At the start of every season (Spring, Summer, Autumn [Fall] and Winter) we hold a competition for our loyal Patreon supporters. For the Australian winter, we have two inked transparent overlays from one of the most famous artists Felmang. Truth be told, cannot find the Team Fantomen story. Bonus point if you can. You will receive the two panels plus a signed Felmang Frew Trading Card. The competition is open exclusively to Patreon supporters of ChronicleChamber.com, the fine folk who help keep this website running with their contribution. The competition will be drawn on Sunday, 7th June and announced via video on our Facebook page. How to enter: Current Patreon supporters: Do nothing. You are already entered! Not a current Patreon supporter? Head over to our Patreon page and sign up for as little as $1/month. It's that easy! The raffle draw is random, and Patreons will be entered at a rate of one ticket for each dollar pledged monthly. For instance, supporting at $1/month equals one entry; supporting at $5/month equals 5 entries. Of course, $5/month support also entitles you to access all the Phantom goodies that are stored in our very own Major Treasure Room, the Phantom Preservation Project (P3).

Ikon Collectables (Popcultcha) is back with a Phantom heat changing mug. This is the second heat changing mug they have released. You can either pre order your mug via their website here or talk to your local comic shop as they are likely to also get them in. At $15 (on their website) it is an inexpensive purchase and gift just in time for Christmas with it likely to come out in November. One positive the mug is receiving from phans is the new design and that it is not a standard style guide image, this is something unique. It features the Ghost Who Walks sitting on his skull throne with Devil by his feet as he takes a breather with a cuppa (or warm milk). Below are the images demonstrating the different design as it heats up. Will you be getting one? Thanks to Sean Bassett for the heads up on this news.

Ikon Collectables is back with a bang producing quality low cost items perfect for every Christmas present. Like the heat changing mug, also available for November 2020 is a new Phantom 1,000 piece puzzle. While the mug includes a new design which we have praised, this includes similar style guide images but presented in a new way with the Phantoms in the sky looking very multi generational and the Skull Cave and Phantom Head fitting nicely together. These look presented very similar as the PhanFare style puzzles released by Glenn Ford. On the Ikon Collectibles website it has no price but the Titan Pop Culture website (a Perth based store) has them listed at $24.99 (plus postage). Again talk to your local comic store if you want to get these in. Otherwise we suggest tagging your loved ones in our social media posts to give them a hint that you want these added to your Christmas list. Will Ikon Collectables release anything new? If they do, we will let you know!

It may have taken us almost a year to get around to it but we present our review of the Ikon Collectables Phantom and Devil Statue. This statue has been released in traditional purple along with blue, red, gray, an Australia brown version and a New Zealand green version. At $449.99 each it is indeed a high end item to go along with the Phantom and Hero Statue released in 2016. Ikon has produced high end as well as low end collectables for Phantom phans which meets every phans needs. Did you buy the statue and what did you think of it?

Ikon Collectables has released a new product which is currently on pre order and due to be released in March 2021. It is a satin wall banner with a ghost like skull and the words "The Ghost Who Walks" above it. It is a different type of product from Ikon Collectables and it will be interesting to see how it sells. Expect it will sell and take pride in many a skull cave room. Will you be getting one? While we are at it, the heat changing mug is currently out at shops and the puzzle announced in July is due to be out at the start of December - just in time for Christmas. Previously you could only get these items at local comic shops, pop style shops and online websites. In amazing news similar as Frew finding a new distributor with the Coles supermarket, Ikon Collectables have done the same with the shop Sanity Music now selling through their online shop and at their 150 odd bricks and mortar shops. The Phantom cannot only survive with the comic and the odd piece of merchandise being sold at speciality stores. The Phantom needs to be front and center. Coles and Sanity Music are great starts - we need more for The Phantom to be successful for the next generation. Go out there and buy The Phantom comic while your food shopping and grab a new mug, puzzle or wall banner when you next buy your CD or DVD. Thank you to phan Sean Bassett and Chronicle Chamber team member Stephen East for the news and going to Sanity Music to buy Phantom merchandise from.

Regal Publishers have now announced that their English Phantom series will be starting from 1 August 2020 with the release of issues 1 and 2. Both comics will be in colour and feature Sunday stories from legendary Phantom and Batman artist Graham Nolan. You can listen and watch a video podcast with him here. Each issue will feature two stories. Issue one will feature "The War Mongers" and "The Briefcase" and issue two will feature "Terror in Mawitaan" and "The Sinbad Stone". Issue one will be 48 pages and issue two will be 56 pages. If you have purchased any of their past issues you will know the quality of the print and each comic will be 18 × 26 cms in size. Each comic will be 40 odd pages and priced at a reasonable 120 Indian Rupee's which will be affordable for every phan inside and outside of India. For those living outside of India it is roughly: $2.50 Australian Dollars $1.75 US Dollars $1.50 Euro's 15 Swedish Krona's Past personal experience with Regal Publishers, they do post outside of India. A caution with COVID-19 is that some countries are still not accepting international parcels so there may be a delay in postage. You can contact Regal Publishers via Facebook or via their Whats App number: +91 94810 52592.. The two covers are new and are created by local Indian artist Vincent Moses Raja who eager Phantom phans will know from the Chronicle Chamber Bushfire Phundraiser book which he contributed to. The stories are great choices featuring top quality art by Graham Nolan who is a very popular artist and will help generate interest in the Indian market. Sunday Story #155 "The War Mongers" - Story by Claes Reimerthi & Art by Graham Nolan Sunday Story #156 "The Briefcase" - Story by Claes Reimerthi & Art by Graham Nolan Sunday Story #158 "Terror in Mawitaan" - Story by Tony DePaul & Art by Graham Nolan Sunday Story #159 "The Sinbad Stone" - Story & Art by Graham Nolan

Victorians would have had a ball listening to Sammy J on the ABC radio Melbourne on Friday 26 June as he interviewed Phantom phan and creator Duncan Munro as they talked about the Phantom and the latest comic Duncan wrote in Frew issue 1869 "Held to Account". Of course Duncan and Sammy J have a long history which is best explained by the 2016-2017 award winning show called "Hero Complex". If you missed out on that we recommend visiting our dedicated Hero Complex page. To pay tribute to the show, Duncan Munro wrote a Phantom comic also titled "Hero Complex" with art by Sunday Phantom artist Jeff Weigel, it was voted as the phan phavourite of 2019 by you. You can listen to the full 10 minutes via here Also a big shout out to Chronicle Chambers own Stephen East who was able to ring up and give Sammy J a friendly serve about the Billy Zane podcast interview we managed to get and to plug our website.

As mentioned in our interview with Peter Mennigen, there is a new magazine now out that celebrates the Phantom and the publisher Bastei. We shared the news on our Facebook account and now we can share the details and contents of the magazine which includes a never before seen Phantom story and artwork. Bastei Freunde (translated to 'Friends') is a magazine dedicated to comics published by Bastei-Verlag in Germany. The magazine is produced by fans and contains articles and interviews related to Bastei's comics. Previous issues (#26, #27, #31, #39, #41, #42 & #45) have Phantom related articles, illustrations and or covers. However this magazine is pretty much all about the Phantom and its relationship with the publisher. The magazine is 52 pages, in colour besides the comic page art and measures 29.7cm x 21cm. Included with the magazine is a new story by Peter Mennigen, which is based off a Phantom script that was never published with the cancellation of the "Phantom" magazine. The title is "The Slaves" and has been rewritten into a prose adventure. Included in the magazine are examples of the script and two pages of the original never before seen artwork from this story that was started 35 plus years ago. The two pages will be completed with text in the speech bubbles as it was originally intended. Issue #238 is where the original Bastei comic series stopped and "The Slaves" as intended here was originally intended to be issue #242. Makes you wonder how many other complete stories and covers were created and maybe also awaiting to be discovered. Also included is a short biography on Phantom artist Ortiz Tafalla, information about writer Peter Mennigen, an article on the elements with the Phantom, an interview with the founder of the magazine Martin Hilland and a memorial piece on the former editor-in-chief of the youth department at Bastei publishing house Werner Geismar who passed away in 2018. If you are interested in getting yourself a copy, I would recommend contacting Ulrich Wick at www.wick-comics.de.

The Indian publisher Regal Publishers has just announced they will be printing a separate stand alone ongoing Phantom comic series in English and colour. At this stage there is no official date of the first English comic to be released. We assume the release date will be around a month or so after when lock downs have been relaxed in India with the current COVID-19 world pandemic. We understand this will be a separate series to run alongside the current Malayalm language comics featuring Sunday coloured Newspaper stories from the 1990's and early 2000's. Issue #5 of this current series was released in December 2019 and featured the George Olesen and Fred Fredericks version of "The Wharf Rats" story. Romanized as "Phantavum Akramisanghavum" (ഫാന്റവും ആക്രമീസംഘവും) which was originally redrawn for the newspaper after the passing of Lee Falk in 1999. The comics can currently be purchased through shops in Kerala which is an Indian state on the south west side of the bottom tip of India. Outside of Kerala, orders for shops and for phans like us can be made directly from Regal Publishers. We believe single issues will be priced at around 60-100 Indian Rupee's which is roughly $1.30-$2.00AU, $0.80-$1.30US & 8-15 Swedish Krona. No news as of yet on the stories to be published or if their license includes non-newspaper stories. We did ask Regal Publishers on why they choose these stories from the 1990's to early 2000's and seeing these stories have never been published in a comic inside India, majority of Indian Phantom phans have never read these stories before. Recently we interviewed Swaroop Chand, a local Indian Phantom comic collector in X-Band: The Phantom Podcast Episode #144 and in the podcast he explained the importance of colour comics and the comics to be printed inside India plus much more. We highly recommend this podcast to listen to gain an insight into the Indian comic culture. Between the 1960's and 1990's, The Phantom was very popular among Indians with the Indrajal comics. I truly believe for the Phantom to continue as a house hold name worldwide in the future, we need a long term Indian publisher publishing and printing local Indian comics. This is a huge step in the right direction. We hope Regal can also ensure that these English Phantom comics are distributed in shops inside shops throughout all of India and not just their own state. The best way to order your own copies of either the English copies and or the current Malayalm language comics is to contact Regal Publishers themselves via their Facebook page.

On June 27, 2020 News Corp closed over 100 print papers, with 14 titles to disappear completely. Over 100 of News Corp's regional and community titles no longer produce print editions and instead moved to digital-only formats. In addition, 14 titles will cease to exist. There are reports this amounts to over 500 job losses. What this means for Phantom phans is that of the 100 papers, over half a dozen known Australian regional newspapers has seen the Phantom newspaper adventure comic also cancelled. This decision is a mixture of the downward trend of traditional newspapers but also COVID-19 which has seen a lot of businesses downsize or close their doors. Chronicle Chamber has contacted several newspaper editors and of the editors that have replied, they have all expressed a huge disappointment in the death of the regional Australian newspapers. One did express that it was not a sign of the Phantom's popularity but more the sign of the times with the demand of print. From what we understand the newspapers that carried the newspaper Phantom adventures and have been cancelled are: Daily Mercury Fraser Coast Chronicle The Morning Bulletin News-Mail The Observer The Sunshine Coast Daily The Northern Star For many of the Australian regional readers this means the Australian Frew comic will be the only way phans can now read the latest adventures. This is why King Features Syndicate / Hearst Communications have to be smarter than what they currently are. Newspapers around the world are closing down, adventure comic strips are being cancelled and the comic section in newspapers are getting smaller and smaller. KFS has to also move with the times and evolve the Phantom into more than just a syndicated newspaper character with the odd comic book.

Hermes has just shared the cover of their upcoming volume 5 of the Sunday reproductions with the team at ChronicleChamber, and we are excited to bring it to you. In their latest YouTube video Dan Herman announces their Avon novels 7 & 8 (watch below), and its fair to say they are absolutely nailing bringing these out at the moment after their prior scare of cancelling the series. Hermes Press really do set the standard in the Phantom world for social media use and promotion of available products. This does of course raise the question of the JFK series of comic books, infamously stalled after the first issue... no word yet on when this will finally be available to hungry phans! #DanHerman #HermesPress #Sundays #AvonBooks

Tony DePaul recently dropped a bombshell on how one error made by artist Paul Ryan in the Daily newspaper story "Chatu's Fate" made Tony create a newspaper story to help rectify the error. The story with the original mistake fixed is "Terror's Mutiny". The problematic panel is the third panel below where the Phantom has a gun pointed at him by Chatu in a final showdown after he has rescued Diana from the Rodian maximin prison. What is interesting is that some versions of this strip has the correct text inserted. However the Comics Kingdom website and Frew #1602 (2011) where majority of us have read the story shows the incorrect version. In the Swedish version Fantomen 20/2011 this panel does not appear and was edited out. Here’s the original panel as scripted (provided by Tony DePaul) Tony is a much more elegant writer so we have quoted his comments below: "The problem is that the meaning is skewed by how Paul composed the panel. With two balloons instead of one, the meaning of the scripted line changes. The Phantom code becomes one of no violence." "A can of worms here in changing just one word and breaking the line into two parts, Paul has now turned the meaning of the line on its head. Paul’s composition changes the meaning of the word “do.” "Do" becomes a synonym for “uphold,” the word Paul inserted, so I imagine that must be why he saw “uphold” as a better choice of words." "Clearly, the Phantom wanted to kill Chatu, but he knew he had to put his own life at stake to dispatch the villain in a way consistent with his oath and his code of conduct. Obviously, the Phantom’s using the word 'violence' ironically. He means to do no violence to his code while doing extreme violence to Chatu." So to fix this small blunder which may have left some die hard phans a little bemused, Tony wrote this following sequence of panels into the "Terror's Mutiny" newspaper story. Where you one of the phans who was bemused originally? Did you even pick up the error? Would the Phantom have been justified killing Chatu? Would the 21st Phantom dishonored the oath and legacy if he had killed Chatu even if it were self-defence?

King Features Syndicate has announced that Mike Manley will succeed Paul Ryan as artist on the Phantom daily strip. Paul Ryan’s passing was a shock to the Phantom community, but the nature of newspaper strips means that a new artist had to be found quickly. Manley is the current artist on the Judge Parker strip, an assignment he has had since 2010 (temporary) and 2011 (regular) when he succeeded Eduardo Barreto – another Phantom artist that passed away suddenly. Manley is a veteran comic book artist who has worked on several DC and Marvel titles. He has also supplied artwork for Egmont in Sweden, though not on their Team Fantomen production of Phantom stories but on Agent Corrigan, another classic KFS comic strip which has been successful enough in Sweden to require exclusive stories. Manley’s first daily will be seen on May 30, and he will continue as artist on the Judge Parker dailies and Sundays. You can follow his blog Drawman here. Along with the same news release, KFS announced that Sunday page Phantom artist Terry Beatty will become writer of the Rex Morgan, MD strip. Beatty began drawing Rex Morgan in 2013, and the plan for him to become writer as well was in the works long before there was a need for a new Phantom daily artist. Beatty’s first strips as writer will be seen in print on May 2 for dailies and May 8 for Sundays. Source UPDATED March 24: Mike Manley has made a blog post himself, which includes a teaser image of the Skull Cave from his upcoming daily strip of June 3rd.

It is great to see The Phantom back in the art world and in May and June we will see two new exhibitions one in Melbourne and the other in Sydney. The first is at the James Makin Gallery and featuring art by Franck Gohier titled News From The Far North between the dates May 7, 2021 — May 23, 2021. Below are a collection of the Phantom paintings. If you want to enquire about the prices, go to the James Makin Gallery website. Details of the gallery are: Address 67 Cambridge Street, Collingwood, Victoria, 3066, AUSTRALIA Opening hours Thursday – Sunday 12 AM – 5 PM T: +61 (0)439 770 362 E: info@jamesmakingallery.com The second exhibition will coincide with the 2021 LFMBEC guest speaker Chris Boylan, who will be talking about the Phantom Shields of the New Guinea Highlands. By coincidence, the Michael Reid Gallery at Surry Hills will be holding a Phantom shields exhibition from 10 June - 24 June. There are no details online yet but their website can be found here. Details of the art gallery are: Address Standard House 105 Kippax Street Surry Hills NSW 2010 Australia (enter from Waterloo Street) Opening hours: Wednesday to Friday from 11am – 5pm, Saturdays from 11am – 3pm or by appointment outside these hours info@michaelreid.com.au +61 2 8353 3500 If you go to any of these events, please let us know.

Along with the recent release of the Frew Games Treasures of Drakon board game, we have seen the accompanying release of the next trade paperback (click to buy) from Frew Publications which includes a sequel story by the dynamic creative team of writer Julie Ditrich, artist Wendell Cavalcanti and colourist Ivan Pederson. You can see our review of the TPB here. Julie Ditrich has been great in her promotion of this new sequel. It is good to see The Phantom getting more air time in the media and hopefully we see more of it. The media release promotes Julie's position as the first Australian female writer contributing to The Phantom universe, and the sixth female comic book writer overall. You can read the media release here. These historical details spark the question - who were these other female writers? Please note, this is just credited female writers and not uncredited writers or editors. For example, according to legend, Lee Falk's widow Elizabeth Falk finished off some of his scripts when he passed. While this is unconfirmed it is a great story. It is also worth mentioning we are not talking about female editorial staff like Judy Wamsley and Judith Shepherd who both worked at Frew and helped Jim with editing the stories for decades. Many comic writers until the 1980's did not receive credit - there may be a number of more female authors to add here but to our knowledge none that have been credited. As we find more, we will add. What follows is our best effort to identify all previous female authors. Have we missed any? If so, please let us know so we can update this article and make the correction. Since the publication of this article, we have found other female writers. Here is a list of the credited female Phantom writers that we have found. In our list we are including all writers of anything Phantom, which includes three writers who wrote prose stories for Moonstone in 2007. 1) Pat Fortunato (USA) wrote a King Comic back in 1967 featuring the "Girl Phantom". If you read her blog article about this particular Phantom story she wrote, she sort of hints she may have written other Phantom stories as well. This story has always been well received and has been published around the world in 11 countries including twice by Frew. 2) Diane Karlstrom nee Alfredhsson (Swedish American) has been credited as writer on 17 Phantom stories under her own name or the pseudonym Dai Darell. Her first story The White Slave Trade was published in 1983 by Fantomen and her most recent in Frew #1853 (2019) The Pit of Doom. Interestingly The Pit of Doom was also inked by Coral Martinez (you can read an interview with her here), which may make this the first Phantom story ever to be written and drawn (inked) by a female team. 3) Layla Bess nee Gauraz (France) wrote three stories with her future husband Georges Bess in the 1980's. Layla was not originally on this list. 4) Maureen Abbott, Kim Hill & Kay Moore (Australia) are credited as co writers with three others for the educational Phantom story produced in 1997 for the Family Court of Australia. The story was published in a free giveaway publication. We have no information on who had what role or whether they where just part of the government project. We are simply assuming they wrote the story. 5) Ingebjørg Berg Holm (Norway) wrote a story which was perhaps even more controversial than the Sandal Singh saga and The Golden Eagle story combined. Titled Giovanna and published in Frew #1358 (2003) and Fantomen 9/2003, it was brought to life by artist Dick Giordano and featured a story about the 4th Phantom falling in love with a cardinal in the Catholic church who turns out to be a woman who is poisoned and killed while carrying the 4th Phantom's child. 6, 7 & 8) Nancy Kipatrick (USA), Trina Robbins (USA) and Susan Griffith (USA) each wrote a Moonstone prose story in 2007 for the first Phantom Chronicles book. All three wrote stories for this volume, with each story accompanied by spot illustrations by the amazing Rubén Procopio. 9) Anna Jansson (Sweden) wrote a 2009 story after a nation-wide challenge by Ulf Granberg and Team Fantomen for authors to pitch their stories to be created into a comic. Anna was a Phantom phan but also a nurse before writing novels, so a story about the discovery of penicillin featuring the Phantom was a natural for her. 10) Elizabeth Massie (USA) wrote a Moonstone story in 2010 (also published by Frew #1774 in 2017) partnered with Rafael Nieves, with art by Paul Daly. The story centers around Julie and the 17th Phantom travelling with and protecting their friend Nellie Bly during her solo around-the-world trip. We are led to believe that Elizabeth has written other, as yet unpublished scripts which sadly may never see the light of day. 11) Julie Ditrich (Australia) is the eleventh overall (currently), and the most recently credited female writer on our list - hopefully there will be more soon. Julie Ditrich is also the first Australian woman Frew comic book writer on The Phantom. The story, is illustrated by Brazillian artist Wendell Cavalcanti and is a sequel to the three original Princess Sin comic book stories originally published in the 1970s. Julie has other Phantom works in progress. [Edit 15 May 2021] There has been a few changes to this article after some other female names have come up. We have added Layla Bess and the writers of "The Wisdom of the Phantom". Another two possible female writers are Liz Brooker wrote stories for Frew Publications for characters like Sir Falcon, The Phantom Ranger etc however at this stage there is no credit or information that she wrote any Phantom stories. The other is Ivany Casale who wrote several stories for RGE in the 1970's. Have we missed any others? If so, please let us know so we can update this article and make the correction.