Phantom (comics)

The Phantom is a fictional, costumed crime-fighter who operates from the fictional country of Bangalla. The character was created by Lee Falk for the adventure comic strip The Phantom, which debuted in newspapers on February 17, 1936. The Phantom was later depicted in many forms of media, including television shows, movies, and video games.

Publication history

Comic strip

Lee Falk's newspaper comic strip The Phantom premiered on February 17, 1936, with the story "The Singh Brotherhood", written by Falk and illustrated first by himself, for two weeks, followed by Ray Moore, who was an assistant to artist Phil Davis on Falk's Mandrake the Magician strip. A Sunday Phantom strip was added to newspapers on May 28, 1939. During Moore's World War II military service, he left the strip to his assistant, Wilson McCoy. Upon Moore's return, he worked on the strip on and off until 1949, when McCoy succeeded him. Following McCoy's death in 1961, Carmine Infantino and Bill Lignante (who would later draw several Phantom stories directly for comic books) filled in before Sy Barry was chosen as a successor. Barry would continue working on the strip for over 30 years before retiring in 1994.

The Phantom

The Phantom is a long-running American adventure comic strip, first published by Mandrake the Magician creator Lee Falk in February 1936. The main character, the Phantom, is a fictional costumed crime-fighter who operates from the fictional African country of Bangalla. The character has been adapted for television, film and video games.

The series began with a daily newspaper strip on February 17, 1936, followed by a color Sunday strip on May 28, 1939; both are still running as of 2016. In 1966, King Features stated that The Phantom was being published in 583 newspapers worldwide. At its peak, the strip was read by over 100 million people daily.

Falk worked on The Phantom until his death in 1999; the comic strip is currently written by Tony DePaul and drawn by Paul Ryan (Monday-Saturday) and Terry Beatty (Sunday). Previous artists on the newspaper strip include Ray Moore, Wilson McCoy, Bill Lignante, Sy Barry, George Olesen, Keith Williams, Fred Fredericks, Graham Nolan and Eduardo Barreto. In the strip, the Phantom was 21st in a line of crime-fighters which began in 1536, when the father of British sailor Christopher Walker was killed during a pirate attack. Swearing an oath on the skull of his father's murderer to fight evil, Christopher began a legacy of the Phantom which would pass from father to son. Nicknames for the Phantom include "The Ghost Who Walks", "Guardian of the Eastern Dark" and "The Man Who Cannot Die".

Phantom

Phantom may refer to:

Film

Lee Falk

Lee Falk, born Leon Harrison Gross (April 28, 1911 – March 13, 1999), was an American writer, theater director and producer, best known as the creator of the popular comic strips The Phantom (1936–present) and Mandrake the Magician (1934-2013). At the height of their popularity, these strips attracted over 100 million readers every day. Falk also wrote short stories, and he contributed to a series of pulp novels about The Phantom.

A playwright and theatrical director/producer, Falk directed actors such as Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Chico Marx and Ethel Waters.

Life and career

Falk was born in St. Louis, Missouri, where he spent his boyhood and his youth. His mother was Eleanor Alina (a name he later, in some form, used in both his Mandrake the Magician and The Phantom story lines), and his father was Benjamin Gross. Both of his parents were Jewish. Lee was born and raised Jewish. Benjamin Gross died when Falk was just a boy, and after a time, his mother Eleanor married Albert Falk Epstein, who became the father figure for Lee Falk and his brother, Leslie. Falk changed his surname after leaving college. He took the middle name of his stepfather, but "Lee" had been his nickname since childhood, so he took that name also. His brother, Leslie, also took the name "Falk".

Jeanne Bates

Jeanne Bates (May 21, 1918 – November 28, 2007) was an American radio, film and television actress. She signed a contract with Columbia Pictures in 1942 which began her career in films both in bit parts and larger roles.

Career

She began her acting career while attending San Mateo Junior College, with roles on radio soap operas produced in San Francisco. Bates had the lead role, and supplied the signature scream, on the radio mystery series Whodunit. In 1943, she married the writer of Whodunit, Lew X. Lansworth (1904–1981).

She also had her film debut in 1943, in a Boston Blackie mystery, The Chance of a Lifetime. She played Bela Lugosi's first victim in The Return of the Vampire (1943), Diana Palmer in The Phantom (1943), and she had a minor role in Death of a Salesman (1951).

Bates worked steadily in television beginning in the 1950s, including an appearance on the syndicated western series, The Range Rider, and thereafter on episodes of NBC's Buckskin, Riverboat, and Peter Gunn, as well as the crime drama, Sheriff of Cochise, and the aviation adventure series, Sky King and Whirlybirds. She also appeared in a 1956 episode of The Lone Ranger entitled "Cross of Santo Domingo".