comic Art). You can purchase the Seriefrämjandet tribute book via their website which can be found here. Thanks to Andreas Eriksson, Mikael Lyck, Jimmy Wallin and Pidde Andersson for letting us know of the news. We will post a review of the Seriefrämjandet tribute book when it is out.

What is a NFT, I hear some people ask? NFT stands for "Non-Fungible Tokens" and is a non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain, a form of digital ledger, that can be sold and traded. Types of NFT data units may be associated with digital files such as photos, videos, and audio. Because each token is uniquely identifiable, NFTs differ from blockchain cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. [Editors note: sourced from wikipedia] If you still do not understand, we recommend you doing a google search, go to this website or downloading an audio book to learn more - truth be told, many at Chronicle Chamber are still getting their heads around it. Many will not understand what a NFT is but in our best way to further explain it simply in our own words, read on.. It's a unique piece of art (or music, photo etc) that there can only be one owner. Others may be able to use it, but there is no ownership dispute and there is providence backing up the ownership. If it gets re sold in a controlled medium, the past owners also are tracked and included in the providence. Unlike bitcoins, NFT are non fungible which means you cannot swap one for one. The trend has seen some amazing prices spent on NFTs in the last few years with prices fetching over $100,000. Interesting in one form or another, NFTs have been around for close to a decade. It was only a matter of time before we see the Phantom enter the market with many DC, Marvel and other artists already using it. David Barry, the son and agent for master artist Sy Barry has announced on Facebook on the birthday of the Phantom that you will soon be able to buy NFT Phantom art. You can read the Kleckt (4 C Collectors, Inc.) announcement here. Do any readers here have NFTs in their portfolio and will you buy a Sy Barry Phantom NFT? Thanks to David Barry and Mikael Lyck for the news.

In Fantomen issue 5/2022, we can now vote for your favourite 2021 Fantomen comic cover. You can vote here at this website It is again a really tough year, the covers for 2021 had an amazing high quality. If you want to hear what me and the guys in the X-Band: The Phantom Podcast thought was the best covers you can listen to Our best of 2021. The prize is for a limited print featuring art of the winning cover. This is open for international phans with the winning prize sent free of charge to your address. You can vote until 9th of March and the result will be announced in Fantomen 16/2022 with a poster of the winning cover as a supplement.

For the first time in German, Christian Blees' tells the publication history of the fascinating hero and goes into detail about the various sources on which the editions published in this country are based. "Lee Falk's Phantom" is a reference work not only for Phantom fans, but for anyone interested in comics. About "Lee Falk's Phantom" Softcover Size: 17 x 24 cm 244 colored pages Regular Price: €29.95 Special Edition Price: €39.95 More information Buy Now About Christian Blees I was born in March, 1964, and was never a Phantom fan!!! :-) In the foreword to my book I do explain why I wrote this book though. I always had been a Batman fan and considered Jim Aparo as my favourite Batman artist. Some time ago I thought I should check which Phantom stories he had done (of which I, of course, had heard before, but never really cared). So I bought German editions that contained his stories. After comparing the German versions with the originals I discovered that some had been heavily edited by the German editors. And this all started my interested in The Phantom in general. At first I thought I maybe should write just an article for the Bastei Freunde fan magazine, but then I realized that the publication history of The Phantom is really interesting (particularly in Germany!), and so I decided to write a whole book on it... What the book covers The first part (called Roots and Sources) deals with the publication history and origins of the character in the U.S.A., including chapters not only on the different artists (not the ones which came after Sy Barry, though, as his stories were the last ones printed in Germany), but also on the different comic book publishers and their issues, authors and artists. Then come the Swedish and Italian publishers/issues of which quite a lot (about 90 from Italy and 150 from Sweden) later were reprinted by Bastei in their Phantom comic books and digests. In the second part (The Phantom in Germany) I tell the (more or less) complete story of how and when The Phantom appeared in Germany, including the daily strips in the newspapers (and also the novels). Sometimes I focus on particular stories, showing how the German editors edited (and sometimes complete rewrote!) stories from the U.S., Sweden and Italy for their different publications. The third part is called Paths Through the Jungle and has 20 different tables that cover ALL PHANTOM STORIES EVER PUBLISHED IN GERMAN LANGUAGE, telling which story was published when and in which publication under which title, and if (and how much) it was edited. Please feel free to ask any more questions! As a bonus, the normal edition of the book there will be a special edition which will come with a kind of 48-page comic book supplement. This contains the daily version of the Phantom Wedding story in the German language, a story that was edited quite heavily for the Bastei comic book series in the late 1970s. We took the strips from the original German newspaper printings (from 1979) which had been collected by a German phan in that time! You can find out more about me at the following websites. www.funkschreiber.de www.journalistenbuero-berlin.de www.laurel-hardy-abend.de

Mikael Lyck from Chronicle Chamber reviews the latest Fantomen issue - 2022/4 which features the following stories: "Djungelutmaningen" ("The Jungle Trek") by Tony DePaul and Paul Ryan "Häxan" ("The Witch") by Ulf Granberg and Özcan Eralp A pretty cool iconic cover by the talented Henrik Sahlström. This is issue 1700 of Fantomen, quite a big number! It is still shy of Frew number 1910. The issue features two Phantom stories; The Jungle Trek, daily from 2006 that has not been published in a comic book in Sweden earlier. Written by Tony DePaul and drawn by Paul Ryan. The twins are growing up and The Phantom wants to see if they can manage different things in the jungle. For me this is around the time in my opinion the daily stories really started to get good after a long mediocre period. Second story is a reprint of The Witch, created by Ulf Granburg and Özcan Eralp. This story was first published in 1977 in Sweden and has never been published in English. The title of the story is a bit boring and it is in black and white, but look past all of that and it is quite a decent story. Then there is also a memorial text honouring Germano Ferri who has done quite a lot of Phantom work. Next issue will contain a story which has art and story done by Joan Boix and a Lee Falk, Sy Barry classic, looking forward to that! All Fantomen reviews will be included in our monthly X-Band: The Phantom Podcasts. You can find out more at our website and or subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos

After the success with Shakti Comics and Regal Publishers, a third Indian publisher Lion Muthu Comics will be releasing another Phantom comic for 2022. This is amazing news with the popularity of the Phantom back and growing steadily in India. We understand this is a one off TPB in a series of other classic nostalgia characters including Mandrake, Rip Kirby and Secret Agent X9 which will all be translated into the Tamil language. There are around 80 million Tamil speakers in the southern part of India. The Phantoms popularity in India is hugely important for the success of the character. In India there are over 120 million English speakers, 700 million Hindi speakers and also over 110 million Bengali speakers. The front cover is by popular Turkish artist Ertugrul Edirne. The image shown first on Comicology has the Phantom in red. It was originally published in red for the Turkish Kızılmaske Büyülü Çizgi Roman series published between 2013 to 2017. We understand there is a small chance it may be digitally altered to a purple costume. Unlike Shakti Comics and Regal Publishers, Lion Muthu Comics will be publishing classic stories by Lee Falk and Sy Barry and not new stories. At this stage, there is no release on the exact stories but we understand they will be a mix of Daily and Sunday stories from the 1970 era. Lion Muthu Comics have a website you can buy their comics from which is found here. At this stage the comic is not on their website for pre order or sale. Will you be buying one?

It has been a busy last few weeks for Boss Fight Studio's. On top of the Hero HACKS range very close to being released, they announced their cartoon style 3" blind bag range and now today a new 5" retro 'Power Stars' range. The Hero HACKS should be made available in March/April 2022. The 3" set out in July/August 2022 and his Power Stars set available in October/November 2022. It is going to be a busy 2022 for Phantom collectors with the NECA Original Superhero's range out now as well. These are one inch larger than their Hero HACKS range and almost double the size of their blind bag range. However they only feature seven points of articulation but all the nostalgia. The guns also can go in their holster and hands. No preview yet on the packaging design. To pre order any of these figurine sets click the below links: Power Stars 5" Phantom King Comics Super Heroes 3" Blind Bag set of 18 Note: the pre order for the HERO HACKS has been closed.