TODAY we wrapped up a 38-week Phantom story that got quite a lot of notice around the world. It was another installment in my long-range plan to grow up Kit and Heloise Walker, the Phantom’s twins.
That gets our readers thinking (mostly fretting) about the inevitable: that one day the 21st Phantom will be laid to rest in the family crypt with the 20 Phantoms who went before him. Someone will need to swear the oath of the skull and carry on in his stead.
Since 1536 the succession has passed from father to son. But in A Reckoning with the Nomad, Heloise shows her chops when it comes to fighting evil.
That guy with Heloise’s foot in his face is a mass murderer, Eric Sahara, aka, The Nomad, an immensely wealthy financier of terror networks around the world. He’s a psychopath, intensely paranoid.
Heloise is not quite 16, but her old man started training her and her brother Kit as jungle fighters as soon as they were out of diapers.
I like to write these single-panel days whenever I can because Mike Manley never fails to wow the reader. What a terrific artist!
Mike’s a fine artist first, so he knows anatomy, how the body moves, that carries over so well into his comics art.
Heloise shares a room with the Nomad’s daughter at the Briarson School, a la-di-dah prep academy in Manhattan. The Nomad means to do away with Heloise not because she’s the Phantom’s daughter—he’s in the dark about that. No, he wants her dead because he’s discovered that, for a time, she lived in the Presidential Palace in Mawitaan, the capital of Bangalla, in East Africa.
The Nomad thinks Heloise must be secretly working for her former guardian, President Lamanda Luaga; that Luaga must suspect Eric Sahara is the Nomad, and he’s sent Heloise to get close to Sahara’s daughter and possibly confirm that suspicion.
Why isn’t the Phantom dealing with the Nomad? He was when the story started on February 19. Or he thought he was.
The guy he was after in Africa turned out to be a body double. The Phantom was badly injured going after the phony Nomad and the two dozen guns guarding him.
The Nomad’s terror horde fires rocket-propelled grenades at the Phantom. He uses a ratty old mattress to deflect an RPG into the side wall and open up an escape route.
But the Phantom has underestimated how many guys are on that side of the building. Gunfire drives him back inside. It’s quite a terrible night at the office for our hero.
To get out alive he finally has to shoot the fuel tank on the flamethrower a guy is using to burn him out.
One thing I really like about writing the Phantom is that he never thinks with his guns. His response to violence is always measured and proportionate. He won’t harm even the worst villain if he can help it.
On the other hand, he’s not playing dress-up with that brace of M1911’s he wears. If he needs to use them lethally as a last resort, he will.
He gets away, but with a piece of shrapnel stuck under his jaw, up against the jugular. Of course you gotta stick yer dirty jungle fingers in a wound like that and fish around, right? Who could resist?
He’s half bled-out by the time he gets back to Skull Cave in the Deep Woods. Good thing his old friend, Guran, chief of the Bandar, is a crackerjack medicine man on the side.
Meanwhile… the real Nomad turns up in New York.
So they see the sights… Liberty Island…
Well here’s why Heloise’s instincts about Eric Sahara are right on…
The wounded Phantom rings up Heloise via Skype or FaceTime to brief her on this mass murderer he’s been after.
But she doesn’t tell him. She knows he’ll suit up and come to New York, despite the unhealed wound that might easily start leaking again.
On the fateful night, Heloise calls home and leaves voicemail outlining her plan to get information on where the Nomad is headed next.
This next image you’ve already seen here on the Nickels, in a September post about my young friends H and M. The loathsome Nomad strikes Heloise with a closed fist after arranging for the airport police to question her as a terrorist sympathizer. That was his ploy to separate Heloise and Kadia and get on with his murder plot.
The Nomad puts Heloise aboard his private jet. As he prepares for takeoff, she regains consciousness…
And this is where we came in up top. She kicks him in the head, the jet comes down on a neighborhood street just over the airport fence.
She opens his head up with her cellphone next, knots his tie so tight he passes out, kicks him in the head again for good measure… holey moley but these Phantom offspring are tough!
While all this is going on, an airport cop has climbed the fence and is hotfooting it for the crash site.
The cop fires warning shots, Heloise just keeps booking it.
Next thing you know, she’s wandering around barefoot on the seedy side of Hoboken or some other Jerseyrific burg. The cop’s body cam has footage of Heloise running away, so the feds, naturally, would like a word with her.
Back in the Deep Woods, the Phantom awakens early and hears the alarming voicemail Heloise left hours earlier, before the Nomad attacked her. Her plan at that time was just to find out where the villain was headed after New York, so the wounded Phantom, once healed, could get after him again.
The Phantom rips the bandage off his neck, suits up, and is about to head for New York when the phone rings.
A cop car prowls by, Heloise hangs up and ducks into an all-night bodega. She buys sneakers and a pair of shades that symbolically turn her into a Phantom in her own right.
Meanwhile, the cops are looking at the body cam footage of Heloise identifying the Nomad and running away.
The guy working the bodega counter has the news on. The airport police chief is telling the lie the feds told him to tell. And the plan is to give a medal to the half-bright cop who almost shot Heloise.
As he waits for Heloise to check in again, the Phantom considers trying to explain this whole mess to his wife. Then he decides, no, why come clean when he can go brood about how he got sidelined on the DL and their daughter almost paid for it with her life.
Then Heloise is back on the line and our denouement is in sight.
Another one of those outstanding single-panel days by Mike Manley! Two images of Heloise in a single panel. That wasn’t in my script, that’s all Mike. Just brilliant.
And now the adrenaline rush is over and Heloise is just a kid again, 7,000 miles from home.
So there you have it, a bare outline of the story, really. There are something like 185 strips I haven’t shown you here.
To see all 38 weeks of the Reckoning online, sign up for a free trial subscription to Comics Kingdom here and start reading on February 19. The site will give you access to every comic published by King Features. If you decide you want to become a paying reader, it’ll cost you pocket change by the month, the price of a small cup of coffee.
On Monday, we go to the Himalayas to check in on the Phantom’s son, Kit. He’s studying at a monastery where the 11th and 16th Phantoms went for their secondary educations. That’s related to a whole other yarn, where the Phantom felt his death was approaching and didn’t want Kit to take the oath as the 22nd Phantom at such a young age. So he sent Kit off where even Guran wouldn’t be able to find him.
And the Phantom would have died in that adventure if not for Babudan, the Bandar badass who put an arrow through the heart of the Phantom’s unseen assassin.
It was Diana’s idea to have Babudan shadow the Phantom and foil the prophecy of his death, foretold by the mystic Old Man Mozz.
Diana never just came out and said it in so many words, but wily old Babudan got the drift.
The 21st Phantom keeps cheating death! What are the odds that it can go on indefinitely?
Tony DePaul, November 10, 2018, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
Following the story over the course the last few years, it has become the theme of the mortality of the XXI Phantom, and of one of the twins replacing him. Many are rooting for the girl, others for the boy (Currently far fewer for the boy than the girl.)
Well, I have been wondering about something else. What happens to the wife of the dead Phantom, or the mother of the new one? I can’t say for sure, but I have never heard anything mentioned about mothers, wives, or the possibility that there might have been other children being born to the Phantoms besides a single son.
We have all seen the crypts of past Phantoms, even lately “the vault of missing men.” but there is a glaring absence of what happens to the women, and possible children.
I know I might never see anything about that, but I would dearly like to know about them. Any plans like that for the future?
Curiosity Killed the Cat,
Allan
The lore does tend to focus on the Phantom’s nuclear family, but I suppose the extended family has been welcome in the Deep Woods, too, down through time. It’s hard to imagine a gentleman like Lee Falk booting grandma out through the secret waterfall when the new Phantom takes a wife and raises his own brood of Walkers.
If the 21st Phantom meets his fate, Diana surely won’t vanish with him!
I’m one of those “For those who came in late…”
I just don’t know what to say, Your leaving? Sighs… It’s not going to be the same without you. All I can say is I’m glad I KFS archives to reread.
If I am reading this right, you will not be scripting about Kit JR in the Himalayas. If so just what is going to happen there? Is KFS just going to drop that plot line?
God, I’m getting too old for this.
Allan
No, I’m here, Allan. I wonder if this post includes a reference to the dust-up of 2017?
You can read all about that here http://www.tonydepaul.net/thats-it-for-me-and-the-phantom/
And the resolution of it here http://www.tonydepaul.net/and-a-bruising-time-was-had-by-all/
Mr. DePaul,
Thank you for answering so quickly, I feel honored that you did so.
I am of course overjoyed you will still be with us, and in a way disappointed.
I read the comments in KFS on your strip and thinking how happy I would be to not read about them snarfing about you and the way you tell the story. I was sort of looking forward to that. I was looking forward to reading their disappointment of not having you to kick around any longer.
However I far more happy I will still get to follow your story. I can always block those that get on my nerves.
I hope the deal made with KFS was a good one. I can’t help but feel you still came up with the short end of the stick. But not my call. (I feel selling your rights, is akin to selling land that has been in your family for generations. Painful but sometimes necessary.)
Again thanks for answering, and I hope for many more years of entertaining reading. As Guran said, “Long live the Phantom!”
Allan
Hi Tony – I’m looking forward to seeing this story printed by Frew in Australia – hopefully in colour! I’ve been re-reading the early adventures recently and was wondering if you have ever been tempted to try some sort of extended flashback sequence to an early story…to see if it could be done faithfully in the modern era with the space restrictions of the current strip. Or…have you been tempted to bring back the character of Jimmy Wells (the character originally intended to be the alter ego of the Phantom)? Perhaps you could write a story that finally explains the Phantom’s references to the ‘Sunda Trough’, which is referenced as an important part of the legend in the first story, but never mentioned again?
Hello, Ross. There’s so much great source material in the Phantom universe I’m always tempted to bring it back. But, as you say, we’re so tight on space it’s almost impossible to sustain. I always wonder how many readers will remember the old material well enough to fill in the blanks if all we give them is a very limited number of flashback panels.
It seems to work whenever I reference recent stories, and reference just a brief event in those stories. Long sequences are more suited to a book format where you get 30 pages at a time instead of 2 panels, maybe 3.
Give you an example: three years ago I had a synopsis approved for a story called “Muckraking the Phantom.” I loved the idea but it was going to require so many long flashbacks to previous stories that I thought readers would get hopelessly lost and give up on it. So I never did write the story.
My premise was that Lara Bell, the reporter from “The Scoundrel,” would go around the world tracking down characters who’ve had some interaction with the Phantom or Walker, and these people would help Lara Bell piece together an idea of who the mystery figure really is. She’d be mining information from people like Ted West, the pilot from “The Aeronaut;” Ernesto Salinas, the police chief from “A Detente with Crime” and “Mexico’s Phantom;” E. Chesley Bowe, the boy genius from “The College Kid;” Tendai Uzoma, the tagger from “Graffiti Phantom,” and so on.
And I finally thought, man…space is so tight, the references to those other stories would have to be so spare.. how many readers would make the connections strongly enough to sustain interest?
About Sunda Trough, I’ve always thought it was kind of a literary artifact left over from the days when Falk was hedging his bets on whether Bangalla was in Africa or Asia (lions and tigers? Wha?), and as the idea coalesced around a Ghost Who Walks in East Africa somewhere I think Falk just didn’t revisit the Asian connection. But your guess on that is as good as mine, Ross.
Thanks for writing!
Only just noticed this post from you but I have to say that it’s a shame you decided against writing the story for the approved “Muckraking the Phantom” synopsis. I remember every one of the characters you were thinking of revisiting but I suppose that not everyone is a Phantom nerd with a photographic memory. (A photographic memory that only works on Phantom lore.)
I’d like to see Tendai the graffiti girl and E. Chesley Bowe as the young adults they’d be by now. Tennie might be a grown-up comics artist. E.Chesley is probably a physicist with CERN working with the huge atom smasher but otherwise has not changed one bit.
But you know best about what’s it’s possible to do in a couple of hundred strips of two or three panels.
Lara Bell, or as I sometimes say, Lara Croft, is another well remembered character and I thought about her only today when reading the second instalment of the new Sunday Phantom story. You brought back Derwood Apple! Just as you were threatening to do when replying to me on this blog some time ago. I thought to myself that Derwood seems to be taking an unhealthy interest in who the Unknown Commander is. I remember what happened to the unfortunate Orson Burley who got interested in the Phantom. Drugged, marched through the Jungle in pajamas and bare feet and finally terrified out of his wits in a face to face confrontation with the Legend. Then I thought of how much more gallant the Ghost is with insatiably curious ladies. All Lara Bell got was a guided tour of the Treasure Rooms followed by her camera being wiped and a dose of Guran’s amnesia powder so she remembered none of it.
I’ll have to wait and see where you go with Derwood but I’m glad that you did decide to revisit him. Congratulations to Jeff Weigel by the way. He’s done a great job of examining the dailies and making Sunday Derwood recognizably the same man as Daily Derwood.
Great story Tony and great art by Mike Manley. I’m glad we all were able to see what you had planned, after that KFS debacle with your contract. Keep the Ghost Who Walks relevant in this day and age!
And more stories from the Chronicles!
Thanks, Mike. I’d almost forgotten about that but, true enough, the Reckoning story was in the queue when I resigned. KFS approved the synopsis three years and two editors ago. Lots of changes in the business, and they’re still going on. Our executive editor’s position was eliminated about a week ago.
Thanks for hanging in with us and following the Phantom!
Your storytelling, and Mike’s artwork are a wonderful combination. Only one image, of Nomad’s jet flying upside down, was too much. Going at that speed, low to the ground, it wouldn’t have been possible for it to do a 360 degree rotation. I think Mike got carried away with enthusiasm for your story. The daily installments appear at 5 AM in my time zone, and every morning, at my computer with a hot cup of coffee, the first thing I would do is see what has developed in the story. After checking that, then I can go to my email, and look at the news.
I, too, find that reading the comics first is good prep for reading the news, John. It gets my suspension-of-disbelief reflexes properly tuned up.
Great summary, great story! I liked the strips I somehow missed, particularly the one that shows a Phantom swearing the oath. Thanks to you and Mike! As to the high heel as a weapon, it’s important for a Phantom to be a dangerous person as well as knowing how to use dangerous weapons!
Glad to hear you enjoyed the story, Robert. In dangerous neighborhoods it’s good practice to look for women in high heels and try to keep up with them, I always feel much safer.
Ya know, that high-heeled stiletto in the face will get you every time…..
Doesn’t even require a permit, either. And it’s open carry!