“All the devils that disturbed me and the angels that defeated them, somehow come together in me now”
I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Phantom, but occasionally I will check him out if the creative team is decent. I don’t love Russell Olson’s art, but I do think Ray Fawkes is an interesting writer, so I picked up volume 1 of The Phantom, which is Mad Cave’s relaunch. 
It’s lettered by Taylor Esposito, edited by Sarah Brunstad, costs $17.99, and it’s 132 pages long.
The first issue of this trade is a zero issue, and I had some high hopes after it, because Fawkes tells a single-issue story in which the Phantom tracks some hunters but doesn’t intervene completely because a tiger wants to take care of them. It’s a clever story, mainly because our hero knows enough about the jungle to know that the tiger is in control, but he also wants to make sure the men deserve killing — he doesn’t let the tiger just slaughter them, so part of the story is him trying to find out what kind of men they are. It’s a tense, interesting tale, and Fawkes does a nice job showing that as much as the Phantom can mete out punishment on his own, he can also step back and let nature take its course. I hoped that Fawkes would do more interesting, small stories, perhaps only an issue in length, in the “regular” series, but alas, it was not to be, as issues #1-5 are one story, although it’s a pretty good one and builds on the characterization of the Phantom in the first, teaser story. A plane crashes near the village the Phantom calls home, and it happens to be full of bad guys and heroin. The Phantom neutralizes the bad guys, the plane explodes, but he knows the drug kingpin whose heroin it is will be coming to find his shipment. When he — a scary dude named Asif Singh (a longtime foe of the Phantom, but what’s nice about this story is you don’t need to know that) — shows up, the story kicks into a nice high gear. Singh terrorizes the village (after pretending to be a nice guy who just wants his heroin back), and the son of the chief (who’s old and sickly), the Phantom’s best friend, becomes the negotiator with the bad guy as the Phantom stalks through the jungle, looking for ways to take the bad guys out. 
It’s a nice, tense story, as the Phantom uses the shadows and his reputation to his advantage, while his buddy, Guran (another longtime Phantom character), talks to Singh and tries to stall for time. Of course, Singh isn’t a complete idiot, so he figures out what Guran is doing, but he doesn’t know everything about the village and the Phantom, so he’s at a disadvantage and he doesn’t know it. It’s a good, fun story, as bad things happen to the good guys but nothing too horrible — our hero is seriously wounded, which made me wonder if Fawkes was actually going to kill him off and replace him, as it’s clear there have been many Phantoms over the years. Does he die? Well, it’s not a depressing book, so chances are he lives, but I’m not going to say definitively!
Fawkes does a good job with the characters, showing how the Phantom fits into this village and why he wants to protect it so much. Fawkes uses the long history of the character well, but he does put some nice spins on things, too. Our hero’s lady (I don’t know if he’s still married to her or if that has been retconned) is a vital part of the story, too, even if she’s not in it that much. As with a lot of stories about older heroes set in exotic locations these days, Fawkes does a decent job showing how non-exotic Bandar is, as it’s just a place where people live and want to be left alone by, you know, drug smugglers. Fawkes does a very good job building the tension and showing how the Phantom can get the drop on the soldiers of the Singh Brotherhood, and it’s nice that he’s able to make this feel dangerous even though the Phantom always seems to be in control, even after he’s wounded. 
That’s not easy to do, but Fawkes does it well.
Olson does a decent job with the art, but it’s nothing spectacular. He tells the story well, and he gets some nice full-page splashes, which is nice. Some of the art really pops, such as when he gets to draw the tiger in all its magnificent glory after keeping it mostly in the background for most of the issue, which is a good choice. One thing that’s really nice about the art is Olson’s coloring, which is full of beautiful greens and blues which create an amazing feel for the jungle at night. It’s not a dark comic by any means, but Olson does a really good job making it dark enough so we can believe that the Phantom moves through it without being noticed. It’s also contrasted with the interiors, which are generally brightly lit. He uses very nice shading, too, which makes it even more nuanced. While the actual line work is simply solid, the coloring does make it quite a bit nicer.
This is a good thrilling action comic, and I don’t know if Fawkes is going to continue with it (it’s implied that Mad Cave is going to continue it, but I don’t know if Fawkes is writing it). Still, this is a good standalone volume, and while, as I noted, I’m not an aficionado of the Phantom, he does show up in some cool stories!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
I always want to support new Phantom comics when they are released, this was ok, sadly nothing special.
I think a book like the Phantom needs a far stronger artist to make it successful these days, people really don’t care about these old pulp characters anymore.
Looks like they followed up this mini with three one-shots, and it sounds like that’s gonna be it. There’s a “deluxe” hardcover solicited which includes everything. Not sure if there will be a trade collecting the one-shots (which I think were 30 pages each).
I read the zero/FCBD issue. Solid. I think I like the art more than you. But I didn’t pick this up. I like the Phantom in theory but haven’t found the right entry point to hook me.
Ah, well then; you just need to watch Popeye vs The Man Who Hated Laughter. That was my introduction to The Phantom, as well as several other King Features comic strips. It was part of the Saturday superstar Movie, which was an ABC Saturday morning showcase for potential cartoon series, with pilots from several animation studios, including Hanna-Barbera, Rankin-Bass and Filmation. The cartoon series The Brady Kids, Yogi’s Ark and Lassie’s Rescue Rangers all premiered there. This one had Popeye in an adventure to rescue various comic strip characters, who had been kidnapped by a man who cannot stand laughter. He captures the humor characters and then the President gathers the adventure heroes and sends them to rescue them, including The Phantom, Flash Gordon and Steve Canyon. You meet The Phantom in the Skull Cave and that was enough for me. I then had a copy of Charlton’s The Phantom #66, which was an average story, but he was pretty cool…lived in a cave, ran around with a wolf, packed a pair of .45s, ancestors were all The Phantom, making people believe he was a ghost, Furan and the Bandar pygmies…good stuff. Then, in the next issue, Don Newton became the artist. I didn’t see that issue until years later. I did find the one that came three issues later; “The Mystery of the Mali Ibex.” The story features The Phantom in a tale that involves the theft of a state of an ibex and a series of murders and mayhem. It took him to Casablanca and the jungle and it was one big riff on the Humphrey Bogart movies Casablanca, The African Queen, The Maltese Falcon and Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I hadn’t seen any of those movies, at the time, but I loved that story and have loved the Phantom ever since. Way cooler than Batman (he had a cave, first), as he didn’t need a utility belt, just two pistols and two rings; one for the good guys, under his protection, and one for the bad guys, who were in deep doo-doo.
He hasn’t always been handled well, but, more often than not, it’s great adventure and usually visually striking. Artists like Sy Barry, Jim Aparo, Don Newton, Pat Boyette, Joe Orlando, Luke McDonnell, Sal Velluto…..just great stuff. He also seems to draw a better than average set of writers. I used to own the entire line of Avon paperbacks, with prose adaptations of some of the notable strips. I have the Columbia movie serial, with Tom Tyler (who was also Captain Marvel, at Republic), the tv pilot (with Lon Chaney Jr, as a criminal), the Popeye cartoon, the Sci-Fi Channel two-part movie pilot, the Simon Wincer-directed feature film, the Phantom 2040 cartoons and digital copies of the comics from Gold Key, Charlton, DC, Marvel, Moonstone, Wolf, Dynamite, Mad Cave, Checkerboard, plus the Indrajal-published comics, from India. Not every story is gold, but there is more than enough silver and copper to suffice.
Unlike you the Phantom is not one of those characters I’ll follow anywhere but he is very cool. I’ve seen 2040 and the theatrical movie and enjoyed both. And also “The Man Who Hated Laughter”
I first ran into him as a pre-teen in British strips republished in a UK weekly comic; i liked him but was disappointed he didn’t have powers. I grew out of that last bit.