THE PHANTOM

>One of the first comic strip characters ever

>Is a complete joke today

How can we make The Phantom GREAT AGAIN Sup Forums?

>implying he isn't still great
the phantom didn't change, we did.

I still like to read the classic strips, but maybe that's a nostalgia thing. Phantom was basically the only comic I read as a kid.

give him one of those gambit head dress things and a cybernetic eye and arm, get rid of the panties on the outside of his pants and give him a sword

kek

I picked up issue 1763 of the Australian series recently. It's a large-sized 80th anniversary title. Weird to think that The Phantom came before Superman and Batman.

I got the NZ variant cover. Apparently he used to get printed here with a brown costume.

we just have to wait it out until pulp becomes popular again. until then, though, we have all those sweet sweet public domain characters all to ourselves.

>Weird to think that The Phantom came before Superman and Batman.
Not that weird considering Batman is a straight ripoff of The Shadow and The Spider. Or that he ran around carrying guns originally.

I wish pulp-style stuff was more popular. Sometimes all the massive ongoing storylines spread out across multiple titles gets a bit tiring.

i miss when arch-enemies were just thugs with gimmicks or unusually-smart gangsters.

Fabulous costume.

Move him out of Africa to somewhere people actually give a shit about.

How about he time travels to future Africa? There could be mutant Rhino men, Lion men and Chinamen

Who do you think ranks as the phantom's arch enemy? The python is a sort of antithesis to his ideals, but he's not really an equal to the phantom whenever he appears. There was the singh brotherhood, and the recurring arsehole tribes, but that's about it, isn't it?

Where though? The wilderness and the tribespeople near the Skull Cave are part of the whole mythos.

What, like new york? C'mon fella. A hero's a hero no matter where he's operating. Just because you don't care about africa doesn't mean you can't write interesting comics about it. If you want proof, just read the 2004 unknown soldier run.

>Is a complete joke today

Not really. Apparently he's a huge fucking deal in scandanavia and austrialia, because their major publishing houses hold the rights to the character, so he's gotten a constant push.

Here in the US we have our own heroes, so The Phantom doesn't get much exposure.

Wasn't there a show about him set in the future?

Dyanmite has tried. But it does ring of let's move out the white guy to add in more diversity by having Lothar take up the role. They also introduced a female Phantom for some damn reason.

Fuck off americans
He's not yours to ruin

You do know he is an American creation right? Like even though he's not popular here right now he still was made by Americans first. So yeah.

I'm australian, dipshit.
Besides, I'm not the retard suggesting that he should be in the future, or somewhere other than bengala, or some stupid bullshit.
Phantom's a pulp hero, and he should stay that way.

Nah

>Egmont do full license of The Phantom in 1950s
>Egmont expands the brand and its currently ongoing with great writers and research

>Scandinavia is big enough to support the Swedish franchise
>Isn't expanded beyond publishing comics in Scandinavia
>EU free trade means painless export to EU, allowing The Phantom to exist as a greater media franchise
>Isn't done
>Meanwhile US franchise is in the media swamp of being shit Marvel prints

Focus on the Phantoms of the past. There's no real pirate stories in western comics nowadays, bring back the pirate with Phantom. One of them fought pirates, at least.

...

>huge fucking deal in scandinavia
Finfag here, we still get old Phantom hi-jinks in newspapers, complete with racism and sexism from simpler times for added humor value.

>There's no real pirate stories in western comics nowadays

There really should be. I still say DC should make All Star Swashbuckling. Just carry it on from where they left off

The story of a Phantom who loses the use of his legs shortly after assuming the mantle, his struggles with disability and endless games of wheelchair basketball?

He's traveling all the time across the world, you filthy fucking pleb.

This replying to every post shit really needs to fucking stop. It is never necessary.

>They also introduced a female Phantom for some damn reason.

Casual spotted. There have been couple of female Phantoms in the past.

There was a monthly The Phantom (mustanaaamio) magazine in Finland. It ran old stories, published new ones and had awesome european comics like Thorgal as additional comics.

>tfw that magazine stopped publishing, has been gone for years and you just reminded me about how good it was.

Kids don't read comics unless it's Donal Duck, anymore. Sad, really. Discovering Camelot 3000 as a teenager through Phantom's back-up stories was cool as fuck.

The youth is rotten.

For some reason I always assumed he was living in India or Indonesia

and the pygmy niggas just kind of "were" there

Goddamnit

As cool as it was, it really lacked any media synergy to push it further.
Like if you bought groceries, some stores just had Phantom Magazines alongside Donald.
Sure, it was a cool thing, but it isn't Donald, and Donald appeals to both genders.

And we know why the "Finnish" youth is rotten

Even black Phantoms?

What, because they have to learn Swedish at a young age which takes away precious time from learning important things?

The American comics are shit now.

The European ones are still good.

Yeah but one of the core concepts of the Phantom is the belief that they are the same man, no one knows the identity is passed from Father to son, so a black Phantom and female phantom acting at the same time kind of ruins that. So yeah I'm a casual.

ausfag here, we still get old strips in the newspaper every Sunday.

>The German branch of Egmont has a comics division
> publishes several of the same series as in Scandinavia
> Doesn't publish The Phantom

Complete joke?
I mean hard to find a big fan these days, but nobody ever makes fun of The Phantom.
Like plenty of people treat Aquaman like a joke, cause they are actually making jokes.

Last Phantom joke I can think of was a Robot Chicken skit where Defenders of the Earth were just a very hardcore neighborhood watch.

>The Egmont Group (formerly The Gutenberghus Group) is a Danish media corporation founded and rooted in Copenhagen, Denmark. The business area of Egmont has traditionally been magazine publishing but has over the years evolved to comprise mass media generally.
>Egmont has a number of local country branches: Australia, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, and United Kingdom.
Still no attempt at exporting Phantom to earn more money.
Danskjævler

You're not wrong. It was initially in India, explaining the presence of sultans and maharajahs, but for whatever reason it was retconned to Africa later. I personally like the change.

If they wanted to earn money they'd put out TPBs for specific fa-favourite storylines and back-ups, but nooooooooooo, had to wait years and years for Cobolt to get the licenses to get HCs for the back-ups.

Phantom's a legend of a ghost who walks, as if that would be a problem.