InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Say it."

arilou_skiff (arilou_skiff) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-08-14 19:05:00

Entry tags:

char: the phantom, genre: adventure, group: founding fathers, publisher: egmont, theme: history

Ben & Kit: Tag-team OF JUSTICE!

"He has the strength of ten tigers.
You never find him, he finds you.
He has a thousand eyes and a thousand ears.
His voice turns blood into ice.
He who sees the his face, dies a horrible death.

He is the Ghost who Walks. The Phantom. The Man Who Cannot Die."

He also sometimes team up with America's Coolest Founding Father. Like in this story.

This is taken from Fantomen Krönika #4 2009. Fantomen Krönika is a reprint publication and the story was originally published in Fantomen #8 2002. Story by Claes Reimerthi, art by Carlos Cruz.
For those poor fools who do not know The Phantom, here's the traditional recap page!

These are my scans and my translation, they could probably be done better but I just wanted to get the gist across. These are 6 pages of a 27-page story in a reprint collection that has three stories of the same length.

So, the 11th Phantom is in London for some reason, and gets involved in a murder case...

Then plot happens, it's not really important but it turns out a former cuban slave-hunter wants revenge on some plantation owners because they told they'd pay him to kill his employer but then refused to pay. So he's using musk smeared on the boots to have his dog track his victims and kill them (also like in The Hound of the Baskervilles he's smearing the dog's teeth with luminescent stuff) The important thing is that they're out to get the dog, so Ben builds Kit a weapon.

Yes, Benjamin Franklin built The Phantom an ELECTRIC DEATH STICK!
Then they catch the villain, he exposits a bit and the Phantom clobbers him, like he always does.

Next story: Kit & Ben Vs... THE LOCH NESS MONSTER!

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dr_hermes
2009-08-15 12:59 am UTC (link)

Thank you for the work you put into this post, and a chance to get a glimpse of a story I otherwise would never see. Still, this sounds better as an idea than in execution. The art is solid but a bit awkward. It's always hard to tell how writing is that has been translated into English (such a difficult thing to do... getting the gist of the original and making it seem natural in the new language). I once read a lengthy article comparing various translations of Jules Verne, and sadly realized that unless I learned French myself, I would never be able to fully appreciate a great writer.

Still, this is fascinating. One of the very first and greatest super-heroes meeting one of the most complex and interesting men in history, teaming up to do a pastiche of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES...! It makes me realizes how much there is in European comics that I've missed. Thanks again.

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arilou_skiff
2009-08-15 09:22 am UTC (link)

I think my favourite thing with the Phantom is that despite it having a VERY strong continuity (you can pretty much chart what at least the earlier Phantoms were doing from year to year :p) it still manages to be very accessible to newcomers: Usually all that is needed to understand a particular story is that recap page and maybe a brief intro narration "THe Phantom is in London..."

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houbanaut
2009-08-15 04:31 pm UTC (link)

I agree that the art in this story is only so-so, but you shouldn't judge all of The Phantom by this sample. There are many artists who've done great work on the series, and some of it is fantastic. (Since the magazine is a bi-weekly in Scandinavia, and has been running for nearly 60 years, there's an enormous library of stories to draw on.)

The Phantom is originally an American newspaper character, and all of Lee Falk's stories must have been written in English, but it seems like apart from the early newspaper strips, not a lot of it has been reprinted here. (As opposed to in Europe, where all the classics are afforded deluxe hardcover editions.) The Moonstone books apparently don't follow the newspaper strip/European continuity.

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	ashtoreth 2009-08-15 04:28 am UTC (link)
	Dang. Ben Franklin is my favorite historical figure. (Looks like a cattle prod tho...TURNED UP TO ELEVEN!) (Reply to this) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-08-15 05:02 am UTC (link)
	Ben Franklin -- the only President who was never actually President. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	arilou_skiff 2009-08-15 09:23 am UTC (link)
	He explained it as connecting a Leidner bottle to The Phantom's walking cane. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	psychop_rex 2009-08-15 07:29 am UTC (link)
	I didn't realize that the Phantom's symbol (on the first page, last panel) looked like that. I was aware that he wore two rings, one which marked the bad guys and one which marked his friends, but I thought the friend-ring left something involving swords - that one looks more like a swastika made out of capital Ps. Is that the definitive mark, or does it vary? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	arilou_skiff 2009-08-15 09:19 am UTC (link)
	The good mark is four swords on aa round table, but they're basket-hilted rapiers. Hence why the stylized version looks like "p's". (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-08-15 05:06 pm UTC (link)
	Ah - so the swastika aspect is not the way it usually looks? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

arilou_skiff
2009-08-15 05:10 pm UTC (link)

The symbol is a circle of four swords laid out in a cross pattern inside a circle, since they're basket-hilted rapiers or sabres they stylized look like lower-case p's. I'm actually not sure if the emblem is supposed to be right-angled cross or a saltie-type cross. (it seems to vary depending on depiction) I don't really see anything even resembling a swastika this depiction (apart from the fact that a Swastika too is a kind of cross) if anything it looks more like the keys of St. Peter or something.

The Good Mark represents the four swords laid down by four pirate captains defeated by one of the early Phantoms, who ended up founding the jungle patrol.

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	psychop_rex 2009-08-16 03:50 am UTC (link)
	The curved parts of the Ps face outward in a manner very similar to the little right-angle lines at the ends of the swastika, in my opinion. (Mind you, I don't find it offensive or anything - it just looks very much like a swastika to me.) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

dr_hermes
2009-08-16 08:21 pm UTC (link)

I've always wondered if perhaps Lee Falk or Ray Moore didn't at the beginning think of the "good sign" as the crossbones from the pirate symbol Jolly Roger. The Phantom had already adopted the skull as his emblem, and since his origin was tied in with piracy, I suspected that he might have been intended to be shown turning pirates' dreaded symbol back against them. But I've never seen this in print, it's just one of my many many skewed theories.

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