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The Phantom, 1/22/05

Here’s another game much like Exposition, called Tenterhooks. The point is to talk around something that everyone knows about for the sole purpose of artificially creating suspense. You know, like referring to your Secret Nazi Whoosit as “what we came for” rather than just saying it. On the other hand, if this bunch of watery grave-robbers typically conducts themselves with such a lax view towards security that they can’t be bother to remember how many rubber-suited villains are in their party, then maybe they’re better off being as indirect as possible.

On the other hand, it’s possible that they aren’t being indirect at all, and really are just an innocent band of historic meter-long aluminum tube enthusiasts.

Bonus observation: the Ghost-Who-Ruminates-Aloud apparently can’t decide what type of word balloon best represents his underwater running commentary. Nice to see that he’s always trying new things out.

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The Phantom, 12/14/04

One of the defining characteristics of works of fiction is that they aren’t happening in the real world. That won’t come as a shock to most, but many authors find themselves berated by obsessive readers and/or viewers about unrealistic or inconsistent plot developments or details — like “The Enterprise just went to Warp 12, but they said earlier that you can’t go past Warp 10,” or “Nobody just passes out from their first hit of meth,” or “You can’t keep a tiger in a hotel room — where would it go to the bathroom?”

Well, this one’s for you, fanboys; I hope you’re happy. Better make that a real big housekeeping tip, Walker.

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The Phantom, 12/4/04

If you’ve read this feature regularly, you’ll know that there’s nothing that turns me on more than hot, hot discussion of geographical and cultural signifiers embedded in dialect. Thus, it’s rather surprising that, until I read today’s strip, I never really considered what sort of accent the hero of the Phantom might have. I mean, let’s see: scion of a family of mysterious obscenely wealthy vigilantes, of European descent, born and raised in somewhere that is probably southeast Africa, married to an American, which all should result in him sounding something like … Teresa Heinz Kerry, maybe?

Anyway, the thing that threw me in this strip is that our grumpy superhero displays his disdain for American sports scheduling by exclaiming “Blast!” In my experience, the only people who ever use this word as an interjection are British. Well, I mean, not my experience as such, as none of the British people I’ve known or encountered personally have ever done so, but, well, can you imagine a native English speaker shouting “Blast!” in any accent that isn’t British? Yeah, me neither. That might also explain why the Ghost-Who-Watches-Television-In-His-Hotel-Room is so discombobulated by the schedule: in the Commonwealth Formerly Known As The British Empire, their so-called “football” games are on TV essentially all the time, instead of the rational once-a-week schedule we’ve established here.

I still can’t linguistically explain that “Huh!” at the beginning of the sentence, though. But it’s worth noting that lovable wolf Devil eschews the pedestrian “Woof!” for a more naturalistic “Wrf!”