The Phantom: Wahgi War Shields

Lee Falk's hero, The Phantom, made his comic book debut in February 1936, but he also appears on dozens of traditional war shields made by people from the Central Highlands of Papua New Guinea between the 1960s and 1980s. Why?

The Wahgi people of Papua New Guinea have long made enormous shields from tree trunks, and have continued to make these shields as a form of ritual artwork. In the late 20th century, many of these Papua New Guinea highlanders began incorporating "new ideas" into their traditional works, so that shields bore emblems of football teams, beer brands, and, yes, The Phantom. Western comic books became widely available in the region after World War II, and The Phantom became a particularly popular character.

Art educator and dealer Michael Reid notes that two things in particular made The Phantom an ideal subject for a war shield -- he is a hero who protects his home and he is known as "The Man Who Cannot Die." Just as many comic book readers adopt the emblems of their favorite heroes, so too have these artists taken the symbolic power of The Phantom and adapted it to their own traditions.

In the News: Amazing Kreskin’ Offers to Fix ‘Fiscal Cliff’

by Lori Montgomery, Washington Post, December 7, 2012

Finally, a light at the end of the “fiscal cliff” tunnel: The Amazing Kreskin is here to help.

Kreskin, billed by his publicist as the world’s most renowned mentalist, was a fixture on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in the 1970s. Now 77, he says he can break the stalemate over taxes and spending that has gripped Washington for much of the past two years.

All it would take is an hour in a room with President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) or their proxies.

“If I can, through mental suggestion and mental conditioning, bring both to a state of mind where I’ve lifted all the pressure, all the threats, all the money being offered and all the fears of the next election, I can bring them together to their unconscious level, and they will start to think in terms of compromising,” Kreskin said in an interview.

Kreskin made the offer via news release Thursday to fly to Washington and help with the cliff after observing what he described as a mounting crisis in government.

“I’m a little bit worried we’re in a crisis psychologically, too,” he said. “We’ve got to start thinking about each other.”

So, how would it work? On television and in his stage shows (after four decades in show business, Kreskin is still performing more than 200 times a year), Kreskin is famous for astounding feats of mind reading and mental dexterity. On former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s Fox News show in 2009, Kreskin distributed 52 playing cards throughout the studio audience, and — by encouraging people to “talk to me” mentally about the cards in their hands — tracked down the person holding the very card that Huckabee had plucked from a separate deck moments earlier. (It was the three of clubs.)

“They don’t call you the Amazing Kreskin for nothing, do they?” Huckabee marveled.
Now Kreskin says he can look deep into the minds of Washington politicians and “envision” the “pathway” to a mutually acceptable compromise that he believes is buried there.

“Don’t give me that crap. These people have a sense of what has to be done,” Kreskin said. “I could bring out of them the mind-set to say, ‘Hell. Jesus. We’ve got to start to think together and to give and take.’”

Yes, he said, “partly I will” read their minds. But Kreskin said his gig in Washington would not be a typical performance.

“I do think I will know when they’re revealing and saying something that is true. And I’m going to confront them and say, ‘Let’s continue on this track that you honestly know is the right way.’ ”
Kreskin says he has no “clinical bias” in this case. He says he is neither liberal nor conservative, and that he doesn’t much care whether taxes go up or spending goes down, or how Washington solves this problem. But the problem, he says, has got to be solved.

“This is not as crazy as it sounds,” he said. “The bottom line is, what the hell have we got to lose? This is becoming a three-ring circus.”

The Amazing Kreskin (born January 12, 1935), born George Joseph Kresge, is a mentalist who became popular on North American television in the 1970s. He was inspired to become a mentalist by Lee Falk's famous comic strip Mandrake the Magician, which features a crime-fighting stage magician.

And, Oh Yes, They Will Be Mine -- 15 Vintage Phantom Paperbacks

Read it and weep: the Winner's Curse:

Lee Falk. Group of Fifteen First Printing Mass Market Phantom Paperbacks. Avon Books, 1972-75. Toning and mild rubbing; otherwise,Very Good or better. From the collection of first fan, Jack Cordes.

First Phantom Sunday

My recent Ghost Who Walks obsession continues --- The Phantom Sunday, February 17, 1936.

After the success of his Mandrake the Magician, the King Features newspaper syndicate asked Lee Falk to develop a new feature. His first attempt was a strip about King Arthur and his knights, which Falk both wrote and drew. However, King Features turned this down, and Falk developed the idea of The Phantom, a mysterious, costumed crimefighter. He planned the first few months of the story and drew the first two weeks as a sample.

Inspired by his lifelong fascination with myths and legends, such as those of King Arthur and El Cid, as well as modern fictional characters as Zorro, Tarzan, and The Jungle Book's Mowgli, Falk envisioned the Phantom's alter ego as rich playboy Jimmy Wells, fighting crime by night as the mysterious Phantom.

Partway through his first story, The Singh Brotherhood, before revealling Wells was the Phantom, Falk changed the setting to jungle and made the Phantom a seemingly immortal mythic figure. Deciding there were already too many characters called the Phantom (including the Phantom Detective and the Phantom of the Opera), Falk had thought of calling his hero "The Gray Ghost" (which later became the name of a Batman character, a fact alluded to in the first episode of Phantom 2040). However, Falk could not find a name he liked better and finally settled on the Phantom.

In the A&E American cable TV documentary The Phantom: Comic Strip Crusader, Falk explained Greek busts inspired the idea of the not showing the Phantom's pupils when he was wearing his mask. Ancient Greek busts displayed no pupils, which he felt gave them an inhuman, awe-inspiring appearance.

In an interview published in Comic Book Marketplace in 2005, Falk said the Phantom's skin-tight costume was inspired by Robin Hood, who was shown wearing tights in films and on stage.

Douglas Fairbanks as Robin Hood; a screenshot from the 1922 United Artists film Robin Hood.

Bust of Socrates, marble, Roman copy after a Greek original from the 4th Century BC

Nick Derington: The Phantom and Mandrake