Christmas Miracle #3: Phantom Christmas Special

Sometimes Christmas is just a time of year, and stuff comes out at that time. You sometimes get stories that are set at Christmas that really have nothing to do with Christmas. Sometimes you even get stuff that comes out at Christmas and so it gets seasonal branding even though it has nothing to do with the holiday.

So that brings us to Phantom #1713. (Yes, the issue number is not a typo. This comic is a weekly that's been going since the 1940s.)

Every year Frew Publications in Australia brings out a 100 page Christmas Special for the Phantom. Which has nothing to do with Christmas. It's usually just a couple of classic Lee Falk Phantom stories and a couple of new stories that have yet to be printed by Frew, all together in one large volume.

This year's Christmas special is no different! So let's check it out!

Phantom's not good enough for my Granddaughter.

The Phantom was both a daily comic strip and a weekly Sunday strip. The Sunday strips were originally presented in glorious full colour. But they also get printed in black and white. The strip I wanna look at today is from 1955, and it's called A Proper Husband.

The Phantom comic strips had two driving forces for drama back in the day. There were the adventure plots that the Phantom was involved in. Fighting pirates -- that sort of thing. But there was also his romance with Diana Palmer. In fact the romance with Diana was often front and centre as the spur that got him INTO adventures and strips quite often barely had the Phantom in it, for weeks on end, as we followed Diana.

So let's do that. Let's follow Diana for a few weeks, waiting for the Phantom to show up.

Hooo boy. I can already tell this is gunna be good!

Something must happen--!

I just love this panel. Time was, Frew Comics would edit out the continuity text in their reprints of Phantom comic strips. In the 1990s things changed and they started trying to print all Phantom comics as completely as possible. I'm so glad they decided to.

--Andrew S.
(I really love that panel.)