Archive: Phantom

Sunday, Oct 09, 2005 Comments are closed

Here comes the groom, all dressed in skin-tight purple spandex

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The Phantom, 10/9/05

Maybe I still have weddings on the brain, but there was nothing in Sunday’s comics more amusing than the wedding flashback in the final panel of The Phantom. And I thought we had an eclectic guest list! Mr. and Mrs. Walker (for GHOST-WHO-WALKS, everybody!) apparently invited, from right to left: a shirtless white dude; a Native Canadian fresh from FBOFW’s pow-wow; a sad clown from a velvet painting; Bruce Willis; a top-hatted fop; a Keebler Elf in a cone hat; and, of course, Rex Morgan’s Buck, before graduate school reduced him to a pus-encrusted drifter. The groom apparently couldn’t even be bothered to put on a tie for the occasion. Why not take some sartorial cues from President Luaga, Ghost-Who-Has-Only-Two-Outfits? He seems like quite the natty dresser.

Incidentally, what exactly is the Phantom doing with his left hand in the second panel of the second row? It looks like he’s about to pick a chocolate out of a sampler box on the president’s desk … very dramatically.

Friday, Aug 26, 2005 Comments are closed

Hugs, not mind-erasing drugs

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The Phantom, 8/26/05

Apartment 3-G, 8/26/05

Yes, it’s true: whether your man is facing backwards or forwards, and whether you’re about to get dumped by your boyfriend due to some arbitrary chunk of narrative convenience or about to get involuntarily drugged and have your memories purged by a purple-latex-clad freak and his pygmy sidekick, there’s nothing that starts the weekend off right better than a nice hug. Hugs to all of you, Curmudgeon readers!

Monday, Jul 11, 2005 Comments are closed

Never mind the plague; what about the raging fashion crisis?

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The Phantom, 7/10/05

So for the past several weeks, I’ve been trying to get a handle on what the cultural deal is of the plague-ridden African nation of Baronkhan (BaronKhan?). It’s a neighbor to the Phantom’s own happy post-colonial democracy of Bangalla and the obviously apartheid-based state of Rhodia. But Baronkhan (BaRonKhaN?) is a tougher one to crack. In this strip alone, we’ve got a kimono-wearing doctor in panel two (assuming that we’re looking through de-colorizing glass and not at a sepia-toned Japanese print hung on the outside of the building for some reason), some soldiers apparently on loan from the 18th century Ottoman army in panel three, and our Aryan prince and his native sidekick Tom-Tom (Tom-Tom?), dressed for a trip to a mall in suburban Ohio. With this melange of sartorial styles on display, I guess the Phantom can indulge himself in disguises he doesn’t get to wear very often. In this case, he’s chosen some sort of hooded faux-medieval get up, perfect for working the manor fields under the watchful eye of a benevolent duke, or possible for leading a pitchfork-wielding mob to roust out a coven of potential witches. It would have been a little more effective if you couldn’t see the purple spandex through his décolletage.

By the way, if you’re not a regular follower of the Phantom, you might be edified by the little explanatory footnote in the middle panel of the bottom row. The fact that similar footnotes appear roughly once every two to three weeks says something about the how long the Phantom’s creators think they can hold on to readers.