What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? Is that a space alien? April – June 2026

Uh … Probably not? The current storyline has featured what sure looks like your classic Whitley Strieber-model Grey Alien. Eric “The Nomad” Sahara describes this as a costume. This seems the most likely explanation, especially given we’ve seen, such as on the 26th of June (Stitch Day, surely a coincidence) shows this alien holding up a standard-model white-guy pink hand … but that’s based on the coloring of a daily strip, which the artist and writer don’t really control. But it’s happened more than once, so it’s probably intentional.

Making it imaginable that this is an alien is that the continuity of The Phantom — and sister strip Mandrake the Magician — is open to this kind of supernatural/paranormal thing. The more impossible stuff like time travel and the island of Eden and secret subterranean cities of animal-people are typically kept to the Sunday stories, where the bounds of reality are looser. But, for example, in the 2009 weekday story Crocco Island West Tony DePaul had The Phantom relocate a population of Creatures From The Black Lagoon to somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. (This incidentally introduced Captain Savarna Devi to The Phantom continuity, so it’s not a story you can write off as The Phantom having eaten too much rarebit before bed.) So … maybe?

The possible alien has control of a device that’s able to make a person see their deepest terrors. But I don’t know that this is anything beyond the power of, like, Mandrake the Magician’s evil half-brother, so, it has a “mundane” explanation within this superhero continuity. I’ll put my chip down on “human with some hypnotechnology device” right now, but someone wanting to bet on a real alien with some grudge against The Phantom is not making a foolish bet.

So, I hope this catches you up to late June 2026 in Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity. I’ll probably return to this story around late September 2026, so follow this link if you want to catch up to what’s happened since then, or if you want to read about the separate Sunday continuity or, whenever I notice it’s restarted again, Phantom 2040.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

6 April – 27 June 2026.

I left The Phantom in his Unknown Commander guise, on his way to a meeting with Colonel Worubu and intelligence officer Dai Lu Han about what really happened in the Jungle Patrol’s raid into Ivory Lana and General Chuma’s slave-labor mining operation. Mostly he’s messing with them, since they don’t know it was The Phantom who was clobbering all General Chuma’s underlings and leaving the place open to the Jungle Patrol’s raid. You gotta mess with them some or they’ll never form weird quasi-religious devotions to your amnesiac alter-ego.

By asking Colonel Worubu why he sent Officer Dai into Ivory Lana on her own The Unknown Commander forces Worubu to say she knew she was expected to follow her investigation even if it forced her into dangerous locations like an illegal slave-labor camp. The Unknown Commander congratulates everyone for how well it came out, although truth be told, there was a lot of moral luck involved. And with the 25th of April — and the colonel congratulating Dai on a good capture — the story of The Muckmen of Zumaridi River concludes.

First strip. Ignis Vindicta, who looks like a Grey Alien, asks, 'What is it you fear most, Mr Sahara? WHO do you fear?' Eric 'The Nomad' Sahara: 'Fear? Me? You just made yourself more ridiculous than the mask does, Vindicta.' Vindicta, taking out their phone: 'Tokolshe .. show The Nomad his greatest fear.' Sahara is shocked as the ankle bracelet on him snaps something. Second strip: The Nomad sees himself surrounded by a violently enraged Phantom, smashing a skull mark on his face. Third strip: The Nomad sees himself falling from a crashing plane, futilely shooting repeating rifles at a winged-demon version of The Phantom, helpless against several kinds of horrible death. — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 12th, 13th, and 14th of May, 2026. Stacking the three together seemed the best way to capture this plot-bearing moment and let me assure you, I won’t be doing that again. Anyway, you can see where this seems beyond the power of even Facebook, these days, but also that this is what they wanted Meta to be if we hadn’t laughed it off the face of the planet.

The current story, The Grudge — 270th of the daily stories — starts with the bonkers image of a private jet taking off from Washington, D.C, carrying a Grey Alien. This fellow, “Ignis Vindicta”, carries the most tremendous pardon in the history of the world to Guantanamo Bay, where onetime Phantom terrorist-in-chief Eric “The Nomad” Sahara has been detained. And with the most biggest excellent privately-financed pardon of all time Eric Sahara is turned over to Ignis Vindicta.

On the plane, Vindicta attaches an ankle bracelet to Sahara and explains that technology provides for the ultimate denial of free movement and free thought which, sigh, yeah, fair. As a demonstration he turns on the Torment Nexus app — Tokoloshe — and shows The Nomad his greatest fear, The Phantom only he’s like this swirling winged demon and they’re falling out a crashing airplane. Who knew The Nomad had been traumatized by a Ed Repka album cover?

Vindicta brings The Nomad to his base of operations in Rhodia, there to meet up with Rhodian Admiral Leopold Braga, last seen cleaning up after the huge mass breakout at Gravelines Prison. Braga thinks Vindicta is nuts, but hey, money is money and besides they’re all there to destroy Vindicta’s enemy The Phantom. And part of Vindicta’s special revenge plans? Teaming up The Nomad with a special guest partner, regardless of how much The Nomad insists he works alone. That special guest partner? The Python, currently held captive in an open-air cage in the middle of a Wambesi village.

In the Wambesi village. The elder says, in the Wambesi tongue, 'I have a premonition the villain will soon be free if he remains here.' The Phantom answers, 'I can't say the thought hasn't crossed my mind. This arrangement has been compromised since the day the Rhodians discovered it.' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 9th of June, 2026. I know I say The Phantom’s true superpower is that he has time to deal with all his responsibilities, so I must take this as Tony DePaul deflating me by showing how yeah, even he has to let stuff slide now and then. Fine, but I still say I’m right in the main.

Yeah so about that. So the drums of the Wambesi summon The Phantom to the The Python’s cage. Ever since this 2019-2020 story revealed that a pack of fake art students were trying to scout out where The Python might be held the threat of an escape attempt’s been present. And now it’s feeling weirdly imminent. The Phantom goes looking for somewhere else to hide The Python, but hasn’t yet found where to keep him. That’s where we’re set up, just now.

Next Week!

Drones! Mumbles! A massive attack on the city! Card cheaters! In a week I recap Mike Curtis, Eric Costello, Charles Ettinger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy so please check in in a week and twelve hours so Eric Costello can explain how much I didn’t understand! Remember, I don’t promise to be good at picking up character names or inferring stuff from plots, I just promise that I read the comic before I start writing jokes about it!

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Why are the Bandar doing all this for Christopher Walker? February – May 2026

Since the start of February Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s Sunday The Phantom has been about filling in a surprisingly underexplored piece of the 90-year-old comic’s lore, that of how exactly the first Kit Walker decided to stick around in Bandar territory and establish a legendary line of heroes. And, more, why the Bandar cared for this. So far there hasn’t been any touch of the current, 21st, Phantom — the story started in its title year of 1536 — but that doesn’t need to constrain the story’s end.

All my plot recaps for Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays) — and DePaul and Mike Manley’s separate weekday continuity, plus Alex Segura, Michael Moreci, and John Amor’s Phantom 2040: A New Shadow — should be at this link, so if it’s past about August 2026 and you don’t see why I’m not up to date, try that link and see if that helps.

The Phantom (Sundays).

22 February – 17 May 2026.

Bandar people, seeing the lone survivor of the Singh pirate attack on the Matilda washing ashore, see not just a needy sailor. They see someone who might be the hero from the sea that the ancients foretold. And how did they do that foretelling? We haven’t seen in the story yet, but since we know from other stories that precognitive dreams are a thing in The Phantom’s universe we can make inferences.

Kit Walker doesn’t know any of this, or more than a handful of Bandar words at first; he even mistakes “Bandaryomo” as the name of the authority-figure-y woman who takes interest in his case, rather than her title, if you can imagine. He also doesn’t figure why he has to stick around there. Sure, the attempt to set signal fires for English, or Portuguese, or any friendly ships fails. But if need be he could walk home, a feat that would be astounding but not actually impossible.

Kit Walker (1st Phantom) has a turbulent dream while sleeping on the beach: 'Father is there no one out there to see me?' His Father's Ghost: 'None save we the dead, my boy.' Walker: 'The Bandar say this is no misfortune but my *destiny* in the guise of adversity. Their ancients said a man would come from the sea ... a man of great daring ... of *legend* itself.' Father's Ghost: 'And our own Kit Walker of Portchester ... a sailor of the carrack Matilda ... ? Is this man? This is what the Bandar say?' Walker, stirring in his sleep: 'But I'm ... not ... I'm not ... ' — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 29th of March, 2026. I’m not sure if this strip establishes the first Phantom as being from Portchester. The Phantom Wiki lists it under the Team Fantomen comic origin story, but the citation given might be just to identifying his parents. Anyway I’m sure you spotted the skulls in his Father’s Ghost’s eyes.

If he could get going, though, since he’s haunted by the battle that sank his father’s ship and killed everyone aboard but him. Reliving the battle he realizes that his father knew its hopelessness even as he looked forward to the action. He retrieves a sword from the shipwreck, thinking of how it’ll help his journey. But the Bandar have told him how, as they see it, his destiny is to be their man of legend. He can’t see it, himself.

Still, he hadn’t heard the whole story. But a man from the sea who for all time is obliged to fight against evil, be a ghost who walks, a man who cannot die, that’s got a certain appeal. He’s trying to shake it off as a pagan legend to be hung on him. To convince him, the Bandar bring him into the Deep Woods, to the waterfall that guards Skull Cave. It makes an impression, must say. And that’s all I can say for now about this. But …

Next Week!

How about the much gentler story of a Hollywood star who’s discovered by a diner needing a waitress? This and other soft tales of fortune in Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. should be explained in seven days, barring storms.

What’s Going On In _Phantom 2040_? Did _Phantom 2040_ End? February – May 2026

It hasn’t ended, no. The strip — one of the annoyingly extra-long, hard-to-read-on-a-laptop comics like Eye Lie Popeye — slipped from running weekly in March, and hasn’t run since mid-April. I assume this reflects mostly that creators Alex Segura, Michael Moreci, and John Amor need to also work on projects that support their eating habit.

So this is the second of my attempts at following the storyline in Phantom 2040: A New Shadow. Both of my plot recaps for this should appear at this link, as will future recaps if I get around to writing them. Meanwhile all of my posts about The Phantom, including both the Sunday and Weekday storylines written by Tony DePaul, should be here and there should be a new Sunday-strip recap coming in days.

Phantom 2040: A New Shadow.

20 February – 17 April 2026.

So it happens that there have been only a couple strips since my first and last recap, which laid out how former soccer star Carlos Osorio had stolen trillionaire jerkface Charles Tyrus’s The Phantom costume, and somehow this particular outfit is key to Tyrus’s plan to take over the energy of the Ghost Jungle. Most of what we’ve seen since has reinforced that.

One important piece of new information is about Rebecca Lastname, whose last name turns out to be Starker. Her strange dark magicks somehow have something to do with Tyrus’s plans to merge with the Ghost Jungle’s energies, reveals that she didn’t just do all this energy-merge-setup to be nice. Starker’s failsafe means she can send purple lightning energy to make Tyrus be her The Phantom.

Meanwhile, Carlos Osorio is getting a handle on how he’s the son of the Kit Walker from the Phantom 2040 cartoon of the 90s, and that his impulsive theft of Tyrus’s The Phantom costume reflects his taking up what had been the Walker legacy. He starts to have mental conversations with his father who I guess was the 23rd Kit Walker? Because while his fighting style of punching lots of stuff indiscriminately works surprisingly well against the biological robot things of Tyrus’s evil corporation, and punching a crack in the big glowy blue tube somehow stops Tyrus from getting more Ghost Jungle energy, it doesn’t really address why he should be doing all this.

Osorio Phantom: 'What's the point, then? If this keeps happening, and if it keeps getting worse, aren't we just delaying the inevitability?' Walker Phantom: 'Yes, in a way. But that's the job of each Phantom --- hold the line. What other choice do we have?' — Panels from Alex Segura, Michael Moreci, and John Amor’s **Phantom 2040: A New Shadow** for the 17th of April, 2026. Well, okay, and there is value in things not being **even worse** but the argument so far is that The Phantoms are not holding the line. Maybe we need something more than one guy with a magic suit to save the world from how capitalists discovered that causing misery creates money.

The Phantom Walker, whom I’m not sure whether is Osorio’s imagination, or a hologram, or a Force Ghost, or what, gives Phantom Osorio a decent pep talk about seeing why there needs to be a The Phantom. It’s about standing up for the little guy against the powerful and corrupt. They’ve been doing that for centuries. And now, after all that work … the one thing keeping the world alive is this Ghost Jungle somehow tied to the city of York (it turns out) and trillionaire jerkface Charles Tyrus is on the brink of absorbing the energy of that. Maybe the project could be going better. But that all brings us up to

This Week!

Where in a mere couple days I hope to bring you up to speed on Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom, Sunday continuity, which is all about the first The Phantom.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? Did that Muckmen story end? January – April 2026

Last time I recapped Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom (Weekdays) I figured we were near the end. Three months later we’re … near the end? We got the tag that we’re in an epilogue to it, at least. DePaul wanted to do more with the intelligence officer Dai Lu Han who’d been poking around to figure what the weird rumors coming from over the border were about. Over on his blog Tony DePaul mentions filing copy for a new Phantom story with both Mike Manley and Jeff Weigel, so, things will happen. Just don’t know what, just yet. If you can imagine.

If you’re reading this after around July 2026 and want to know how things turned out, try looking for a more up-to-date plot recap at this link, which is also good for finding the separate Sunday storyline — currently a detailed telling of the origins of the First Phantom — and when I feel up to it, Phantom 2040 and some future Ghost. Now back to the Zumaridi River story.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

12 January – 4 April 2026.

Last time I checked in, the Weekday Phantom discovered Jungle Patrol intelligence officer Dai Lu Han had also reached General Chuma’s slave-labor Zumaridi River mine in Ivory Lana. The Phantom had been picking off Chuma’s henchmen, and Jungle Patrol’s ready as per the Unknown Commander’s orders to bring in The Phantom’s prisoners.

The Phantom sits down Chuma and his bookkeeper for a little chat about The Phantom is this ominous looming figure in the dark with eyes that are probably only glowing in that metaphorical artistic way. The bookkeeper’s creeped out fast and runs out the door into Dai Lu Han’s captivity. Also the cook staff that The Phantom had first signed on to his take-a-couple-guys-every-night plan for busting up the guards. The General meanwhile … I had taken him to jump through the window at first, but I’m not sure The Phantom didn’t push him. It was a ground floor window, don’t worry. He runs off, with Dai following and demanding he halt.

Patrolwoman Dai Lu Han, interrogating the bookkeeper: 'Wake up, you! Where's General Chuma!?' Chuma is indoors, with The Phantom behind him. The Phantom: 'We have the answer to that question right here, don't we, General?' Panel of Chuma's face hard against the glass as it starts to crack. — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 4th of February, 2026. Yeah, that’s got to be it, The Phantom’s got to be shoving him through the window. This seems challenging but he is a guy who can punch you so hard his ring leaves you imprinted for decades. That move probably has some wrist action to it, though.

As Jungle Patrol helicopters land General Chuma tries to fight his way out of Dai’s custody. She actually sets her gun down to fight him bare-handed, which seems more cinematic than wise. I guess I’d rather a cop punch a guy out than shoot him dead, but I’m also pretty sure a gun you set down the other guy can pick up. The Phantom watches, approving of Dai’s style, and I suppose ready to step in just in case, but it’s not like she knows that.

As the Jungle Patrol secures the scene Colonel Woruba orders the prisoners taken in, the cooks brought in to explain what all just happened here, and Patrolwoman Dai to surrender her weapon as she’s under arrest. The Jungle Patrol is so upset by this you’d think something happened to John X. She brought in a big, high-value target while busting up slavers who were plotting a coup. Surely success forgives her not actually asking permission to enter Ivory Lana and find all of this?

Dai Lu Han punches General Chuma, while The Phantom watches in darkness. Phantom, thinking: 'When your opponent sets her sidearm down and doesn't mind mixing it up, General? ... Come on, slow learner ... how big a clue do you need?' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 28th of February, 2026. This does strike me as another moment for Tony DePaul’s efforts to diffuse the White Savior ideas baked into The Phantom. Showing that a regular old patrol officer is as able to punch an evildoer into submission as The Phantom would be makes it less special that he **can** do these superheroic deeds. What makes him stand out isn’t his ability but his choice to act on that all the time and not just when circumstances bring him to. (That he has inexhaustible wealth and somehow all the time to do everything he needs helps his choice, though.)

In the epilogue, starting the 16th of March, Dai rejects her friend’s attempts to comfort and denies that she’s being treated unfairly; she went too far and that was that. And Colonel Jonathan Worubu (I don’t know if I knew his first name before) reflects on the great work Colonel Weeks put in to control his impulse to act fast, without communication, without backup. Just then the Unknown Commander appears in the shadows, or at least Colonel Worubu thinks it’s the Unknown Commander, asking to speak with both in his office in an hour.

The bunk for Jungle Patrol officers, after lights-out. Dai: 'The Unknown Commander? B - But you're the only officer who meets with the Unknown Commander.' Worubu: 'He wants you there ... ' Dai: 'Sir, I'm confined to quarters!' Worubu; 'Thirty minutes, patrolwoman.' Dai, thinking: 'Yikes!' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 31st of March, 2026. If the Unknown Commander learns what Dai is thinking this moment he is going to be **very** upset that she knows the rules of narrative engagement so poorly. This will take special training in how moral luck affects the courses of epilogues!

And that’s this week, where we see the truth of the Old Jungle Saying, “there are times when the Phantom leaves the jungle and walks the streets of the town like an ordinary L-13 Regional Supervisor of Customer-Facing Operations”.

Next Week!

It’s a jailbreak! And Silver Nitrate is having every anxiety attack in the world about it! See Mike Curtis, Charles Ettinger, Shane Fisher, and friend of the blog Eric Costello’s Dick Tracy in this space, all going well.

What’s Going On In _Phantom 2040_? Are you going to start covering _Phantom 2040_? September 2025 – February 2026

I haven’t decided. There’s enough going on in Alex Segura, Michael Moreci, and John Amor’s web comic Phantom 2040: A New Shadow that people might appreciate having it untangled. Really I should have started like two months ago so the amount of background to cover wouldn’t be too much. We’ll see how things develop and if I feel like I can add something to the strip’s existence by commenting on it.

The other question that might be worth a subject line slug is: is this happening in the same world as beloved 90s cartoon that I never watched Phantom 2040? I don’t know since I never watched it. But based on the cartoon’s Wikipedia entry, it looks like the strip is taking place in a riff on this. Like, roughly similar background of a collapsing ecology and dead nation-states, evil Maximum Inc robots company and their BIOTs, a Ghost Jungle everyone thinks might save the planet somehow, and a new Phantom coming into the line without a life spent training into it. But a lot of the details are different, far as I can tell. If I’m matching names correctly it looks like this world is set a generation after the cartoon, which makes the “2040” part more of a tag than a useful date, anyway, like Knight Rider 2010.

It’s also a world where Phantom comic books have been things people grow up reading, which distinguishes it from the (present-day) continuity of Tony DePaul’s The Phantom weekday and Sunday strips.

Also I should warn you before starting out, I’m untangling the sequence of events as best I can. The story starts, reasonably, in media res, flashing back to how I got into this fix, and then flashing back several more times to fill in backstory. There’s sequences I’m not sure I’ve got in the right order because I’m at my strongest when I can flip between pages of a story to make sure I’m connecting things right, and there’s no doing that for this strip. You’ll see.

Phantom 2040: A New Shadow.

24 September 2025 – 20 February 2026.

Trillionaire jerkface Charles Tyrus summons the press, including former soccer-star-turned-news-guy Carlos Osorio and Melinda Starker to an announcement. Tyrus, head of the Zero Corporation, has decided to be the world’s much-longed-for hero The Phantom. Tyrus unveils the purple costume of the superhero, who died in mysterious circumstances decades ago, as part of his self-coronation. Osorio, whom we learn grew up on the lore and comics of The Phantom — and was even known as The Phantom of Football before he blew out his knee — can’t take it, and impulsively rushes the stage. He grabs the suit, flees, and sends Tyrus in a screaming rage about how his moment was just ruined.

This has Osorio chased down by Tyrus’s BIOTs — Biological Optical Transputer System, if the Wikipedia summary of the 90s cartoon applies —- who are pretty much your usual robots ordering The People to stand down before shooting them. Osorio’s able to keep ahead of them until at least dawn, and the edge of a cliff, at which point — where the comic started, by the way, the stuff up to here being told in flashback — The Phantom rides in, shoots the BIOTs dead(?), and invites Osorio to consider his destiny.

Phantom-Osorio faces a line of armed, gun-raised BIOTs, while a narrative-style box reveals that someone is telling Charles Tyrus that '[ Osorio ] has the costume'. — Panel from Alex Segura, Michael Moreci, and John Amor’s **Phantom 2040: A New Shadow** for the 5th of December, 2025. Also this comic, like **Eye Lie Popeye**, is presented in a huge column of single-panel boxes with enough space in-between that you don’t really know if the strip has ended. I know **Eye Lie Popeye** has these panels rearranged from a normal-format comics page where they’re easy to read so I don’t know why they’re being difficult here. Apart from making it way too much work to excerpt pages, or panels, for discussion like I do here.

That destiny: The Phantom knows that Osorio knows about this whole Oath of the Skull, even by heart. And he doesn’t quite say that he was Fernando Osorio, Carlos’s decades-dead father, but there’s lines and there’s reading and you do the work. It throws Osorio for a heck of a loop, as you’d think.

But he does put on the costume — “on my terms” — and returns to the city where he’s surrounded by BIOTs. Also by onlookers who are too happy to have The Phantom back and not be, to their knowledge, a trillionaire jerkface. And rather than leave the BIOTs to capture Phantom Osorio, the people start harassing the robots. In the scuffle, Phantom Osorio gets one of the BIOT’s guns and shoots the others, and the new hero kind of accepts that he maybe saved the people who were saving him.

Catching up with the crowd after the BIOTs are all killed or whatever? Osorio’s old friend Fitzroy who might well have a first name, or a last. Can’t tell yet. This comic has an About The Characters page with three names on it and they’re the ones the comic keeps presenting in dialogue. She’s there with a robot wolf, D.V.L., “get it?”, which Wikipedia tells me was also in the cartoon and is itself a reference to the 21st Phantom’s wolf (Devil). Fitzroy had years ago tried telling Osorio her conspiracy theories about what happened to his father that Osorio only now accepts were right. Also she mentions D.V.L. used to be his mother’s dog.

The hologram-glitched Phantom Walker says, 'This can't be real ... this can't be happening'. He looks down from the hills on a big sciencey medical tube glowing blue, with weird bubbly fluids pouring into it, while in a dialogue box Tyrus proclaims how 'I *am* that person [ to rule the world ].' — Panels from Alex Segura, Michael Moreci, and John Amor’s **Phantom 2040: A New Shadow** for the 6th of February, 2026. I do not have a solid idea of the relationship between the Ghost Jungle and the city that the comic keeps going back to. I’m also not sure if the city is meant to be the Metropia — what the New York City metro area becomes after the fragmenting of the United States — of the cartoon or how Metropia and the Ghost Jungle related. In the cartoon apparently the Ghost Jungle was “thousands of square miles of mutated vegetation” which doesn’t sound like Westchester County or North Jersey or even Connecticut to me but who knows.

Starker, researching whatever the heck it is Tyrus thinks he’s up to, discovers that Tyrus is not so much flush with cash as he is being propped up by something called Maximum Inc — another bit from the cartoon — and who want something with The Phantom/Carlos Osorio. She’s interrupted in her research by police detective Sagan Cruz — also from the cartoon — who thinks her son is in trouble. Her son is Carlos Osorio, so she is correct. But explosion something gunfire and then they try to escape this weird new superpower thingy that was one Charles Tyrus.

And what happened with Tyrus? After throwing a fit about losing the costume as if that were a unique and irreplaceable magic item, and furious about the data breach that was Starker’s research, he turned to Rebecca Lastname and the “dark magicks” of the woman who gives him the kind of flirty seductively evil vibes you expect from this to get into a glowy disc that I think takes him to the Ghost Jungle. Or maybe it’s in the Ghost Jungle already.

It’s confusing my poor brain, which has a hard time with flashbacks and cross-cutting and people who don’t keep saying each other’s names. But it’s also causing Phantom Osorio to see Phantom Walker glitching out, like a hologram losing its power or data integrity. Also for Phantom Walker to keep saying “there’s no time” to explain things that I just bet you will turn out to be at least outlineable in a couple minutes’ work. Anyway, Rebecca and Tyrus figure that Cyberville — again something from the cartoon — was a ruse. The real plan: get Tyrus to digivolve in a giant glowy medical pickle jar. Tyrus emerges from the jar as an even more ragey, muscle-boundy guy with glowy red eyes who disregards Rebecca’s caution that they should see if he’s stable first. And so that leads to the scene where he corners Starker and Cruz with the promise that Starker is going to lead him to Osorio.

And if that’s not what happened, it was something close to that.

Next Week!

I can just reuse the one I did on Tuesday, right? Sure, why not? It’s been double surgeries for the characters in Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D., ahead of Beatty himself taking time off for his own successful surgery. Come and see, soon, how everything turned out pretty okay after all.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Is this an anniversary retrospective story? November 2025 – February 2026

The current Sundays story in The Phantom is set in 1536, retelling the story of how the first Kit Walker became the first The Phantom. Given the comic strip turned 90 this past month, fleshing out the surprisingly underdeveloped story of how this happend seems like a natural anniversary topic. Strip writer Tony DePaul denies this, though, citing his newspaper-guy-earned hatred of anniversary stories. So, just coincidence, then.

If done right, I’ve written here an essay that gets you up to speed in The Phantom Sunday continuity for mid-February 2026. If not, that’s the way it goes. You can find my plot recaps for all of Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays) at this link, as well as my links for the separate weekday continuity, and who knows what else? For now, back to the past.

The Phantom (Sundays).

30 November 2025 – 22 February 2026.

So that was a weird one, huh? The Ghost Who’s Current On World War II Planes saved Major Kurt Bauer, OSS operative on a B-17 carrying Nazis and looted gold, from its March 1945 crash, to land it in the year 2026 at Mawitaan International Airport. As security surrounds the Flying Fortress, The Phantom hops out and makes his way to Diana Walker, who’s flying their much less interesting plane.

The arrival of a man from eighty years ago brings out thoughts. President Lamanda Luaga wondering the heck is this all about. Major Bauer sharing the location of Nazi gold deposits, and the captured Flying Fortress they were using to try escaping the Battle of Berlin. And for The Phantom, a reminder that there’s been a weird time story before, the 2006-07 Sunday story The Time Skip, by Tony DePaul and Graham Nolan, that saw The Phantom meet Beryl Markham, a real-world historical person and noteworthy pilot, before her first-ever nonstop solo flight from England to North America. But he’s confident that Major Bauer won’t be going back to his home time because … well, who knows with these weird time things, right? That, the 25th of January, ends the story of The Ungraved.

Kit (the 1st) Walker, mending clothes, while among Bandar people doing the same. He thinks: 'In this calamity, it was my good fortune to be wrecked here, among the Bandar. My wounds are tended, I am fed, and now, clothed. There are warlike shores where a foreign sailor would be slain on sight. I speak a mere few words of the Bandar tongue ... I tried to show the manner of clothing we English wear, but my pantomime must have been dreadful! If my antics proved entertaining, no matter ... I am among friends! That's the only thing I know for certain in this land.' Dressing in his new shirt and pants, he says aloud: 'By jove! I feel I'm in England already! I have sewn sails and hammocks ... and now Bandar cotton ... Arabian silk ... wool from the Indies.' He sits on the beach, pondering: 'Do goods from other lands reach the Bandar by caravan? A pity, if it's true ... my hope of rescue lies in the mercantile trade at sea.' — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 15th of February, 2026. Walker also works out that, worst comes to worst, he could get back to England in a couple of years, walking all the way if need be. if James Holman could do it, he probably could too, and peeking at The Phantom Wiki we see earlier stories have him get back to England by 1541, though of course DePaul might figure that’s just one of those legends, like The Phantom wrestling tigers for Emperor Joonkar.

The 1st of February began the current story, 1536, and it’s done so without any current-day framing. It’s an attempt to address and expand on the story, normally told in two or three panels at the start of a story, of how the first Kit Walker in the early 16th century founded The Phantom. As Tony DePaul noted, these recaps jump from Walker washing ashore in Africa to taking The Oath Of The Skull to fight piracy everywhere and there’s some intermediate steps that could be filled out. Nearly all of them, really. Just about a year ago DePaul finally got around to giving Kit Walker 1st’s ship a name, the Matilda, and now, the story is getting some more attention yet.

So what we’ve seen so far. Walker washing ashore. And the Bandar discovering him and seeing “the hero foretold by the ancients”. Walker tries drawing the attention of anyone in these waters — most likely the Portuguese, but Portugal and England have been allies since 1386 so their rescue would be fine — but night after night passes without anyone noticing his signal fires.

And the Bandar approach Walker, taking him into their care. He doesn’t understand them very well, but he surmises that the Bandar queen is a gentlewoman and protective of him. The people help him eat, and heal, and repair his clothes and if he has to be marooned, he reflects he’s in a good spot for it.

And that’s where we get to by the 22nd of February, so we’ll pick this thread up sometime around late May or so. In other threads …

Next Week!

It’s been double surgeries for the characters in Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D., ahead of Beatty himself taking time off for his own successful surgery. Come and see, soon, how everything turned out pretty okay after all.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? What’s coming for The Phantom? October 2025 – January 2026

A new story, one assumes. The current, The Muckment of Zumaridi River, seems to be nearing its natural close and Tony DePaul reported a few weeks ago he’d turned in the last scripting that Mike Manley would need until Spring. In the Sunday continuity, DePaul and Jeff Weigel are scheduled to do a big fresh write on the origins of The First Phantom, telling a (DePaul hopes) less colonialist explanation for how in 1536 the original Kit Walker became such an important figure with the support of the Bandar.

That’s to come. This essay, I’m hoping, gets you up to mid-January 2026 in the weekday continuity. If you’re looking for the separate Sundays continuity (currently with a time-travelling B-17 pilot) or you’re in, like, April 2026 and want a more up-to-date recap, try this link. Now back to the Muckmen of Zumaridi River.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

20 October 2025 – 10 January 2026.

We left The Ghost Who Walks foiling would-be Ivory Lana dictator General Chuma by snagging some of his emerald mine guards. The guards, stuffed into the prison of a nearby town abandoned by everyone being either a guard or a forced laborer at the mine, work out what they have in common. Besides being captured by a mysterious figure who moves faster than the eye can see and whose angry voice freezes a tiger’s blood and is rough with rough-necks and sometimes leaves the jungle to walk the streets like an ordinary man? Well, they’re all Bangallan.

The Phantom, over the phone: 'As you know, Colonel, a Bangallan citizen who takes up arms against democracy at home *or* abroad ... ' Colonel Woruba, getting dressed: ' --- is in violation of the law! How many suspects, Commander?' The Phantom, looking over his latest clobber victim: 'Hard to say ... the information reaching me from Ivory Lana at this hour is a bit sketchy, Colonel.' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 11th of November, 2025. Little unsettled that Jungle Patrol has the same model land-line phone that I do, except in black. That’s me being eccentric, right?

As they’re solving that, The Phantom in his identity as the Unknown Commander calls the Jungle Patrol, to report that a bunch of Bangallan citizens who’ve been taking up arms against a (foreign) democracy are being held. Jungle Patrol’s Well-Known Commander Warubu and everyone else assumes they were taken by Jungle Patrol forever-crush John X. Patrolman John X is another secret identity of Kit Walker’s, whom they last heard was on “special assignment” in Ivory Lana.

Also making that assumption? Jungle Patrol intelligence officer Dai Lu Han, who has followed the Colonel’s not-explicitly-ordered-to-stay-out-of-Ivory-Lana direction and found the mining camp. She overhears the kitchen staff talk about how their secret hero is thinning out Woruba’s forces and will be freeing them. From this we know that they may be good at feeding forced laborers but not at keeping secrets. Except that when she confronts them they all agree they’re certainly not keeping secret their hero, uh, we don’t talk about this. The cooking staff is stunned that she’s there alone, though, and they’re willing to lead her to the prisoners.

Prisoner, from around the corner: 'How do we know you're really Jungle Patrol?' The Phantom, moving around his clobbered prisoner, thinking: 'Jungle Patrol?' Prisoner, from around the corner: 'I want to see some I.D., lady!' Jungle Patrolwoman, also around the corner: 'I've already identified myself. Weren't you listening? I'm Patrolwoman Dai Lu Han.' The Phantom, thinking: 'The intelligence officer? I didn't hear any helicopters ... ' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 9th of December, 2025. I understand the dramatic reasons The Phantom knows the name of everyone in Jungle Patrol — it shows this is a sharp mind, the way on the original **Star Trek** Captain Kirk always knew how to operate every station on the ship — but, for my part, if Jungle Patrol is more than about six people I wouldn’t have a prayer. I once failed to recognize my mother’s name.

This has all the makings of a farce, since The Phantom, unaware of Dai Lu Han’s presence, is busy bringing in another clobbered baddie. The prisoners are pretty snide about Dai Lu Han being there on her own trying to talk about bringing them into custody, so The Phantom opens up a barrage of gunfire at the reader. This breaks up the prisoner’s efforts to grab her pistol, and she’s able to clobber one of the baddies herself and push them into the increasingly overcrowded jail.

Now she calls Colonel Worubu, who is all but speechless about whatever it is exactly Dai has done. Dai herself isn’t sure she didn’t just tell the Colonel that prisoners the Unknown Commander bagged are hers. Doesn’t matter; the Colonel has been getting an extraction mission ready, and last Saturday, they took off … ten minutes after the last panel. And that sets us up for an exciting week ahead.

Next Week!

Mike Curtis is back with a story full of clown viscounts of crime, secret identities, and souped-up cars — and what’s this? A guest writer and a guest artist? Tune in to Mike Curtis, Charles Ettinger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy next week, same … Cat-Time?

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Why was a Nazi crew on that B-17? September – November 2025

We don’t have precise information yet. We know they were fleeing to Argentina with looted gold. How they ended up with a flyable B-17 is not yet revealed. But if they don’t get a long-range aircraft there’s no story and I don’t know there’d be an Axis plane with enough range that could plausibly be used.

So this brief piece will catch you up through the end of November 2025 on the Sunday plot in The Phantom. If you’re reading after about March 2026, you may find a more up-to-date recap of Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays) at this link. The link also has recaps of the separate weekday continuity and any news about the comic that comes across my desk and needs passing along.

The Phantom (Sundays).

14 September – 30 November 2025.

The Phantom, having used a really cool wingsuit to fly into the B-17 and punch out the guy who was going to jump to his doom, got to the flight deck to figure what he could do. He’s able to fly the plane with the facility of a superhero who was there for World War II the first time around. Unfortunately, the engine fire suppression gear isn’t up to its one job. So he looks for the craziest possible alternative, and flies through a waterfall to put it out.

The Phantom, sharing what he's worked out about this: 'Gold looted by defeated Nazis ... I'll guess this plane was bound for South America.' Kurt Bauer: 'Argentina. I was the navigator. The flight engineer knew enough about navigation to catch me sabotaging the mission.' Phantom: 'You've killed a Nazi in hand-to-hand combat on a plane full of Nazis ... your popularity goes into a nosedive. But tell me how an OSS agent comes to be aboard the fortress in the first place.' Bauer: 'Born Hamburg, 1920. Ellis Island, 1926. Enlisted Cincinnati, Ohio, December 8, 1941. We spoke German in the home, English at school ... I wasn't even out of boot camp when the OSS came for me.' He shakes The Phantom's hand: 'Kurt Bauer, Major, United States Army. Serial number 15804759.' The Phantom: 'Pleased to know you, Major. Go on with your story ... ' — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 16th of November, 2025. I understand his relief at escaping two rounds of certain death but Major Bauer is sharing a lot of information about himself to a guy he doesn’t know and who hasn’t even given him a name. Assuming that he is giving true information, I mean; it wouldn’t be beyond the bounds of reason for Bauer to be spinning a fake story for the guy talking English at him.

In the meanwhile the guy The Phantom knocked out — lone survivor, since he now hasn’t jumped with a bad parachute — wakes and can’t believe the waterfall trick worked. The guy, Kurt Bauer, explains he’s an Office of Strategic Services agent, under cover and talking just enough like a guy from a World War II movie to sell it. The Phantom has some inferences about what all happened: looted gold that the Nazi crew was trying to flee to South America with. Bauer confirms; as the navigator he was trying to sabotage that escape, but the flight engineer caught him wasting time and fuel over Africa. The fight blows his cover, everybody starts shooting, and Bauer’s the only one who doesn’t get killed.

So now, flying out past the Time Forest, on to landing. The Phantom aims the B-17 at Mawitaan’s airport and this Sunday we saw the flight controller’s reaction to being told there’s a B-17 coming in. It’s a tough situation to radio in to the control tower but they’ll probably figure something out.

Next Week!

It’s every author’s dream: a bidding war for your first novel! That’s based heavily on the real life trauma of your new girlfriend! Without asking her how she felt about being your protagonist and having her terror spilled out onto the pages of a hot-selling book! How will everything turn out okay in Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D.? We’ll see in a week.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? It’s nothing, right? July – October 2025.

No, it’s not “nothing” going on. But this is going to be a short summary for Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity, because it hasn’t been a plot-heavy story yet. I suspect DePaul is setting up elements to surprise us later, but the story has been more about the Ghost Who Walks making terrible people scared, ahead of where he can start punching them.

So this may be an underwritten bit of catching you up to mid-October 2025 in The Phantom. If you’re interested in the past, or in the Sunday continuity, or you’re reading this after about January 2026 and want to be more up-to-date, try this link. It should have everything there.

I haven’t yet decided where I’m working the Phantom 2040 web comic into my schedule.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

28 July – 18 October 2025.

We joined the Phantom in media res for The Muckmen of Zumaridi River, as he learned of enslaved laborers at an emerald mine at the Zumaridi River. General Chuma, hoping to make good his electoral loss by an emerald-funded insurrection against Ivory Lana, has people trapped in the mine by guards and by the personal information he harvested from people who thought they were applying for actual jobs.

With a credible threat of violence against families over their head, The Phantom has to disassemble the mining operation more elaborately. So he starts clonking individual guards and dragging some of them away. The effect is a slow but steady, and inexplicable, disappearance of the people supposed to be keeping the enslaved miners in line. While the miners don’t run, just yet, the guards are afraid they’ll be next. And General Chuma is crazed because all these guards are just disappearing. Are they deserting? Fleeing? Being killed? Being captured? They don’t have evidence what’s happening or why. It’s making it really easy to quit being a guard, though, or quit guarding so enthusiastically.

Cook, as his aides look on: 'Chuma's men are always talking about what you've been doing, mister ... 'Man down! Man missing!' ... There's no mark on this man [ who's been knocked out and rests on a heap of potatoes ] ... He goes missing, doesn't he?' The Phantom: 'Which is where you and your friends come in, Cook.' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 6th of October, 2025. I kind of get why The Phantom would refuse to identify himself here; the less information they have, the less can be tortured out of them. (Yet, surely the guards would be intimidated knowing they were trying to beat The Phantom.) I don’t get why The Phantom’s refused to learn the Cook’s name, or the names of the two men assigned to support him. Maybe he’s living, and trying to help them live, the philosophy of gathering no information they don’t need.

We know, though, that The Phantom is taking everyone he clobbers and stuffs them into the unused jail at the abandoned town nearby and established in early July. Food is coming to them from the mine’s Cook, who hasn’t gotten any more specific name yet. And who isn’t perfectly sure that he’s been roped into helping out The Real Actual Phantom. It’s going to depend on what he does with the captured guards, he supposes, since surely The True Phantom would not be a law unto himself.

Meanwhile back at Jungle Patrol headquarters, Patrolwoman Dai Lu Han has been working hard and well studying what they know about the Zumaridi River. Colonel Woruba dispatches her to consult her sources in the border area. She takes this as not explicitly forbidding her crossing the border into Ivory Lana herself. So, associated with Ossewey people who naturally cross the border all the time, she goes in looking for what she doesn’t yet know is General Chuma’s militia and maybe even The Phantom.

Next Week!

Huh, weird, but it looks like a story ended just in time for me to do a recap. We’ll look through Eric Costello, Mike Curtis, Charles Ettinger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy next week, all going well.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? How is there time travel in The Phantom? June – September 2025

Hard to say. Any time-travel mechanism is full of problems. But The Phantom has always, going back to Lee Falk days, had a slight mystical-magical edge, and like its sister strip Mandrake the Magician tends to have even more fantastic adventures in Sunday stories. In the current story, a couple kids found artifacts from a crashed World War II airplane and something something time rift bringing the plane to the present day. Or night, every single night, repeating the crash.

When The Phantom jumps onto the doomed plane and punches out the guy whose artifacts the girls found, the artifacts disappear. Do they remember having found and brought them out yet? Will they when the story ends? No way of knowing yet. That’s for the future. So sometime around December 2025, check this link for an update on Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays). Also check there if you’re wondering about the separate and more grounded-in-reality weekday continuity. But now, time travel and World War II stuff:

The Phantom (Sundays).

15 June – 7 September 2025.

A couple Wambesi kids took some Nazi artifacts out of the land beyond our understanding of time. And right after that, a B-17 Flying Fortress appears over the Wambesi skies, crashing and burning without trace, every night. The Phantom investigates.

What he’s able to find: the decades-old remains of the B-17. And a load of gold bricks. And that the crew has Nazi uniforms, weapons, and boy, that doesn’t add up. After asking the children (Nia and Hami, who are not the girls from “The Ingenues” Sunday story of two Mori youth going to the big city) exactly how they found the artifacts they took out, the Ghost Who Walks summons the pilot’s license his superhuman power of finding time for stuff allows, and the DH-88 he has ready.

From the sky he can see the plane materialize, with the engine catching fire and the plane banking to port. One of the gunners jumps, but his parachute fails to open. And the plane crashes without the rest of the crew jumping.

The Phantom, wing-suit flying to the B-17, thinking: 'That domed jumper must be about to exit the aircraft on the port side ... I should have timed his exit more precisely last night. I could have saved his life by getting aboard the Fortress in time.' He lands at the door and exclaims, 'I *am* in time!' The about-to-jump man exclaims, '!!! Was zum Teufel!?!' The Phantom punches him, knocking him out: 'It's your lucky day, friend!' Back at the Wambesi village Nia and Hami gasp, watching the souvenirs they got from his corpse dissolve. — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s’s **The Phantom** for the 7th of September, 2025. The Nazi guy was so baffled because he and his crew only like hours before escaped the famous fighting Phantom of 1944, the … 21st … of that line. Look, time works differently around there, all right?

Next day, The Phantom talks Diana into using her pilot’s license that I didn’t know she had either, but that feels extremely in line with the Vintage Phantom strips on ComicsKingdom. The Phantom’s plan: use one of those cool wingsuits to board the B-17 on its next appearance. So he does, and slugs the jumper before he can leave the plane. Back in the village, the Nazi gear — found where he hit ground — fisses out of existence.

Next Week!

Truck Tyler’s son is no such thing! But that’s all right, because he did not accidentally kill a guy! Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. gets some attention next week, unless someone else messes up the Woods of Deep Time.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? When is Kit Jr going back to India? May – July 2025

Hard to say if he will! Kit Jr had been studying under the Kyabje Dorje, until the moment when his father heard Mozz’s prophecy that would, among other things, see Savarna Devi go to the mountain city where he was and kill Officer Jampa. Well, Devi’s gone and killed Jampa, but Kit Jr is on a whole separate continent, so at least she won’t be suspected of working for Dorje and bring wrack and ruin down on the Mountain City, right?

Anyway, The Spark, the story concluded in mid-June, sees Kit Jr choosing to stay in Mawitaan, the better to be near enough Kadia Walker, liberated daughter of terrorist The Nomad. I hope to finish recapping that story and get the start of the next, The Muckmen of Zumaridi River, recapped here. If you’re not reading this in late July or early August 2025 — say it’s, for you, November 2025 or later — or you’re interested in the Sunday story (currently one about a World War II Stratofortress lost in time) you can expect to see a more up-to-date recap of Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom (Weekdays) at this link.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

5 May – 26 July 2025.

I left off last time with the Kyabje Dorje getting home to learn there was a killer house party while he was away. I mean, a brutal murder in broad daylight. Jampa wasn’t a popular man, but he was someone who could keep The Invader from getting angry enough to push on the Mountain City. Fortunately, there’s nothing to connect him to the murderer, except for Savarna Devi hiding out in Kit Jr’s apartment.

Kyabe Dorje, thinking: 'Radio reports of the pursuit were surely heard in the north ... who can doubt that Jampa's killer escaped to mainland India or died in the wilderness? While serving her own aims, Savarna Devi removed all *suspicion* from me! And anyone close to me ... ' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 16th of May, 2025. Gads, you can just see him reasoning his way into “this very bad idea is good, really” and it’s painful to watch.

Devi lays out her post-murder story, one of finding the heat too great to escape the city. So she laid low, and effectively. Dorje starts to think she might be an asset. If she were willing to fight alongside him, anyway. He thinks she’s probably gotten away with it, and in a way that won’t link the murder to him. (He had nothing to do with it, apart from motive in wanting Jampa gone.) And Devi thinks she’s gotten away with it, doing nothing that could implicate Kit Jr whenever it is he does return. I assume we’re being set up here, but who knows when that may pay off?

At a campsite, Kit Jr carries wood: 'I said I had news, but it's not true ... Dad, I had to talk to you before anybody else because I have no idea what I'm doing! ... I miss Manju, but ... I feel like Kadia, this strange girl, needs a friend who can reach her. I mean, what if Heloise is right? What if that friend, weird as it sounds --- is me!?' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 31st of May, 2025. For those who came in late, Manju is a young woman in the Mountain City that Kit Jr was just about to say something definite to. In Mozz’s prophecy of wrack and ruin she and he become partners and she ends up killing The Phantom at Kit Jr’s orders.

Meanwhile, back in Bangalla, Kit Jr is continuing his stay in Mrs Daft’s boarding house’s lawn hammock, as her rules prohibit having boys over. (For reasons that make sense to her, Heloise Walker has claimed that she and Kit Jr aren’t related.) He keeps thinking he needs to return to the Mountain City, but he thinks more and more often how he needs to return to Kadia. He returns to Skull Cave to tell Dad that he’s going back to the Mountain City and somehow it comes out that he’s going back to Mawitaan and finding a job for a little while. Kit Sr is fine with this. Trust in fate, now that it’s been wrestled out of shape at least twice that he knows of. With his return to town the story ends, the 14th of June.

The Muckmen of Zumaridi River begins in media punch, with Ivory Lana strongman General Chuma finding his soldiers punched out and disappearing all over the compound. Lee Falk introduces the flashback, with a family fleeing into Bangalla, where they tell the Jungle Patrol their story. The militia’s mining a new emerald strike through enslaved labor. People applying for what sound like normal enough mining jobs find their family and friends — all their contacts — become hostage, forcing them to work in conditions so inhumane you’d think they were harvesting cocoa for Nestle.

General Chuma, to one of many frail, resentful enslaved laborers: 'As your employer, I expect more. Why apply for a job and then fail to work to your full potential? Mark my words, muckman ... you'll live longer if you hold up your end of the employer/employee relationship.' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 10th of July, 2025. Starting to think there’s something wrong with how we’ve got resource-gathering operations set up. We really should — wait a minute, the second guy in line, is that Chancellor Gorkon? How did they get **him** in the emerald mine?

Colonel Worubu goes to the Unknown Commander’s office and stays there until The Phantom gets on the line, just like you wish would happen when you tell the phone tree “operator” enough. The Phantom heads out, then, and finds the compound is weak to external superhero threats. After sneaking in to confirm just what’s going on here, and think it through so everyone in the audience understands, it’s time to start punching, and I suspect that’s where we get back from flashback to story proper.

Next Week!

It’s some more exciting adventures in time, space, and electrical engineering, as I look at friend of the blog Eric Costello, I-assume-friend-of-friend-of-the-blog-Eric-Costello Mike Curtis, and probably-Mike-Curtis’s-friends Charles Ettinger and Shane Fisher’s last several months in Dick Tracy, coming next week, unless a haunted painting comes between us. You’ll understand.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? What’s this B-17 crash doing? March – June 2025

As foretold in my Phantom Chronicles, the Sunday continuity of Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom started a new story just after my last recap. It’s had a striking image: a damaged B-17 Flying Fortress crashing into the Wambesi jungle … every night. How? The answer, provided both in text and author Tony DePaul’s blog, is that it’s part of the jungle prone to weird time stuff. It’s meant to be one of the more magical, fantasy-prone stories like Lee Falk would often slip into a Sunday adventure. So just what the rules of this encounter are has yet to be revealed, but that’s what we have future strips for.

And you’ll see recaps of the stories in those future strips, as well as of the separate weekday continuity, collected at this tag. Now, let’s get to recapping the story of “The Ungraved”.

The Phantom (Sundays).

23 March – 15 June 2025.

The story opens with a Wambesis family returning from the big city of Mawitaan to spend time with their relatives and the old homestead. Kids Hami and Nia set out with metal detector and shovel, and disappear long enough that search parties set out. But the kids are all right, telling tales of the amazing things they’ve found … World War II artifacts. Some Nazi medals, a pistol, some coins. And, over forbidden jungle — this one, forbidden by Wambesi lore — appears a burning airplane.

In the top row, Wambesi villagers watch a burning airplane circle in the sky. In the main strip: [ Nia shows the Wambesi king the objects she unearthed the day before. ] It's a pistol, a Nazi medal, some coins, and what looks like a Nazi flask or something. King, in the Wambesi tongue: 'What have you children done? You *knew* better! You foolishly disturbed a land that lies beyond our understanding of time itself!' [ From village to village, drummers speak of a fire in the sky. How it appears nightly with the growl of a wounded beast. In the Deep Woods, the tale reaches the Ghost Who Walks ... Man who Cannot Die ] We see the Phantom riding to the scene of the temporal anomaly. — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 27th of April, 2025. “We’re going to be awash in Alternate Universe Harry Kims!”

The leader of the Wambesi is horrified. They’ve disturbed a land that lies beyond their understanding of time, ever since the starship Voyager crashed and left temporal anomalies all over the place. And now, every night, this burning airplane appears in the sky, circling nine times before crashing. They call in The Ghost Who Probably Has A Sonic Screwdriver Somewhere, who watches from the highest point in Wambesiland and spots the crash site.

On the ground he finds the remains of the B-17, long since crashed and badly overgrown. And, we learn this weekend, carrying a pretty big cache of gold bars. What they were doing with that gold, and why they crashed, and why pulling some Nazi souvenirs away would provoke its appearance in the night skies remains a mystery.

Next Week!

Next Tuesday I hope to share a much less intimidating mystery. That would be the question of who might be claiming to be Truck Tyler’s son and why! It’s Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D., all going to plan, unless we hit some fresh time anomalies. You’ll know if they happened.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? Why does everyone want Kit Jr dating Kadia? February – May 2025

Not everyone does. Kit Senior, 21st Phantom and the one the strip has been following since Franklin Roosevelt’s first term, is content to let Kit Junior do what he will. Having broken prophesied dooms twice now he’s just going to see how this one turns out.

Diana Walker, Kit Jr’s mother, wants him dating Kadia mostly so he doesn’t return to the Mountain City. Mozz’s Wrack and Ruin prophecy foresees disaster when Savarna Devi’s killing of Constable Jampa is linked to Kit Jr’s mentor there, Kyabje Dorje. If Kit Junior is never back at the Mountain City, the link can’t be made, right?

Heloise, Kit Jr’s sister, doesn’t know any of these prophecies and just figures her brother would be great with the liberated daughter of terrorist The Nomad. Some motives aren’t so deep.

Now let’s get you caught up to early May 2025 in the weekday continuity in Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom. All of my Phantom plot recaps should appear at this link, so look for the separate Sunday continuity there. Or more up-to-date plot recaps on the weekday storyline if you’re reading this after, oh, let’s say August 2025.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

9 February – 3 May 2025.

The last time I checked in, Tony DePaul and Mike Manley had just told an expanded version of The Origin Legend of The Phantom. And then started the story proper for “The Spark”, which DePaul explained on his blog was to show the moment where Kit Walker Junior takes the step that launches him to being The (Next) Phantom.

There’s two sides here. One is with Kit Jr finally going to Mawitaan to see his sister, set up in a new school and roommates with the daughter of the man she crashed an airplane to capture. He’s charmed to meet Mrs Daft, whom Heloise and Kadia are boarding with. And baffled that Heloise insists on introducing him not as her brother but as the boyfriend of her sister Kadia. He has no idea why she did that and checks what my above-the-cut question is this time around. Sorry.

So, when Kadia understood that her father was Eric “The Nomad” Sahara, international terrorist, she renounced all this, and took the last name Walker, as in the kindly family who took her in. Also that she does not know includes The Nomad’s nemesis The Phantom, nor the specific young woman, Heloise, who actually got The Nomad finally captured. Heloise and Kadia presented themselves as sisters to Mrs Daft, explaining why two people with the obscure surname “Walker” might be associated. But after a horrid scene with Kadia’s birth mother Imara Sahara, Kadia did declare Diana Walker was her mother now. Possibly just an exclamation in anger — she had shortly before called Imara Sahara “Mom” — but possibly a sincere declaration of how she’s chosen her family.

Heloise, showing off Kadia to Kit: 'I know what you're thinking --- she's gorgeous! Brother, it's what you *don't* see that wows me *every day* about this girl! Brains, work ethic, character, spirit --- ' Kadia, holding up a hand to stop: 'Heloise!' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 11th of March, 2025. (Car hood slapping meme) This baby can fit so many traumas caused by parental figures with critical secrets in her!

Kit Jr, meeting Kadia for the first time, doesn’t know anything about this. This suggests that his and Heloise’s parents don’t know either. Maybe Heloise is just not as experienced as her father is in spinning up secret cover identities all when needed. Probably will come in time.

Heloise talks up Kadia and Kit Jr to each other obsessively, and talks them into having dinner at the beach. At the beach she excuses herself, claiming she knows the very confused lifeguards. It gives Kit Jr and Kadia time to ask one another, like, is Heloise their secret account or something? Because she’s talking them up a lot and it’s so far past “kind of weird” that “kind of weird” would be “comfortingly normal”. But Kit Jr did like Kadia from first sight, and they go for a swim together.

Oh, hey, did I mention that Kadia is badly traumatized by learning she was in a terrorist-mastermind family and occasionally has suicidal ideations that lead her to swim out to where she can die in the sea? Because I didn’t know that, and neither did Kit Jr. Heloise never got around to mentioning this either. Kit Jr swings into action, rescuing her before even the lifeguards can get out with the boat. And, recovering by the fire after, he reflects on how sometimes you just know you’re going to remember a moment forever.

In the water. Kit Jr: 'There's nothing out there, Kadia ... what did you think you were going to find? Your very own desert island?' Kadia, turning away: 'I'm the last girl you'd want to be on a desert island with, Kit.' Kit: 'We just met, but ... I'm not so sure you're right about that.' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 1st of April, 2025. I have no good place to fit this, but it seems too important to let pass: Jungle Patrol Colonel Woruba, pressured by the Unknown Commander to give a letter of recommendation for Kadia to cafe owner Gugu Lee, has been seeing Lee. He says he’s there on duty, but she does ask about “us”.

It’s easy to suppose that this moment is the one that — let’s say sparks — his personality solidifying into a The Phantom. But the story isn’t over. Might not even be fully begun, since I haven’t even mentioned the other half of what’s happening in The Phantom (weekdays)…

And that takes place in The Mountain City, in Arunachal Pradesh, India. Kit Jr left abruptly while his mentor Kyabje Dorje was away on his own off-screen Phantom-esque work. Manju, whom Kit Jr’s left a note that doesn’t quite offer a ‘do you like me too?’ checkbox, despairs that either of them will come back. But the Kyabje returns, with bullet wounds, and learns the shocking news that someone has killed the hated Constable Jampa.

On catching up with his messages, Dorje is livid. Jampa was an awful man in every way, yes, but everything was predictable with him in place. Now, anything might happen. For example, Jampa’s killer, Savarna Devi, might be in town, hiding out in Kit Jr’s apartment until the heat dies down. She is, in fact, and he meets her, wanting to know what her deal is and how far away she can get before he counts ten.

Kyabje Dorje: 'You must leave us, Savarna Devi. If the Enemy were to learn you've been sheltered here, I would be seen as responsible for what you've done. The city itself might be held to account ... ' Devi: 'For the likes of Jampa? Explain it to me in the morning, Kyabje Dorje.' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 21st of April, 2025. Also a thing that doesn’t fit elsewhere: I only just this time around stopped to think whether ‘Kyabje’ might be a title. In a loose sense it is, a mark of respect given to seniormost lamas, persons of extraordinary ability and capacity to protect from suffering and the disturbing emotions. And on that note, a Dorje is a ritual object, representing the thunderbolt of enlightenment, but it’s also a common men’s name.

Devi’s deal is, when she was a child Jampa pirates led by Jampa seized her father’s ship and killed him, and when Kit Jr (back in Bangalla) casually mentioned him, she left immediately. In Mozz’s “Wrack and ruin” prophecy, Devi was with Kit Jr in the Mountain City when she saw and killed Jampa. This led the forces behind Jampa to suppose that Dorje, as Kit Jr’s mentor, was behind Jampa’s murder, and in revenge they bombed the Mountain City to ruin.

So obviously that can’t happen, since Kit Jr was on a whole other continent when Devi showed up out of nowhere and shot Jampa dead. But, now, Devi’s discovered that just because she shot dead a god-awful person doesn’t mean there isn’t a god-awful system that wants him or someone just like him in place, and the only safe harbor she can find is … in Kit Jr’s place, with Kit Jr’s mentor. Going to be something getting out of this mess.

Next Week!

It’s a star of old-time radio! It’s a long-running serialized story comic! It’s — wait, Gasoline Alley is due two weeks after! What happened? Next week I discuss Mike Curtis, Eric Costello, Charles Ettinger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy and the case of the Itemized Expense Report.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Who’s writing The Phantom now? December 2024 – March 2025

While Tony DePaul is undergoing a year of chemotherapy, we’re still reading scripts that he wrote. The Chronicle Chamber podcast posted last month a (text) interview with him, describing a bit of the writing process and the business and what motivates things like the replacement of the Unknown Commander’s office. Most interesting to me is the tease that DePaul might come to writing a Sunday story about the process of Kit Walker becoming the First Phantom. That got an unusually (unprecedentedly?) long two-week (weekdays) expansion recently. But I would love to know more about how Walker and the Bandar grew together.

So this essay should catch you up to late March 2025 in Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays). If you’re looking for a more up-to-date recap and it’s after about June 2025, or if you’re interested in the weekday storyline, you might find a more useful plot recap at this link. If you’re just interested in the state of the Sunday field by March 2025, you’re in the right place.

And on a completely separate note, for the other syndicated comics web site: GoComics intends to deploy its most invincible server upgrade yet next Tuesday, the 1st of April. There is not the slightest chance of the web site working then, and probably not for a couple days after. Heck, this past week I’ve been getting spurious notifications that someone liked a couple of comments I made on Origins of the Sunday Comics back in 2021. Last week there was a day almost no comic strips posted at all until mid-day. Yesterday several comics posted their Spanish-language version in the English slot. Last week’s problems were explained as a server breaking, but this all smells to me of stuff being moved into production. And, you know, if you have, say, used Mac Automator to let you pick a comic strip to download archives of? You might want to take care of any strips you’d been meaning to archive before an update that has an excellent chance of breaking your script. Just saying.

The Phantom (Sundays).

29 December 2024 – 23 March 2025.

The 21st Phantom recounts, or recounts the Phantom Chronicles’ recounting, or such: in the wake of the Battle of Tondibi, when Morocco’s Saadi dynasty destroyed the Songhai army with the help of the new European arquebus, the Second Phantom seeks the captured daughter of a mortally wounded Songhai captain. Along with Second Phantom is the daughter’s caretaker, the only person who could convince the daughter that the Phantom is not yet another enslaver, as well as a couple of the captain’s soldiers.

It’s a high-speed chase, for the conditions of 1591. Second and his small unit are moving with a specific goal, finding one particular battle standard. The other army remnants — winner and loser — are moving, as Second notes disdainfully in his Chronicle, in bad order. And as larger units they can’t help moving slower. Finally Second discovers them and, leaving the caretaker with a couple wheellock guns and directions to stay safe, infiltrates the camp.

[ The abductor of the Songhai child calls for fire trained on the man pursuing him. ] One shoots at The (Second) Phantom. [ With one of his wheellocks spent, The Phantom unleashes the other on the man about to fire at him. He expects to need a loaded weapon if he means to end the chase. ] The Phantom shoots one of the men, then runs up to the other and cracks his head with the gun. [ Now he has one. ] — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 9th of February, 2025. The Phantom acquires the arquebus seen to start the whole story. And I’m sure DePaul would like us to consider whose voice is the narration box. There have been earlier narrations that were clearly the Second Phantom’s writing, or at least his perspective. And there have been ones that seemed to be the 21st Phantom’s. Whose voice is this?

It’s a tough fight. The band have the arquebus superweapon, but it takes time to reload, time that Second can use to run up and punch a guy unconscious. It’s a tough fight, though, given Second’s party’s small numbers. Most remarkable to this reader is not that the caretaker rides in and tosses Second the two wheellocks. The remarkable thing is Second shoots some of the men he’s fighting. This seems to establish that 1591 is before The Phantoms took up the code of not shooting people, but the fact goes unremarked-on, and it’s not a story of The Phantom making that rule.

Second grabs the arquebus — the one whose discovery got the 21st Phantom all excited to start the story — of one of the people he’s shot, and pursues the abductor. He uses it, shooting into the darkness, and kills the abductor. He’s able to bring the daughter back, but finds the Songhai captain had already died.

The story resolves — well, next week, properly — with the 21st Phantom trying out the arquebus, with something plausibly like the gunpowder that Second used. In the sunlight and stationary, he was able to make a shot similar to the one Second made that night. Diana points out, the Songhai captain never knew his daughter had been saved. But 21st observes, something good was done when it was needed and that is worth celebrating.

Next Week!

Boy, it was awkward having to write around an emotionally abusive boyfriend in Mark Trail a couple weeks ago. Well, on to Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. where … oh dear. We’ll get into this next week, it’ll be okay. It’s Terry Beatty, there’s a limit on how cruel his world gets.

What’s Going On In The Phantom? Why is Tony DePaul telling the Phantom Origin Story in detail? November 2024 – February 2025

Because he wants to, basically. That’s not a satisfying answer in itself — what would he write that he didn’t want to, at least to some measure? — but I suppose that after writing his vision for what the end of the Walker line of Phantoms might look like, he wanted to do the beginning. It’s not in elaborate detail — just two weeks’ of strips — but considering the Phantom Origin Story is usually recapped in a single strip, this is some detail. Over on his blog he describes some of what he was trying to do with the story, particularly in shoring up details that the Phantom has been vague or contradictory about, or in adding new bits. Like, now, the Walkers have a family crest, and the name of the ship the First Phantom was on has a name.

I am not remotely qualified to guess whether this has any connection to elaborating The Phantom origin story, but DePaul also noted in his blog last week that his cancer’s returned, and he’s going into chemotherapy, and that’ll be a much higher priority than most anything for a while to come. I doubt anyone reading this blog would wish him anything but the best of luck; I know the one writing it does.

So this should catch you up to mid-February 2025 in Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom (Weekdays). Any news about the strip, or Tony DePaul, should appear at a link here, as will any plot recaps for the Sunday strip or, after about May 2025, the dailies. On with the past stories, then.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

18 November 2024 – 8 February 2025.

All that happened in the old story, after my last daily-continuity checkin, was the Elon Muskbot ranting to itself until it shorted out deep in the Bangallan jungle. We can only hope the template has as good fortune.

The next Monday, the 25th of November started “The Skull and Jaw”. In London, Diana Walker happens to see a pub by that name, with a skull-marked man sweeping up outside. Neville Stokes is very happy to invite her into his Phantom-themed pub, explaining that in just two nights he’ll be on The Graham Vincent Show to chat about his past life as a miscreant and his present as pub-owner to skullmarked men from around the world. Also the reality show he’s in negotiations over, where people who had encounters with this strange figure tell their shady past.

The Phantom Wiki lists Neville Stokes as a one-time character, indicating he hasn’t appeared in the strip (or comic books) before. I had suspected, from the lack of narration boxes tipping off past appearances and from The Phantom himself not being able to place just where he’d met Stokes.

Diana: 'Oh my god! Is it some kind of elaborate trap!?' Phantom: 'We don't know that yet. If and when we do know, I want you to get out of here fast and not look back. How's your drink? Need another?' Diana: 'Oh, darling, I just might!' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 21st of December, 2024. Diana’s recollection that nobody guided her to finding this place is accurate and we readers can check that easily. But I wouldn’t rate it as outside the abilities of someone expert in misdirection and how people form memories to guide someone somewhere without their remembering it. So if a supervillain organization can hire a street magician they might pull it off.

What the heck is Stokes’s deal gets The Phantom out of Bangalla and up to London to see Stokes leading the pub in watching his (recorded) chat. Vincent’s interview gets enough details out that The Phantom’s finally able to place Stokes. And both he and Diana realize … there’s a lot of skullmarked men here. Is this a setup?

It’s a great question. The Phantom walks undetected among the former(?) wicked and finds at least some are unarmed. Diana is confident that nobody directed her to the pub or led her there. She just happened to be somewhere she could see the sign. The only person who knows Diana Walker is The Phantom’s wife, outside his family and the Bandar, is The Python, in a Wambesi cage under constant guard. I guess the Wambesi know too. But The Phantom concludes — correctly — that this was just a coincidental meeting with people who had encounters with The Phantom and want to hang with other people who do. They’re all there just because they’re people who got punched really hard by The Phantom and are trying to figure out what the heck happened to them. Besides the punching. That part they knew about. But by who? They’re almost sure Popeye is a fictional character but Mythbusters said you couldn’t punch someone hard enough with a ring to leave a mark forever, so … ?

With a new niche of The Phantom legacy established, and The Phantom having chilled way down since the postage-stamp days, Our Heroes having a nice evening out in a London pub, they leave. Of course, The Phantom wouldn’t be the smiling hero he is if he didn’t mess with people a little. As he leaves he whispers into Stokes’s ear that this suits him much better than smuggling tribal antiquities. It’s a nice punch line for a story that had no punching. Stokes is left with his gob smacked from here to Mawitaan.

The 27th of January started the two-week Origin Story of The Phantom. The Phantom Wiki counts this as part of “The Spark”, the story whose name we got the 10th of February. If you want to count it otherwise, hey, there’s nobody but fans to argue the point with you. The one- and two-day recaps we’ve seen in the past have tended to be counted as part of the story they lead into.

The broad outlines are familiar ones. An English ship — now established as the Matilda, a carrack — is attacked by the Singh Brotherhood. We get to see that Captain Walker, father of the not-yet-first-Phantom, knew this would be their death but had no way to avoid the fight. And that the to-be-first-Phantom didn’t know this was going to be their ruin.

Narrator: In Bandar Folklore, the sea would one day bring a stranger to these shores ... a champion to meet the worst of evil ... and never be finally beaten. He would always live on. The Bandar find Kit Walker washed ashore and nurse him to health. We see Walker sitting up by the fire, thinking, 'A friendly people, but ... ' And then he says, 'I --- I don't understand your words. What is it you wish from me?' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 5th of February, 2025. And yes, we do see this Kit Walker’s eyes; he isn’t The Phantom yet. When he takes (creates?) the oath on Friday we see him from behind, an echo of seeing the 21st Phantom’s eyes only as he dies. Which he can’t, remember that.

Also introduced, and an element I would have loved to see explored more: that the Bandar people had a legend that the sea would someday deposit a stranger who would become an immortal champion. It gives the first Kit Walker a reason to take on the role of The Phantom, and is another element undermining the White Savior implications of the raw premise. It also gives the Bandar a reason to ever take care of the Second Phantom, or to make an institution that can last centuries and even, as the Wrack and Ruin story has it, the death of the Walker line.

Another element that might be new — I don’t know — is that the skull the First Phantom swears his oath on is revealed to be that of the Singh captain who’d killed Captain Walker. The First Phantom doesn’t know how he died, just that he is in some way avenged. I guess it would take a while for foreswearing vengeance to get woven into The Phantom ethos.

That interlude closes with the promise that Monday starts “The Spark”, and that’s what we see, Kyabje Dorje returning to the Mountain City. But that’s a story to be revealed in the weeks to come. Catch me in May for the story shrunk down a lot.

Next Week!

It’s your chance to catch me writing about leftover World War II munitions! It’s guest writer Eric Costello and regular artist Charles Ettinger’s Dick Tracy in seven days, all going well.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Why is the Phantom in the 16th Century? October – December 2024

The Sunday continuity of The Phantom, by Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel, is really our (21st) Phantom telling a story he’d just dug up about his great-great-etc- ancestor, the 2nd Phantom. DePaul had wanted to do a story in the style of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant and there is no force on Earth more unstoppable than a comic book artist hearing of a chance to draw in the style of Hal Foster. As often happens with these stories-about-stories there’s subtleties going on with whose perspective is giving us which parts of the story, but nothing I think likely to confuse anyone, yet.

So this should catch you up to the end of 2024 in the Sunday continuity of The Phantom. If you want to know about either the weekday continuity, or are reading this after about April 2024 and want a shortcut to the Sunday storyline, try checking here for news. We’ll see what I have by then.

The Phantom (Sundays).

October – December 2024.

Last time in the Sunday Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks had run across a 400-year-old arquebus and had to tell Diana about it, before he exploded from excitement. Now and then he gets like this. It’s one of the things that distinguishes him from similar vigilante-with-unlimited-training superheroes.

21st Phantom: 'The 2nd Phantom pulled the girl up into the saddle behind him and off they went!' Diana: 'It wasn't even his fight! There must have been a thousand men, women, and children who disappeared that day.' Phantom: 'I wouldn't doubt it. The hero who can make all things right has yet to be born. But on *this* day, circumstances had called to the Phantom's attention this *one* family wracked by war. He knew he had to help.' Diana: 'If it had all gone wrong, you and I would never have met, darling. Kit and Heloise would never have been born.' Phantom: 'Oh no, I think we'd all be exactly where we are today, my love. If the 2nd Phantom had perished in 1591, his widow would have shcooled their son in the legend. Certainly the Bandar would have! They would have raised the boy in the lore until he was an age to be one of us.' — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 29th of December, 2024. I undestand, especially after the Wrack And Ruin story, The Phantom’s sanguine attitude toward destiny pushing things in a particular, pro-Phantom, direction. But, while institutions do reach the point that they become self-sustaining I wonder whether the Second Phantom dying in 1591 would have left behind a system strong enough to survive until the next was of age. There’d only been one succession, and it wouldn’t be as heartbreaking to let The Phantoms pass into history after something like fifty years. (“Something like” because Lee Falk’s chronology was not perfectly consistent and Tony DePaul is figuring to do his own extended take on the Origin Story, coming soon to the weekday continuity.) There’d be plenty of Bandar, and other people, who remember doing just fine without the white guy dressed in purple.

That said, he or at least Tony DePaul did a fine job this past weekend doing my job here for me. The story is of the Second Phantom, in 1591, being present at the Battle of Tondibi which I need hardly remind you was when Morocco’s Saadi dynasty attacked the declining Songhai Empire in what is now Mali, with the Moroccans’ arquebusiers and cannon slaughtering the more numerous Songhai army.

Second Phantom, camping with some of the survivors, witnesses the likely-mortal wounding of a Songhai captain whose child had been captured and brought to enslavers in Morocco. If the child’s to be rescued, it has to be by someone moving now; the Captain’s recovery, if possible, will take too much time. Second hasn’t got any specific obligations to keep him from this mission, and he’s accepted reuniting displaced persons as part of fighting evil in all its forms. With the daughter’s caretaker — the only person who could convince the child that Second is not a new abductor — insisting on coming along, they’re off.

Next Week!

It’s a medical emergency! Fortunately Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. is on the scene, ready to make things pretty much fine! Will you ever walk the mean streets of Glenwood again?

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? How did The Phantom beat the Elon Musk Robot? August – November 2024

The current, and soon to conclude, story in Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom (Weekdays) has The Phantom facing off an artificial intelligence, and robot, with the Twitter-soaked brain of Ian Mollusk. After a bunch of explosives all managed to miss Our Hero, the robot started to monologue about Mollusk’s vision for space. Then we saw him chatting with Bangallan President Lamanda Luaga in the president’s office. How’d he get there?

Thanks to Comics Kingdom letting me peek ahead a week I can say definitely: The Phantom let the AI start monologuing and then walked away. It’s a good lesson for us all. Just because an oligarch talks doesn’t mean he should be listened to, by anybody, and we’d be better off if we left them all in a remote, unpopulated jungle to short out on a riverbank.

With luck now I’ll shortly catch you up to mid-November 2024 in The Phantom’s weekday continuity. If you’re interested in the Sunday continuity, or are reading this after about February 2025, or news breaks about the comic strip, try this link, as it may have something more relevant to you. For now, on to the Mountains of the Moon.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

26 August – 16 November 2024.

We left off The Avarice Has Landed just as The Phantom was returning to deal with the Avarice One lander. The was a private lunar lander that for some reason went off-course and crashed in Bangalla, and now was doing its best to make a lunar base for itself.

We see the 'US Attorney, Southern District of Texas' taking a phone call: 'Ian Mollusk will TRY AGAIN! You have DO something!' We see his caller, who's facing a private security cop car pulling up: 'Gasp! His security goons are listening! They heard everything I told you! PLEASE HELP ME!' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 19th of October, 2024. I’m a little curious how the flight controller got through to the US Attorney for the district. Also, well, credit to her for sabotaging a bad plan from a bad person, but maybe make the whistleblower call from off the guy’s property?

The reason for that crash, we learned, was one of the flight technicians, who aborted the mission rather than allow a sole, unaccountable rich guy to take over the Moon. She reveals all this to the US Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, in time to be arrested by Ian Mollusk’s private security guards. They’re in turn arrested by United States forces. But don’t fear, I’m sure the United States justice system will protect the rich white guy with a bonkers scheme from the might of an unemployed Black woman.

That bonkers scheme, by the way. The Phantom follows the Avarice One lander that’s carving out a labyrinth in the jungle right up until it starts shooting explosives way too close for any rational gunner. And then it unleashes one of those Boston Dynamics-style robots that are supposed to make you think of how great dogs are until they decide you’re a left-wing dissident and eat you. But between his own powers and Devil’s actual great dogness The Phantom beats the robot dog off too.

The Mollusk AI raises arms and looks to the sky, painting a picture of many duplicates of itself in shuttlepods on a 70s-SF-style lunar base: 'It is as Ian Mollusk foretold ... A NEW WORLD OF SOVEREIGN CITIZENS!' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 28th of October, 2024. I am curious whether the AI means “sovereign citizens” as in the lunkheads with signs on their doors saying employees of the IRS or the zoning commission agree they **are contractually bound by a legal contract of law** to pay him $10,000 for every time they step on the property or if it has got the idea that “sovereign” and “citizen” are things people feel positively about and smashed them together.

And this is when we get the android. This creation, trained on the public utterances of Ian Mollusk, explains to The Phantom why it’s busy building the perfect world here on the Moon, and can’t be convinced this is not the Moon. This simulated Mollusk speaks, much like Musk, as someone who has read without understanding William Gibson’s “The Gernsback Continuum” or any other piece of fiction. The Phantom gets clear that yes, this one AI is everything that he’s been dealing with. Also that it’s got a radioisotope generator, which is about when The Ghost decides to walk out of this whole scene.

Mollusk puts in a call to Luaga, demanding his crews be allowed access to the crash site, and offering a bribe when the bluster doesn’t work. Luaga explains that Bangalla isn’t some failing state where money gets you into the President’s office and hangs up on him. And, not to spoil too much, but the robot goes off and shorts itself out later this week.

Next Week!

A new adventure! But not one I’m going to talk about for a couple months. Instead we’ll look at Mike Curtis, Eric Costello, Charles Ettinger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy if all goes well, for a change.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Why did The Phantom suddenly happen in the 40s? July – October 2024

At one point in the recently-concluded Sunday story in Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom, the whole modern-day story establishing the new way Unknown Commander manages the Jungle Patrol stops. In its place Lee Falk, creator of The Phantom and of Mandrake the Magician, is seen wandering around an old-timey New York City, trying to figure out something about the story we’re in. I take it this is meant to represent a phenomenon most writers have reported, that sometimes the characters in a story take over and surprise the writer. Or when the writer discovers all the elements needed to solve a plot problem are there, planted earlier for no reason they knew at the time.

When this essay is over — it won’t be long — you should be caught up to early October 2024 in the Sunday Phantom continuity. If you’re looking for the same after about January 2024, or you’re looking for the weekday continuity (which right now has an AI bot doing a poor job trying to conquer the moon), try this link. It should have something more immediately relevant.

The Phantom (Sunday Continuity).

14 July – 6 October 2024.

The close of “The Commander Will See You Now” doesn’t take much explaining. The Phantom, in his Unknown Commander livery, gives Colonel Worubu new orders for John X, secretly The Unknown Commander/The Phantom from this amnesia story that was a whole thing, and whom the Jungle Patrol is extremely normal about. John’s to be sent to Ivory Lana on what isn’t technically a suicide mission but … Guilt-stricken, Worubu returns to the Unknown Commander’s office, to find the Commander somehow gone. The door was closed, the windows locked, so how did he vanish?

Joe the newsstand guy: 'Why you have the agita, my friend? Talk to me!' Lee Falk, reading the comics section from last week: 'Sigh ... Joe ... I don't even know how to explain it.' Falk sees in the comic The Phantom holding a small gadget that makes a little noise at a window latch. Falk, excited: 'JOE!! --- It's a magnet!!' Joe: 'It's a what?' Falk: 'He hired engineers, didn't he? You can't go out and buy this window just *anywhere*! Thank you, Joe!' Joe mutters 'prego ... ' as Falk walks off, delighted. Falk says to himself, in front of confused passers-by, 'There's a _motor_ inside the sash ... it operates the lock! Low-voltage power ... a reed switch ... he uses a *magnet* to close the *circuit*!' — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 25th of August, 2024. The comic depicted in the second row, first panel is just what ran the 4th of August, including both the Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel credit and a glimpse of the panel where we see Lee Falk pondering the story.

And this even Lee Falk doesn’t know. (I have no information about whether Tony DePaul knew.) We see him wandering Manhattan, and picking up a newspaper with the Sunday Phantom that baffled himself in it, and realizing the answer. The Phantom has a gizmo that activates a window lock from outside, that’s it. He’d even established earlier that the Unknown Commander’s contractors had “You Imagine It. We Build It” as their slogan. Once Lee Falk is satisfied the story proper resumes, and John X goes off to be someone the Jungle Patrol can stop asking so many questions about. The 22nd of September, then, sees this story and its interludes where we see Lee Falk trying to understand his writing, resolve.

There’s only been two weeks of the new story, “The Princess of the Songhai”, so there’s not much for me to recap. What I can say for sure: Our Phantom has noticed a story of the Second Phantom, from 1591. And he’s found the arquebus that was some important piece of the story. And he’s in full smiling enthusiast mood as he readies to infodump all over Diana, who’s game.

Next Week!

Have the indignities of age caught up with Truck Tyler? Can we really say he’s suffering the indignities of age when he hasn’t even through his back out by getting a full night’s sleep for once? I look at Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. in seven days or so, all going well, and if I don’t wrench my shoulder by putting my socks away.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? How can Elon Musk steal the Moon? June – August 2024

The current story in Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity, has an Elon Musk stand-in sending a warbot to the Moon to make claims on it. OK, spellcheck, not happy that you didn’t underline “warbot” there. But this brings up two questions. First, can someone just claim the Moon?

Space law really hasn’t really got a handle on “owning astronomical bodies”. The nations of the world agreed in the 60s they wouldn’t make claims on the Moon or other orbiting bodies. This was a general show of goodwill by ostentatiously refusing to put military facilities in places that are incredibly expensive and dangerous and have negative strategic, tactical, logistic, or intelligence value. But private individuals? Nobody has a real answer. Nobody’s been able to get there except nations, and there’s nothing up there that would make a profit if brought back to Earth, so nobody has needed an answer. If you want to create a land claim given that, “I’ll fight you, bro” seems a plausible way.

(There are hard science fiction fans who want to tell me about helium-3. Helium-3 is an isotope of helium that’s a bit more concentrated on the Moon than it is on Earth, and might be useful if we had power-generating fusion reactors, which we do not, that could use helium-3, which the ones we’re trying to make do not. Right now helium-3 is useful like dilithium is useful.)

Thing is, it’s just the one warbot landed there. It may have enough bullets and mortars to be trouble, but the Moon is big. It’s got the surface area of about all Africa. There’s no artillery warehouse you can fit on a rocket that’s big enough to hold all that. The implication (to me) is either this billionaire twerp is planning to send a whole lot of landers up, or he’s planning to get one specific spot of abnormal value. Or the rocket team was fibbing to him about how easy it would be to establish a blockade of the whole Moon. Too soon for me to know.

So, this should catch you up to late August 2024. All of my essays about The Phantom, weekday and Sunday stories, should be at this link, so check there if I’m not talking about The Phantom story you want made shorter.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

3 June – 24 August 2024.

My last check-in with the gang in Skull Cave was also the final, wrap-up week of The Chain (2024), the sort of coincidence that seems to keep happening with these recaps.

The current story, The Avarice Has Landed, launched the 10th of June. The 11th, Avarice Lunar Explorer took off from Cape Grandiose, Texas, the Space-Ox Launch Center. Arrogant billionaire Ian Mollusk brags about the launch of his vehicle, right up until it goes off-course and crashes into the Deep Woods. Then he has to start taking gloating calls from a Jeff Bezos-y guy his phone identifies as “Cueball” and a Richard Branson-ish figure tagged “Stoner”.

President Luaga: 'Ian Mollusk would be disappointed to know you've never heard of Ian Mollusk.' The Phantom: 'Well, that's his misfortune. I take it he's famous. What does he do?' Luaga: 'What doesn't he do? Among other things, he launches rockets!' Phantom: 'Like the one I saw last night?' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 26th of June, 2024. So, first, there’s a nonzero chance The Phantom will solve this problem by just walking around the Deep Woods saying “I have no idea who Ian Mollusk is” until Mollusk jets over there, insists he’s a very important person, and demands to fight him right then and there, and The Phantom knocks him stone cold with half a punch. Second, though, The Phantom’s a pretty rich guy himself. I don’t know that he’s billionaire rich, but rich enough he doesn’t have to do anything to stay rich. There may be a class-civil-war element not yet developed here.

This made me realize something. Elon Musk must have custom ringtones for everyone who might possibly call him. And every one of them has that Michael-Scott-from-The-Office trait of missing the point of the song. I’ve been trying, not continuously, to think of what exactly Musk’s ringtone choices are for any of the people who all look vaguely like angry thumbs who talk to him. I haven’t got any conclusions, but it’s good when art gives you things to think about.

From Mawitaan, President Lamanda Luaga asks The Phantom to investigate the crashed lander. Luckily the Ghost Who Watches Over Jungle Airspace was planning to do that anyway. In an extended cell phone call that has me wondering about the cell tower situation there The Phantom discovers the spent rocket casing. And an opened hatch. And something that’s been plowing its way through the jungle, carving weird paths with 90 degree angles. There’s the one obvious explanation — it’s Automan — but how?

And then the explorer turns guns on The Phantom, missing him by inches. The rover turns to mortars and these miss by a mile. The explorer then calls The Phantom on the phone, warning he has no right to be here, and is to launch into neutral space immediately or be destroyed.

Avarace Lander, a six-wheeled artillery platform waving its C-Clamp arms, on the phone with The Phantom: 'Avarice has claimed the entirety of this surface and subsurface environment in the name of Ian Mollusk. You must launch into neutral space immediately or be destroyed when next we meet.' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 3rd of August, 2024. I had thought the claws on the end of the rover’s arms might be evoking the Clamp logo from **Gremlins 2** but after a quick check with the Gremlins Wiki no, I’m seeing things. Yes, there’s only so many logical things to put at the end of a purportedly autonomous lunar rover’s arms. But the idea of referencing a movie about chaos unleashed at an alleged “smart building” seemed compelling to me.

With a rampaging robot proclaiming Ian Mollusk the owner of the entirety of the surface and subsurface environment, and shooting mortars wildly, there’s no better move than for President Luaga to come over and see what’s going on himself. So he drives out to where he can be picked up by Bandar warriors, and the President’s bodyguard all explode from their freakout.

At Skull Cave, Diana puts it together: this lander is an artificial intelligence, and definitely not underpaid Nigerian laborers being paid dimes every hour to have racial slurs yelled at them over the Internet. It’s carrying on in the supposition that it’s on the Moon. So its targeting is all screwed up. It’s building a labyrinth to hide because it’s aware it can’t target well. And it’s armed because that’s how you defend a claim until Jimmy Stewart comes in and rides the town of Shinbone to statehood.

The conclusion: Ian Mollusk is trying to take the Moon, and only The Phantom stands in his way. Also 400,000 kilometers.

Next Week!

It’s the suspiciously-well-timed start to a new story in Mike Curtis, Eric Costello, Charles Ettinger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy! We can see what I have to say about explaining the ones that wrapped up.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Is anything going on? April – July 2024

It’s been showing off the new digs, mostly. Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom has been setting up a new relationship between The Phantom and the Jungle Patrol this past year in the Sunday continuity. Part of that is showing off the new toys and selling it, by demonstration. I imagine without knowing that DePaul is hoping to set this all up so soundly neither he nor future writers need to do the “every Jungle Patrol recruit learns to stop asking who the Unknown Commander is” strip that, based on the vintage strips run at Comics Kingdom, Lee Falk felt the need to run every five weeks.

I don’t have a daily outlet for writing about what’s going on in the comics, for some reason, even though it’s fun to do and gets the best response from readers. I regularly stop in on The Phantom twice every three months, once for each continuity, and you’ll find all the essays about that here. If you’re interested in the daily strip, or in the Sunday strip and you find yourself after about October 2024, try that link. It may help you more directly. For now, and for the last couple months?

The Phantom (Sundays).

21 April – 14 July 2024.

When last I looked in on “The Commander Will See You Now”, a story begun late last July, The Unknown Commander of the Jungle Patrol — The Phantom — was ready for his meeting with Jungle Patrolman John X — The Phantom — in front of Colonel Worubu, the Known Day-to-Day Commander of the Jungle Patrol. This meeting was to show off the system that The Phantom had figured out to make The Unknown Commander a more real presence to the Jungle Patrol. Also to try to get the Jungle Patrol to stop being so excited over the mystery of John X.

With Colonel Worubu watching, John X challenges The Unknown Commander — seen over video — on the traditional questions new patrolmen have about The Unknown Commander. The Unknown Commander explains he’s got reasons for being Unknown and just trust him on this. The Commander gives John orders to re-do his report on a recent raid that will still be good for 90% credit on the assignment, and he’ll talk to Colonel Worubu later.

Worubu, alone(?) in the Unknown Commander's dark office: 'Worubu here, Commander! Reporting as ordered ... ' [ Quiet ] 'Ready to receive orders, Commander.' [ More quiet; he looks at the TV screen. ] 'You can open our new communications system now, sir.' A voice from behind: 'Thank you, Colonel ... ' Worubu, thinking: 'Ah! Just the audio connection this time ... as when I was here with Captain Weeks ... ' The Unknown Commander, sitting at his desk, in shadow, says, 'Have a seat ... I'll be with you in a moment.' Worubu turns around and gasps, '!!!' — Tony DePaul and Jef Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 23rd of June, 2024. An electric moment! Colonel Worubu is aware he has talked with The Unknown Commander before, but without seeing him or even directly facing him. It’s not quite as lore-setting as the time we the readers saw The Phantom’s eyes, but it’s a development that would not mean a lot to people who just started reading the comic a month ago. Well, hazards of a continuity strip.

Colonel Worubu, now convinced that John X can’t secretly be The Unknown Commander, gets his chat later, again in the middle of the night. This time it’s with The Unknown Commander sitting in his office in person, not over a TV screen from a replica of his new office. The Unknown Commander lays out some of how this new office is supposed to work, and what mysteries he’s dropping in to work better than the safe accessible only by the secret tunnel to the dry well outside the building. Among the elements: he’s not saying how he sneaks into Jungle Patrol Headquarters, but there is this key to Gate 7 that needs replacing. And oh, here’s some orders for John X for when you see him next.

That’s where we stand. It’s been a long stretch of establishing the New relationship of The Unknown Commander and his Jungle Patrol. I imagine we’re coming up on a new story, one that will use all these new toys and relationship modes. But that’s my guessing. The people who know, well, they’ll leave a light on above a door with a safe inside when they want to tell.

Next Week!

For all of you folks who figured Mary Worth was sure to be the next newspaper-syndicated story comic with a nonbinary character? Sorry, it turns out it was Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D., and next week I hope to tell you about that. You can start putting your bets for the fourth strip once this essay finishes.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? Is Mike Manley coming back to The Phantom? March – June 2024

Yes. Mike Manley was able to return from illness to illustrating Judge Parker … I lost track of just when. Sometime recently. His first Phantom strips appear to be coming in next week, after this story, “The Chain (2024)”, wraps up. For the last several months Bret Blevins has had artistic duties, and even credit, on the daily strip.

So if you are reading after about September 2024, or want to read about the separate Sunday continuity, all my posts about Tony DePaul and Bret Blevins and Mike Manley and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Weekdays) should be at this link. If you find one that’s not mentioned under that tag, please let me know. Now on to recapping the plot, which is a handful of events easy to get down if you’re ignoring all mood and atmosphere and such.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

11 March – 1 June 2024.

After chuckling at Phantom 21’s dream of a recap of “The Chain (1953)”, and not telling Diana Walker about “The Jungle Trek” (2006), Kit Junior was headed in to Mawitaan to see his sister. But something kept pulling him back to The Dad Who Walks.

But Dad Phantom will get to that in a moment. He noticed something subtle, a light in the forest too small for a campfire or a headlight or anything anyone good could be up to. And that matches these tire tracks he’d noticed, too smooth to be used by any vehicle up to anything good. It’s smuggling poachers, badly lost from Mark Trail, sneaking Llongo archaeological treasures out of the jungle. Kit Jr didn’t put these together until The Phantom pointed out the clues, a pleasantly subtle note that he isn’t ready to be a The Phantom yet.

But he’s much of the way there. On his way to freeing a captive Llongo, he gets to fight a smuggling poacher with Devil’s help. And he gives his father every Phantom’s heart’s deepest desire, working one of those Old Jungle Sayings (in this case, “Phantom rough on roughnecks”) into dialogue. Quite effective night’s work, rounding up a bunch of people who, as the saying goes, don’t see why they should have to pay for a crime someone else noticed.

Kit Jr, sitting up, talking to himself: 'Should I tell Dad *why* I came home from India? Old Man Mozz never asked why ... all he wanted to know was *when* I knew I was coming home. I wish I could stop thinking about that story Dad told ... Woru ... the chain ... that's what brought it all back for me. ... Stupid dream ... ' — Tony DePaul and Bret Belvins’s **The Phantom** for the 4th of May, 2024. I am interested that Mozz asked when Kit Jr decided to come home, but not why. It suggests that he wanted confirmation of something he already suspected. I suppose he was anticipating that Destiny might have some counter-move to his manipulating The Phantom, and once he had the date and time he knew it was the temporal junction point for the entire space-time continuum. Maybe it’ll come back up sometime.

In the afterglow of a good night’s punching Kit Jr opens up about what’s freaking him out. He had a nightmare, about being the one who breaks the chain of Walkers as The Phantom. (And so the title gets its second meaning. I didn’t minor in English for nothing, or at all. I’m self-taught and I think it shows.) He instead becomes this … vigilante, so obsessed with revenge for something that he becomes an outright war criminal, mass-murdering prisoners. He woke terrified, fearing he was losing his link to his Phantom heritage, and had to rush home — just at the moment that Mozz stopped The Phantom on the way to Gravelines Prison, the start of the Wrack-and-Ruin story. He can’t believe he travelled seven thousand kilometers because of a bad dream. I share this, have trouble believing he travelled from North India to the Deep Woods in a day myself. Maybe I missed a day or two of the Wrack-and-Ruin narrative.

But this is how the story ends, with The Phantom wondering what force would give Kit Junior a dream that matches Mozz’s prophecy of the death of the Walker line, and give it then. If Fate is trying to undo Mozz’s meddling, why do this? If Kit Jr will become The African, a vigilante killed in some remote nowhere, why “warn” him? Why send him away from the Mountain City at the moment that — we assume but do not know — Savarna Devi kills Constable Jampa? And there’s no answers, just the recognition that knowing the future doesn’t mean you know anything useful.

Next Week!

Alley Oop and companions are trapped in a time loop that ends with the Earth blown up! How many times will it repeat before someone remembers they have a time machine and should be able to go to before the loop starts, maybe stop all this nonsense form happening? We’ll see what happens in Mike Curtis, Charles Ettinger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy one week from now, more or less. (They’re actually out of the time loop, but I’ll take any transitions I can get.)

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? What is this John X business? January – April 2024

The past couple months in Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays) has seen a lot of Jungle Patrol head Colonel Worubu looking over the Unknown Commander’s new office. This is justified by the import of the thing. Tony DePaul is trying to revise a big part of Phantom Pholklore. Up to now, The Phantom has given his orders to the Jungle Patrol by orders left in a safe, signalled by a light above the door. Now, The Phantom, and DePaul, want the Unknown Commander to have new ways to be “seen” by his forces. If the big change doesn’t get screen time to make an impression and show why this is more interesting it doesn’t get weight; compare the hilarious failure of the multicolored Daleks that one Doctor Who. The bigger panels and looser story of a Sunday continuity give time to luxuriate in this.

That’s my interpretation, anyway; you can have others and DePaul is certainly willing to discuss his own ideas of why he writes what he does. Anyway, if you’re looking for recaps of the weekday plot, or for a more up-to-date Sundays recap and it’s after about July 2024, try this link. If those don’t work try some other links. Something will turn up. Back to Jungle Patrol Headquarters, now:

The Phantom (Sundays).

28 January – 21 April 2024.

The Unknown Commander’s office renovations were freshly done, when I last checked in. And then we saw The Ghost Who Rehearses going over a script with Diana.

Back at Jungle Patrol Headquarters, Colonel Worubu and Captain Weeks can’t resist the temptation to see the Unknown Commander’s office. Especially now that there’s personal possessions in it. We spend a lot of time in this, examining things brought from the treasure rooms — sextants and battle flags and Maltese Falconses and such. It deeply impresses the Colonel and the Captain.

Captain Weeks, kneeling by the door: 'Colonel? About the chain of command? How nobody knocks on the Unknown Commander's door but you? ... Maybe this doorstop means he has a different idea, sir! --- An open-door policy!' Colonel Woruba: 'Doorstop? Where' Weeks, picking up a falcon statue: 'I found it on the floor by the door, Colonel ... the Unknown Commander was very specific. Isn't that what we were told?' They examine it, amazed, recognizing it as The Maltese Falcon, as in the Humphrey Bogart movie. We cut to The Phantom and his wife, watching over the computer. They hear Woruba say, 'Captain, would you ... ? P- put this item back where you found it?' Weeks: 'The floor by the door, colonel! Yes, sir!' Diana asks The Phantom: 'Wait a minute ... where did you get that?' The Phantom: 'I happened to run across it in the Minor Treasure Room. If you're asking me where the 11th Phantom got it ... that's a longer story.' — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 17th of March, 2024. DePaul really gives frustrated-lit-majors a treat with this Maltese Falcon which, of course, is a thing invented for the novel without basis in reality. This whole story has been about creating fictions; the opening and framing even had “Lee Falk” — a fictional version of the man, standing in for DePaul and (I read it) all creators of **Phantom** stories — addressing the audience and speaking of how even he doesn’t know what The Phantom is thinking. This reached its peak on the 11th of February, where “Lee Falk” peeks over The Phantom’s shoulder as he writes his Chronicles, and The Phantom **notices**. An actual critic would launch an essay about text and metatext on that.

Finally, The Phantom breaks silence, speaking over the hidden speakers to Worubu and Weeks. His declaration: when John X gets back, bring him to the Unknown Commander’s office. X’s most recent report is inadequate. Also, turn the lights out when you leave.

The Phantom then returns to Jungle Patrol headquarters, in his guise as John X. He had, as John X, spread the story he thought the Unknown Commander was dead and was supposedly checking the post office box in Mawitaan for orders. Worubu brings John X in and they hear … nothing.

Next Week!

After some of the indignities of age we swerve into dog medicine in Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D., next week. Uh … there is pet endangerment in the current storyline but, c’mon, it’s Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan. Everything’s going to be okay, and pretty fast.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? Why does every comic look funny these days? December 2023 – March 2024

More likely than not, whatever strip you’re reading looks funny because of Mike Manley’s health problems. This forced him to take leave of The Phantom weekday edition as well as Judge Parker. The weekday Phantom has been drawn by Jeff Weigel and then Bret Blevins. Judge Parker, D D Degg observed at The Daily Cartoonist, is being filled in now (without credit) by Rod Whigham of Gil Thorp renown.

So some happy news: Manley posted to his Facebook that he’s scheduled to return to The Phantom with the strip for Monday, the 10th of June. I don’t know whether that coincides with the start of a new story. It may represent just being a comfortable margin. I have no word on when he’ll return to Judge Parker. I am also not clear whether Rod Whigham’s tenure at Judge Parker is just for the week — which, must admit, the Comics Kingdom redesign lets us see early — or is until Manley’s return.

So this should catch you up to mid-March 2024 in Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel and Bret Blevins’s The Phantom (Weekdays). You’ll find all my essays about the comic at this link, as well as any news, so if you’re looking for an explanation of what’s going on and it’s after June 2024 for you? Try there.

The Phantom (weekdays).

18 December 2023 – 9 March 2024.

Last time, we were looking at the denouement of Tony DePaul’s more-than-two-year story about the death of The Phantom. Spoiler: The Phantom does not die. But he does spend time wondering what he can learn from diverting what seems like his destiny. Despite everything, Savarna Devi does learn that her former enslaver, Constable Jampa, is in the Mountain City, and goes after him. She seems to shoot him dead, although there is room for deniability in case DePaul wants to tell of Devi keeping her promise not to seek vengeance. (I believe her sincerity in her promise, but this may be irresistible temptation.)

In the Mountain City, Constable Jampa demands of Savarna Devi: 'Who are you!? It's MY BUSINESS to know! Your *papers*, woman!' An onlooker outside frets at the scene: 'Poor woman! H-he's going to beat her!' Then back in the Deep Woods, Mozz sits beside a fire, meditative. — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 4th of January, 2024. So yes, we assume that Constable Jampa had a bad day here, but we can’t swear that it did happen that way. Watch for a future story to know.

With the 13th of January the sixth and final chapter of this story ended, and we began “The Chain”. It begins with something I imagine was a bit of DePaul teasing readers upset at so long an imaginary story: The Phantom talking about what a weird dream he had last night.

This was not the Wrack and Ruin story. No, the dream he has is of a story that ran from February to May 1953, a Sundays story also called “The Chain”. Tony DePaul wrote about this as his story began. Part of it is meant to re-evaluate a story that he found fundamentally flawed. (The essay’s well worth reading, not least for revealing stuff I didn’t know about Lee Falk’s career, including having a hand in bringing Paul Robeson to the stage in Othello.)

The important points of the 1950s “The Chain” are that our The Phantom is having a right lousy time of it, unable to stop a war between the Llongo and the Wambesi and feeling sorry for himself over it. In the 2020s “The Chain” our The Phantom — and his family — chuckle over the weirdness of him not even liking being The Phantom. (As ever, I’m more forgiving of the 1950s author in this. While one of The Phantom’s defining traits is that he enjoys being The Phantom and feels his work is worthwhile and appreciated, everyone’s entitled to sometimes doubting themselves.) In the 1950s/the dream, a previously unnoticed Bangallan named Woru tells the story that explains the previously unnoticed chain hung on The Phantom’s throne in Skull Cave.

It seems that a tinpot dictator of a prince spots the woman who’d become the 20th Phantom’s wife and has his lackeys kidnap her. The 20th Phantom rides to her rescue, of course, but gets caught. And chained to the water well, forced to walk in circles to pump water to the animals, right where his future bride can see but not help. 20th notices, though, that every rotation the chain gets caught a little bit on this one stone, and after months of work, the chain finally snaps. In one bound he’s free, his future wife’s free, the prince who cares about, and he brings the chain back as a reminder of the need for patience.

In flashback, the 20th Phantom leaps from the well he's been chained to, and whacks his guard with the chain. The 21st Phantom, narrating, says: 'In my dream, Woru told me my father had moved like *lightning* and struck like a *thunderbolt*!' ... Woru tended to repeat himself ... ' — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 13th of February, 2024. If you’re curious, the original strip with thunderbolt and ran the 3rd of May, 1953. You can compare the story to DePaul and Blevins’s remake by looking at the Sunday strips around there.

(In the 1953 story Woru also explains this is a lesson about humility, 20th Phantom having got himself captured by going in guns blazing and hugely vulnerable. This was relevant to the 21st Phantom, 1953 edition, as his troubles with the Llongo and the Wambesi amounted to being annoyed they wouldn’t stop the tribal war already! Don’t they know they’re embarrassing the white guy in the jungle? Although when he goes back, he mostly just demands the tribes talk to each other and doesn’t tell them how to be peaceful. Not The Phantom’s phinest hour but at least he figured how to use his reputation for good?)

Among the things Kit Junior and all criticize: if this is an important lesson the Phantom needed to learn, why not mention it when he’s growing up? Or in the Phantom Chronicles? Why entrust the story to a lone tribesman who might well die before passing the message on? And isn’t this more a lesson about perseverance, rather than patience? Are we sure this moral was narratively justified?

Kit Junior then thanks his father for teaching him and Heloise the things they need to know to be viable Phantoms. He mentions a story from 2006 — “The Jungle Trek” — in which he and Heloise are guided through a series of physical and, more, intellectual challenges. The only one he gets to here is a cliff-climbing exercise, where they lose their focus and come terribly near falling. Diana isn’t sure she wants to hear more, which, fair enough. Writing up this recap I see the thematic connection here, although I don’t have guesses about where that’s going.

Kit Junior, convinced that Heloise is just not coming back to the Deep Woods, plans to leave for Mawitaan despite knowing his sister’s trying to set him up with Kadia. But he comes back to talk with his father more. And that’s where we are today.

Next Week!

Another comic strip having a change of artist! But one that, so far as I know, is not related to health issues. It’s to be Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, Charles Ettinger and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy next Tuesday, all going to plan.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? What’s with the Jungle Patrol safe? November 2023 – January 2024

The Safe in the closed room is the means by which the Unknown Commander ordinarily receives reports from, and transmits orders to, his Jungle Patrol. A light outside the door lets the Jungle Patrol know there’s something to pick up. No one in Jungle Patrol has figured how the Unknown Commander gets into a locked safe inside a locked room inside Jungle Patrol headquarters, because the convention was established by like the 1940s when superhero stuff didn’t have to be all that rigorous.

Tony DePaul, the second (named) Lee Falk in the comic strip Phantom legacy, appears to be making some changes in this. Maybe. I don’t know; all I know about forthcoming strips is what DailyCartoonist or a comic strip writer themself chooses to drop. But the text of the story, and the Unknown Commander dropping hints about wanting to be a stronger presence with the Jungle Patrol, suggest that. Maybe some shaking-up of the secret orders routine is needed.

There’s charm in the old secret — a secret tunnel under the safe that leads to a nearby dry well. But, like, there’s a 1950s story where some crooks figured out the scheme and used it to give Jungle Patrol misdirecting orders. They needed to professionalize things a little after that. It is a risk to the soufflé that is a successful superhero universe to take away the more whimsical elements, though; good luck to Tony DePaul for taking it.

(I also don’t know how this change, if it is happening, will be reflected in the other, non-comic-strip sides of The Phantom. But the different publishers of Phantom stories seem comfortable with imperfect consistency and fans seem all right with that too, so they don’t need me worrying about them.)

If you’re worried about what’s happening in Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays) and it’s after April 2024, or you want a briefing on the daily strip, there may be a useful essay at this link. Or check the light above a locked door no one but you ever enters.

The Phantom (Sundays).

5 November 2023 – 28 January 2024.

Lee Falk, the strange supernatural being from whom all Phantom phables phlow, was giving us some insight as he too discovered the current story. The Phantom figured to use his guise as Jungle Patrol heartthrob John X to beef up his guise as Jungle Patrol boss the Unknown Commander. So while visiting Jungle Patrol Headquarters he shared a story that the Unknown Commander — mysteriously silent for weeks — might have died on their last mission.

As John X, The Phantom gets permission to check the Jungle Patrol’s secret maildrop in Mawitaan. While theoretically out of town, he sneaks back in as the Unknown Commander to pick up his mail and leave orders — and not turn the signal light on. And as a guy with more money than you’d think the jungle vigilante trade would bring in, he calls some construction workers in from the city. They have work orders to renovate Jungle Patrol Headquarters. And they know they have the Unknown Commander’s word, right there in the safe, where Colonel Worubu would swear there wasn’t anything.

As Colonel Worubu can barely believe it, the construction workers tear down walls, open up windows, and soon have The Safe surrounded by beams of light. Meanwhile, back in Skull Cave, the Phantom, in his guise of The Phantom, is rehearsing a script and checking that there’s enough shadows in this dignified-library set. Diana worries about the long dialogue he has to commit to memory, and the challenge of pausing appropriately for an unseen dialogue partner. He’s confident, though.

Construction supervisor: 'Windows, Colonel! Right here in the plans. Your Commander was very specific. ... You're not good with change, are you, Colonel? Don't worry ... we deal with nervous customers all the time.' Colonel Worubu: 'I'm not nervous! I --- ! ... I just like things the way they ... always used to be ... ' Supervisor: 'Well then, your Commander's looking ahead on your behalf! I found him a most *positive* personality, colonel! I liked the man right away!' Worubu: 'You ... spoke to him? Face to face?' Supervisor: 'Several times! Wonderful man! My secretary grabbed a snapshot of us the day we signed the contract ... ' Worubu: 'Y - you have a PHOTO!? Of the UNKNOWN COMMANDER!?' Supervisor, getting his phone: 'Not a terribly good one as I recal, but ... ah! Here we go!' He reveals a photo showing himself looking over plans with a helmeted man, face concealed beneath hat and the hat's shadow. — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 21st of January, 2024. Colonel Worubu’s hesitation feels a little like a riff on how a hardcore fanbase can loathe innovation in their focus, particularly on sentimental or fan-folklore-rich items. But it also makes me feel bad for Colonel Worubu since, jeez, the Unknown Commander doesn’t mind showing himself to this contractor but won’t even let the patrol’s day-to-day officer in chief look directly at him? Also I wonder whether the construction supervisor was hired because he was a contractor who could convincingly deliver points The Phantom wanted Jungle Patrol to hear, or if he’s an actor hired to play the construction chief.

From here, we enter my speculations. It looks like we’re being set up to have John X and the Unknown Commander perform a dialogue where the Jungle Patrol can see they’re not the same person. (This would have been so much easier if it were still possible for the Colonel to hold the speaker end of a phone up to the receiving end of another and vice-versa.) And it looks like we’re being set up to have the Unknown Commander delivering video orders from a duplicate of his Jungle Patrol headquarters, a scheme that can’t fail as long as nobody accidentally breaks the bust of William Shakespeare on his desk. But this is all my speculation and I don’t want to brag but my predictions for story strips are batting, like, 0.075 lifetime.

Next Week!

I haven’t checked in on Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D. in months. We need to see how Rene Belluso’s schemes have fallen apart even more. No, more than that. I mean, way more than that even. You’ll see, soon.

Comics Kingdom to Mess Everything Up Again

The blog of Tony DePaul, writer of The Phantom, includes a couple items likely to be interesting to my readers here. So, there you go, glad to help, catch you later.

Well, first, let me do the greatest service possible in this modern era and tell you why that’s something worth your click. First, DePaul writes about the just-concluded Wrack and Ruin story in the daily strips, which just wrapped up over two and a half years of imaginary and real story. And he gives some context to the new story, which started this week, and seemed to tease that the whole Wrack and Ruin might have been a dream, which people would have spent years complaining about in my blog, as if I had any responsibility.

But the current story is a revisiting, and reconsideration of, a 1953 Sunday strips story, The Chain. You can find a recap of the story at the Phantom Wiki. It explains the secret origins of the chain that you absolutely remember drapes across The Phantom’s throne in Skull Cave. DePaul writes about why he’s revisiting this and something of what he hopes to do. Those who’d like to read the original story, and who have a Comics Kingdom strip, can read it starting from the Sunday vintage strips dated the 11th of March, 2018, through to the 24th of June.

And that comes to the alarming news DePaul has. Comics Kingdom is redesigning their site, again, and has plans to unveil it next month, which I make out to be two years since the last time. DePaul is optimistic, having news that readers will be able to scroll seamlessly through stories going back to 1936(!). This would be a great step forward for The Phantom. And for all the comic strips that get accessible, deep archives like that. Me, I’ve been on the Internet long enough that I cannot remember the last time a web site redesign meant the things I do all the time got easier. Or even stayed only as hard as they were. I’m guessing if it doesn’t demand more clicking around, then it’s sure to demand more network traffic to deliver pictures.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? What’s with the art in The Phantom? September – December 2023

Regular Phantom weekday-strip artist Mike Manley has been ill, and has had to take time off. Sunday artist Jeff Weigel stepped in, with strips featuring his work appearing from last week on. On his blog, Phantom writer Tony DePaul reports that Bret Blevins — who’s filled in in the past — will be on the strip full time for the new stor, “to begin soon”. (It’s startling to imagine the conclusion of the Wrack And Ruin story, which has been running since 2021, but there we are.)

I don’t have any details on Manley’s condition, but DePaul does say “there’s more to come from what I hear. Not good … ” It’s not the sort of merry hint I like to bring, but that’s what we have.

After the title card, though, I should catch you up on the weekday continuity in The Phantom for mid-December 2023. If you’re interested in the separate Sunday continuity, or are reading this after about March 2024, there’s likely a more useful recap here. And if any news about Manley, or other people with The Phantom, comes across my desk I’ll share it there, too.

The Phantom (weekdays).

24 September – 16 December 2023.

My last plot recap came at the start of this segment story, “The Journey Home”. And this week begins “The Epilogue”. It’s almost suspicious in its tidiness.

The important thing about all this was getting folks back where they belong, so far as Destiny will allow it. We got some points that might set up future stories, though. First is Bangallan President Lamanda Luaga giving asylum to the prisoners freed from Gravelines. It’s a courageous move: Rhodia — any nation — would feel humiliated by such a jailbreak, and to have most or all of the freed prisoners right next door could be an irresistible temptation. The second is that Rhodia was already plotting the assassination of President Luaga. And hoped to suborn Savarna Devi into doing the murder. Rhodian Admiral Leopold Braga was scheduled to visit Devi in her cell the day of the jailbreak for her final answer. Which, from the safety of the ride home, she says would always have been no.

On horseback. Diana: 'This very morning was your final chance? You were to be hanged *this morning*, Savarna?' Devi: 'If Admiral Braga's deadline was firm, I suppose so ... I'd be dead now. I told him months ago my answer was no --- and would always be no. Lamanda Luaga never did anything to me.' Diana, whispering to The Phantom: 'Just when I think I might be able to hate her ... ' The Phantom, whispering back: 'I know ... ' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 27th of October, 2023. I would assume that The Phantom has passed on a warning that Rhodia is looking to assassinate President Luaga. We know he didn’t do it as the Unknown Commander of the Jungle Patrol. But he’s had a lot of time unaccounted-for on screen and we can suppose he does the things it makes sense to do.

Back at Skull Cave is Kit Junior, who it turns out had an irresistible temptation to return home. The idea came to him, turns out, the moment The Phantom stopped to listen to Mozz’s prophecy of Wrack and Ruin. Kit explains he was careful about his track, taking a path that went through Guwahati (in northeastern India), Delhi, Rome, Casablanca, Mombasa, and more, which is all the more impressive when I thought it had only been two, three days tops since this story began. But then the essential power of The Phantom is having time to get stuff done and not be exhausted at the end of it.

The Phantom briefly tries to keep Kit from talking about the Mountain City with Devi, but realizes better. In the prophecy, Devi meeting up with Kit and then murdering Inspector Jampa instigates the bombing of the Mountain City. But if Devi learns where her onetime enslaver was and succumbs to the irresistible temptation to murder him? And Kit’s nowhere on the same continent? Why would this go beyond Devi and Jampa then? And so The Phantom decides to trust in things working out like they ‘should’.

But, like someone or other said, even a miracle needs a hand. And, particularly, they have to keep Kit from being in the Mountain City anytime Devi might murder Jampa. Diana has a plan and it’s oddly matchmaker-y of her. Kit surely won’t go back to the Mountain City without seeing his sister Heloise. And Heloise won’t let him leave without meeting Kadia. And, heck, could Kadia be a potential partner for Kit Jr? So over weeks, we gather, Heloise keeps teasing that she could come home anytime, but not now, and Kit does put up with this.

The Phantom, Chronicling: 'Weeks pass, and the Battle of Gravelines becomes a distant memory .. Savarna has immersed herself in Bandar culture. She's taken to the routine of daily life in the Deep Woods and seems happy here. Did Mozz not foretell as much? If in a different outcome? The prophecy of a Devi line of Phantoms ... ' — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 4th of December, 2023. Can I just pause a moment to mention how adorable Devil is here? Because Devil is just so adorable here.

And for Devi — she seems to have a fine time, allowed into the world of the Bandar, and Skull Cave and all its cool stuff. And, in an echo of what she swore in Mozz’s prophecy, thinks of how she is done killing. And, last week, Kit unknowingly said something which set Devi leaving immediately. We may infer that she learned something which placed an irresistible temptation in the way of her giving up revenge. We don’t know how that’s to work out.

This Monday, the 18th, started the epilogue, Kit trying to convince Heloise that he’s leaving next weekend whether she sees him or not, Heloise calling his bluff. And Heloise wondering if she and her mother can make Kit-and-Kadia happen, in case that’s a thing that should.

Next Week!

Murder in the library! I forget whether there was in fact a library murder, but it was certainly book-themed. I’ll just check some things quickly and get back to you with Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy, all going well. See you then.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Why is that guy on a typewriter in the strip? August – November 2023

Show some respect, little one. That guy with the typewriter is Lee Falk, the creator of The Phantom and its sister strip Mandrake the Magician. Legend in the serial adventure comic business. Falk died in 1999, but his name remains in the credit box on the comic strips, I assume out of sentiment rather than because he had Bob Kane as his agent.

For some time now Tony DePaul has used Lee Falk as narrator, providing recaps and transitions and background material to readers who joined us late. I’m charmed by it. This story’s seen more of Lee Falk The Character than usual, including his speaking to the reader as though he weren’t sure what the story was. Tony DePaul has never been shy about discussing what he’s attempting in a story, as anyone reading his blog knows. So it can’t be DePaul wanting to find some way to talk about his writing process. The story as it’s told is about The Phantom himself creating a story, his audience being the Jungle Patrol. I imagine as we see more of it we’ll see some thematic echoes between Falk deciding how the story works and The Phantom working on his plans.

And that story we’ll see — well, I should pause a moment. The weekday Phantom, as well as Judge Parker, are going to be looking different for a while. Mike Manley, the regular artist, is ill and it looks like an extended absence, says The Daily Cartoonist. Bret Blevins (with lettering by Scott Cohn) have been filling in for a couple weeks on The Phantom, as they did for a while last year too. Jeff Weigel, who does the Sunday strips, is supposed to take over the weekday strips for the duration starting from later this month. Blevins has also taken on drawing Judge Parker, and I don’t know how long that’s to last.

Anyway if more news about the comic strip breaks, or you want to know about the weekday continuity, or you live in the year 2024 or later and want a more up-to-date plot recap for Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom, try this link. What do you have to lose? Now on with the Sunday show.

The Sunday Phantom.

13 August – 5 November 2023.

Last time we were just started a new story, with The Phantom turning up at Jungle Patrol headquarters as “John X”, the Jungle Patrolman he became during a bout of amnesia a decade or so back. When he regained his memory he had John X taken off for special duty by the Unknown Commander of the Jungle Patrol, whom he happens to be. But during the raid on Gravelines he discovered Jungle Patrol is getting all weird about John X. It’s like the Unknown Commander can’t even scoop people up into his Mysterious Department of Magic without people asking questions. Such as, hey, wouldn’t that interlude and the phone calls from the Gravelines raid make sense if John X were the Unknown Commander?

This story, by the way, is set some time after the conclusion of the story going on in the weekday strips. This gets neatly teased when Jungle Patrol folks as John X for more information about Gravelines, and he says that story’s not yet over. I’m amused.

Title panel: two Jungle Patrol members whisper about John X and Colonel Worubu: 'They were in the Unknown Commander's office ... ' 'What's going on?' The scene dissolves to Lee Falk, at his typewriter: 'I'm not sure I know yet. The Phantom's up to something. We know that much. He's The Phantom, he's John X, he's the Unknown Commander. Why would The Phantom, in the guise of one alter ego, mislead Colonel Worubu on the fate of the *other* alter ego? Does *Guran* know The Phantom's intentions? Why do I seem to think he doesn't? ... ' (He sits up.) 'Diana!' (Typing) 'Flashback! Three weeks earlier, The Deep Woods ... a morning like any other ... ' The scene dissolves to Diana kissing Kit Walker in bed: 'Rise and shine, O Ghost Who Wakes! ... Ooh! Darling!' She rubs her lips. The Phantom rubs his cheeks. 'Sorry ... I stopped shaving yesterday. John X needs to look hte part in a story I want him to tell convincingly.' — Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 3rd of September, 2023. This is not the best one-strip summary of things. But it does very well at showing the most interesting part here, the icon of Lee Falk pondering the writing process. It does make me wonder if the story was created by Tony DePaul thinking it would be interesting if John X told tales about the Unknown Commander, and then went about thinking how that would make sense. Also, I learn from Wikipedia that Lee Falk did look kinda like Mandrake the Magician. I suppose it’s really the other way around — Falk designed his character around himself — but it’s surprising to see and also to learn that he was a playwright and directed on stage Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Chico Marx, and Ethel Waters. Right? That was my expression.

Somehow, The Phantom sees an angle to prove John X isn’t the Unknown Commander, and maybe burnish the Unknown Commander’s legend some, since after a couple centuries not being seen even experienced Jungle Patrollers start asking questions like “how does this work exactly?” So we learn, from flashback conversations with Diana, that he’s been going into Mawitaan and meeting people with Ajabu Engineering (“You Imagine It, We Build It”). And he’s readying some spectacle for the Jungle Patrol’s benefit.

Meanwhile, what he tells Colonel Worubu and the Jungle Patrol staff is that he’s not sure but someone he thinks was the Unknown Commander died in a mission in Ivory Lana. And, sure enough, nobody’s been picking up the daily reports in the Unknown Commander’s vault, nor has the light signalling fresh orders turned on. As John X, he tells Colonel Worubu of how much the Unknown Commander depends on him and his expert judgement. And he scouts Jungle Patrol headquarters, looking for a good way he-as-John-X can vanish and set up whatever he-The-Phantom has in mind.

How will this all pan out? I don’t know. I imagine we’ll have some insight in twelve or thirteen weeks, whenever I get back to this strip. In the meanwhile …

Next Week!

Why are we watching infomercials in Terry Beatty’s Rex Morgan, M.D.? You’ll have to check back here to learn or catch up on the comics yourself. We’ll see what happens.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (weekdays)? Why does Mozz care when Kit Jr decided to come home? July – September 2023

The weekday story has just started the seventh and final part of the tremendous wrack-and-ruin story. It begins with Kit Junior visiting the Skull Cave and finding everybody but Mozz gone. Mozz is low-key freaked out because to get from Arunachal Pradesh, India, to Bangalla he must have set out more than a day or two ago. And this whole story has been the course of two nights, one in which Mozz lays out his prophecy and one where The Phantom acts on it. We appear to be in the morning after that second night.

In Mozz’s prophecy, told the first night, The Phantom should have been suffering from a near-fatal gunshot to his hips. Over the course of several days he reveals Kit Jr’s location to Savarna Devi, who goes to find him and meet her old enemy, Constable Jampa. If Kit Junior was already going to Skull Cave when Mozz had his vision, though, then — what did he see? It’s hard to imagine Kit Jr getting to Skull Cave, finding his father not there, and heading back home in time to meet Devi there. But how is he here, now, if that’s not what “would” have happened without Mozz’s interference?

Kit Jr: 'The falls are *unguarded*, Mozz!! W-What happend to the Bandar?! Where are my parents?!' Mozz: 'When did you know you would leave the Mountain City? WHEN you left is of no concern ... tell me when you KNEW you would leave! The day ... the HOUR!' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 22nd of September, 2023. Not sure what Mozz is more upset by, Kit Jr appearing in possible defiance of his vision or that he didn’t see having an answer in mind in case one of the Walker twins should happen to pop in. Anyway wildly speculating here but I wonder if this is going to be a chance to fill in aspects of the wrack-and-ruin prophecy elided over before, such as the collapse of Kit Sr and Diana’s marriage and Heloise’s disenchantment with The Phantom project.

So this is what has me waiting to see the new day’s installment of Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom as it’s published. Any news I get about the strip, or updates on the Sunday-continuity story, should go at this link. And sometime around December I should have an even more updated plot recap.

The Phantom (weekdays).

3 July – 23 September 2023.

Last time I checked in with the daily story, the jailbreak was all but broken. The Phantom’s done everything he can to be sure if he’s injured he dies without revealing where Kit Jr is. Savarna Devi appears to be the woman of destiny. What remaining Rhodian guards are shooting at her can’t get near hitting her. She figures, why not try shooting even more people?

The Phantom arranges for the Bandar tribe to accompany the liberated prisoners. Most of them drive to Bangalla for an asylum I’m sure won’t cause further crises. But he, Devil, Savarna, and Babudan are on their own. And the warden who’s just seen the greatest jailbreak in Gravelines history catches them. Devil, Devi, and Babudan escape untouched. The Phantom, no; he’s shot in the hip, exactly as in Mozz’s vision. The Phantom’s done everything he can to make sure he dies, since he can’t get Babudan to leave him behind.

Savarna Devi: 'Is there really no one left to fight?' The Phantom, to Babudan, in the Bandar tongue: 'Shall we take a final look around? Make certain all our people are accounted for?' Babudan: 'It's been done, Phanton. We should go now.' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 14th of July, 2023. I agree with The Phantom, I would be much more comfortable with one last sweep of all the bathrooms and dresser drawers to make sure nobody’s left a charging cable behind.

The weird thing is he doesn’t die. The wound is around where he expects, but it’s not as deep as it “should” be. Even without the Bandar wound powder it’s healing up. He’s able to get back to Hero, his horse, and to ride to the Bandar camp. Where, among other things, Guran’s given Diana a tea to make her sleep. Between the amnesia powder and the sleep tea he’s got a potion of dubious consent for everything. Anyway, The Phantom’s back in safe territory and isn’t dead from his wounds or in danger of revealing anything he doesn’t want to. And that, the 16th of September, finishes “Dungeons Undone”, the sixth chapter of this story.

The seventh, “The Journey Home”, began the 18th and my clickbait introduction tells you everything going on there. So now there’s not much to do but look to …

Next Week!

Telemarketing scams! A Minute Mystery! A professor who’s been in his office for eleven months now! And yet another friend of the mayor’s been murdered. Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy gets the spotlight, if my plans hold up. We’ll see.

What’s Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Was there a point to that whole Sunday Phantom story? May – August 2023

Of course there was. There was soaking in an interesting place. There was seeing aspects of The Phantom’s world, and lore, that we hadn’t. It didn’t lead to a big dramatic battle royale, no. Nor the destruction of a lost world, like you’d see in a 20th-century movie about a Dr Moreau-esque city.

As will sometimes happen, Tony DePaul put in his thoughts ahead of my scheduled article. By more than a month this time, though. I can focus all my paranoia on Terry Beatty and Rex Morgan, M.D. instead. Among the things he discussed, in early July, about this, was how Diana’s presence alters the course of what The Phantom discovers. And how storytelling in The Phantom has changed from the days of Lee Falk. He also makes explicit something that I had wondered about. The Phantom has always been a superhero series, and so has always been a fantasy about someone who has the time to deal with stuff.

But it’s also been a more literal sort of fantasy, especially in the Sunday strips. In the Lee Falk days the Sunday Phantom was always running into, if the recent run of vintage strips on Comics Kingdom are a guide, unusually tall people. My mind may be blurring this with The Phantom’s sister strip Mandrake, which has also had a long run of giants in its vintage Sunday strips. But then both the Sunday and the weekday Vintage Phantom stories are about giants scamming the villagers.

This isn’t the first time even Tony DePaul has put nonhumans into the strip. There was a sequence … I want to say around 2010 … with the Ghost Who Walks transplanting some amphibian humanoids to the safety of a more remote island. But putting so much time and attention on the subject does make it easier to bring back later, should a story be able to use them well. And, as DePaul notes in his essay, this also serves as a chance to retire the Bandar amnesia powder. The stuff doesn’t always work and it screws up someone’s life when it doesn’t. So as easy a way as it is to clean up loose ends, DePaul’s Phantom now has reason not to use it.

This all should catch you up to mid-August 2023 in Tony DePaul and Jeff Weigel’s The Phantom (Sundays). Plot summaries for the daily strip, and a more up-to-date one for the Sunday strip if you’re reading after about November 2023, should be at this link. Now back to the Almost Humans for a bit.

The Phantom (Sundays).

21 May – 13 August 2023.

The Phantom’s and Diana Walker’s long journey into the underground world of the Almost Humans reached its goal. Mina Braun has overcome the Bandar amnesia powder from her 2005 (reader time) excursion to this area. It was hard. Besides clouding her mind, The Phantom stole the physical evidence — her grandfather’s World War II-era diaries — that could lead anyone back.

Braun wants to stay in The Domain. She considers herself to be doing good scientific work, even if she can’t imagine telling the outside world about it. The outside world wasn’t all that accepting of her half-remembered experiences from this place before anyway. The Phantom, convinced Braun is there by her own choice, accepts all this. He wants only to map out the locations of all known exits to The Domain. At some point someone is liable to try visiting the location of the viral video where Dr Meier got mauled. He should know how to get there. The Phantom also leaves Braun directions on where to mail a letter if she gets into trouble. Diana points out how if Braun could get a letter out from The Domain, she could probably get herself out from the trouble. This is true, but, what else is there to do?

Throwaway panel, a flashback to the 2005 strip where The Phantom stole diaries from Mina Braun's library, thinking: 'Mina learned of Eden here in the family library. I can't have her or anyone else learning that lesson here again.' In the present, The Phantom, Mina, and Diana Walker dine in a restaurant in The Domain. Diana: 'You're firm, then, in your decision, Mina? You mean to stay here among the Almost Humans?' Mina: 'I am! Thanks to you both, I'm ehre now as the scientist I've always been. Not a woman hiding from a world that thinks her mad. My findings can never be published, of course. It would be a crime to lead the outside world to the gates of the Domain.' Phantom: 'The Champion of Old would be happy to hear you say that.' [ MEANWHILE, at what looks like a ruling council meeting ] Chair: 'You believe this Phantom ... is the same formidable human known to our ancestors?' Teydra: 'If he isn't, I find him no less extraordinary for it! I wish to forge an understanding with this man before he leaves the Domain of the Almost Humans ... a pledge that, whatever he is, we are forever allied with him! --- and he with us.' — Tony Depaul and Jeff Weigel’s **The Phantom** for the 11th of June, 2023. I don’t know why Mina Braun is crediting The Phantom and Diana with her being a scientist again. When we first see Braun she’s gathering vegetables. But Teydra insists consistently that Braun wants to be where she is. And there is much to learn from studying what people eat and how they get food. Much of this story is told in inference, so perhaps we’re to take that The Phantom and Diana’s fuss elevated Braun’s standing. But it does seem like not much time passed between meeting Braun in the fields and going to dinner. Thanking The Phantom, I get, in the roundabout way that if he hadn’t brought her home she couldn’t have got back here. I can’t figure Diana’s role. Maybe she figures The Phantom does everything with Diana.

Meanwhile, Teydra convinces The Council that The Phantom may be the Champion Of Old. The one who fought and survived a ferocious battle centuries ago, one that the Third Phantom did his best to underplay in The Phantom Chronicles. The Council rules that The Phantom will be welcome in their city. But also they’re going to try working out whether he is the still-living Champion of Old. This was resolved in one of the top-row, “throwaway” panels. So it’ll need reintroduction should Teydra and her city feature in a story again. It’ll probably be the lede question for one of these What’s Going On In The Phantom essays.

The current story began the 23rd of July. It’s set sometime after the events we’re seeing in the daily strip, a rare explicit relative dating. The mysterious John X is back, and has news for Colonel Woruba.

Once again and not at all suspiciously Tony DePaul shares his thoughts about John X. This is another secret identity The Phantom developed, during a (weekday) story in 2015 where he joined the Jungle Patrol while amnesiac. The story, DePaul teases, is going to be all about misdirection. DePaul does confirm that this is the real John X/Phantom and not an impersonator, though, a possibility I’d considered. The story’s planned to be something like 39 weeks in all, but the last quarter isn’t yet written. Things may change.

John X’s news is about the Unknown Commander, the guise The Phantom takes to secretly run the Jungle Patrol. It’s that “we may have lost” the Unknown Commander as part of the impromptu raid on Gravelines Prison.

It’s several interesting misdirections. We readers know The Unknown Commander is right there. Why would The Phantom want the Jungle Patrol to believe the commander was dead? How does the Jungle Patrol handled succession in their Unknown Commander, who’s been unseen for four hundred years now? And why is the title of the story “The Commander Will See You Now”? The answers come from people or from time, take your choice which you prefer.

Next Week!

Terry Beatty will have a wonderful Sunday panel explaining three months’ worth of Rex Morgan, M.D. just in time for me to scrap 850 words writing about it! Watch it unfold here! I don’t mind!

What’s Going On In DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom (Weekdays)? Who is John X and why does Jungle Patrol care? April – June 2023

John X is yet another alias of The Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks, Kit Walker, the Unknown Commander, et cetera. Jungle Patrol cares because they know him. In a story back in 2014-15 The Phantom got a case of jungle-poison-induced amnesia. Jungle Patrol found and nursed him back to health, and gave him the placeholder John X name. The Phantom’s plot amnesia didn’t suppress his incredible physical talents, and with not much else to do, “John X” joined the Jungle Patrol.

At his induction ceremony his memory came back: he wasn’t some new patrolman. He was the Unknown Commander. So he disappeared when he could, and as the Unknown Commander left a note that John X was on special assignment. Since then, the Jungle Patrol folks have enjoyed having the mystery of what is John X doing for the Unknown Commander to agree they’ll never know. Agreeing they’ll never know who the Unknown Commander is gets old after a couple centuries. Getting hints is thrilling for them.

[ Narrator: Confirmed! John X! ] The Jungle Patrol staff in the radio room celebrates. The Phantom, on the telephone, smiles. — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 29th of May, 2023. The Phantom: ‘Yeah, you gotta give them a little thrill now and then or the Jungle Patrol starts asking questions about their pay and authorization to use force and stuff.’

So this should catch you up to the end of June 2023 in Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity. If you’re interested in the separate Sunday continuity, or you’re reading this after about September 2023, there’s probably a more useful plot recap here. Thanks for joining me.

The Phantom (Weekdays).

10 April – 1 July 2023.

Way back in mid-April, The Phantom and the Bandar nation were attacking Gravelines prison. They still are. It’s a lot of prison.

The Phantom calls the Jungle Patrol. The word spreads fast that the Unknown Commander is on the phone of all things. Also that he’s in on some kind of action. The Phantom demands the analysis of the prisoner roster that he’d snagged in, reader time, 2021. He wants Jungle Patrol’s analysis of what prisoners in Gravelines are probably there on legitimate grounds. That is, things that a non-fascist state would jail someone for. I’m pleased the strip addressed the question of what to do with the people who “fairly” deserved jail. I think my argument from last time, that in a fascist state it’s impossible to be “fairly” convicted of a crime, stands. But I also understand the need in the moment to keep the situation down to freeing people not likely to make the situation more confusing.

Colonel Worubu, on the phone: '!! Every jailer and every prisoner knows that sound, Commander ... that was a cell gate opening! ... Commander?' The Phantom, with the phone away from him, handing sheets to a freed prisoner: 'I came here tonight to free one prisoner. I didn't foresee two --- but that's you! The freedom of every prisoner not on this list ... is in your hands.' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 28th of April, 2023. I do wonder how many of the prisoners are grabbing their day clothes as they leave. I get everyone being dressed in bedshirts, but it does make the battle scenes weird in an interesting way.

So, after thrilling Jungle Patrol with the promise that John X is there, yes, it’s off to prisoner-liberation. The Phantom picks Viola Odhiambo, schoolteacher, to start with. He sets up directions for everyone not on the list of “the worst of the worst” to be freed and assist in freeing other people. Also, everyone who can pick up a gun or drive a military vehicle? They should do that. Yes, he acknowledges not everyone is able to do that, physically or emotionally.

But they will need guns to do that. The Phantom talks that sergeant, the one left in the office, into opening the armory, by pushing his head into the door. Having seen reason, the sergeant is eager to ask: is this a coup? If it is, you’ll remember I helped, right? If you win? Right?

There is a grim beat in the midst of all this merry prison-fighting. One prisoner, excited to be released, begs to be let out next. He’s described as “one of the most feared men in Gravelines”, which is not to say that he’s on the list to be left behind. Through the bars he grabs Odhiambo. Babudan slashes him with a poison-tipped arrow, killing the prisoner. I know you can hardly credibly do this sort of story bloodlessly, but it’s still a slap to the reader.

Savarna Devi, amidst flaming wreckage: 'Something powerful I can't begin to understand wants me to survive this night, Phantom! No matter how many enemies I face!' The Phantom: 'No one will ever blame the Rhodians for thinking so. Tonight they learned all about your destiny the hard way.' — Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s **The Phantom** for the 29th of June, 2023. I hope Captain Savarna’s awareness of how much the hardcore Phantom fandom likes her isn’t going to wreck her character.

The major, the one who runs, or ran, Gravelines, calls The Phantom, promising reinforcements are on the way. The Phantom calls his bluff. He’s got the Bandar warriors with him. Also a growing cadre of former prisoners with weapons and grudges against the Rhodian government. Also Savarna Devi, who while we weren’t looking grabbed the BFG9000 and is running around like she’s got the cheat codes. Which she might: she’s filled with a sense of destiny, that somehow she will survive this night, and return to her native India. It’s a heck of a bet to make. But when the guards waste whole belts of ammunition without getting her, you see her point. She can’t get enough of this. She asks The Phantom why stop here.

Next Week!

But I stop here, for now at least. We’ll pick up The Phantom’s story in a couple months. Next week, I plan to look at Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy and see … uh … what that board game villain was up to? It was a board game villain, right? Yeah, that’s what’s in my notes. Huh. All right, we’ll see where this is going.

	Mulligan on Technically I Could Always Say…
	eocostello on What’s Going On In Dick…
	realgarrisonskunk on If They Are Trying to Conquer…
	Jeff Morris on If They Are Trying to Conquer…
	Jeff Morris on A Challenge to the Reader

The Phantom (Weekdays).

6 April – 27 June 2026.

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The Phantom (Sundays).

22 February – 17 May 2026.

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Phantom 2040: A New Shadow.

20 February – 17 April 2026.

This Week!

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The Phantom (Weekdays).

12 January – 4 April 2026.

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Phantom 2040: A New Shadow.

24 September 2025 – 20 February 2026.

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The Phantom (Sundays).

30 November 2025 – 22 February 2026.

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The Phantom (Weekdays).

20 October 2025 – 10 January 2026.

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The Phantom (Sundays).

14 September – 30 November 2025.

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The Phantom (Weekdays).

28 July – 18 October 2025.

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The Phantom (Sundays).

15 June – 7 September 2025.

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The Phantom (Weekdays).

5 May – 26 July 2025.

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The Phantom (Sundays).

23 March – 15 June 2025.

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The Phantom (Weekdays).

9 February – 3 May 2025.

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The Phantom (Sundays).

29 December 2024 – 23 March 2025.

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The Phantom (Weekdays).

18 November 2024 – 8 February 2025.

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The Phantom (Sundays).

October – December 2024.

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The Phantom (Weekdays).

26 August – 16 November 2024.

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The Phantom (Sunday Continuity).

14 July – 6 October 2024.

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The Phantom (Weekdays).

3 June – 24 August 2024.

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The Phantom (Sundays).

21 April – 14 July 2024.

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