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Post by Cei-U! on Nov 22, 2022 19:17:20 GMT -5
Phantom's costume never made much sense to me. Purple-and-turqoise tights don't seem very practical for prowling the jungles.
Cei-U! I summon the camouflage fail!
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 22, 2022 21:59:21 GMT -5
Jungle adventures were more exotic, in the 1930s and 40s; it's kind of hard to do that kind of thing these days. I am willing to bet that the article you saw was written by someone whose experience with the character doesn't stretch further back than the last 20 years or so. Why do you think it’s hard to do those kind of things nowadays? Have jungles lost their mystique, or do you think there’s another reason? I did like jungle-based adventures at one point. As for your second point, I hate to be critical of someone else’s writing, but it’s almost like the guy might have used Wikipedia as the article didn’t have that “personal touch” you might often see. Well, jungles aren't mysterious and the old depictions were stereotyped and outright racist, more often than not. In this day and age, we know Africa isn't this primal land, where people still live primatively. It wasn't true in the 30s; but, people were ignorant enough to buy into it. Post-Colonial Africa has been the subject of nightly news features, movies and tv; so, we know more about the real Africa, even if people still hold stereotypes. Bangalla was said to be an island nation, vaguely somewhere in the Indian Ocean, maybe near Africa, maybe closer to India. It varied a bit. In the strips, as years progressed and a modern Africa was seen more globally, they updated the strips to show Bengalla with a capitol city and modern conveniences; but, it became harder to do adventure strips, as the space devoted to comics in American papers shrank. Gag strips became dominant, by the 80s, largely due to the compressed space.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 22, 2022 22:08:35 GMT -5
Phantom's costume never made much sense to me. Purple-and-turqoise tights don't seem very practical for prowling the jungles. Cei-U! I summon the camouflage fail! The coloring changed, over time. In earlier American Sunday strips, the costume was red and that was used in other markets. In some reprints it is blue. The costume is supposed to represent a medieval executioner's uniform. Similar designs, for jailers, could be seen in Flash Gordon. It's also been copied, to a point, in Italian movies, like Super Argo..... and the Italian horror movie, The Bloody Pit of Horror, with Mickey Hargitay, as the Crimson Executioner....
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 22, 2022 22:39:30 GMT -5
Here's Tom Tyler, as The Phantom, in the Columbia serial.... The wolf, Devil, was turned into a German Shepard. There was actually a sequel, but there had been a long enough delay that Columbia didn't still have the rights and had to change the name of the character, to Captain Africa, with John Hart (who took over as the Lone Ranger, from Clayton Moore) as the hero.... There was also a tv pilot, but it didn't go to series..... and there was one for the Sci-Fi Channel/SyFy... The 1961 pilot is pretty dull. The Sci-Fi pilot had moments; but the lead was not great and the plot was pretty cliched. Budget was low, too. The Simon Wincer film, from 1996 is probably the best attempt at a live action version, though I think Treat Williams failed as the villain. The serial is pretty good, for that type of thing and is the closest thing to the strips, of its era. The 96 film probably better encapsulates the premise. Defenders of the Earth had a great episode where the Phantom's brother turns up and we see how they competed for the role. That was partially inspired by the fact that the strips had the then-current Phantom married to Diana Palmer and they had twin sons. The DOTE Phantom is one of the twins. In a flashback, you see the father in the classic costume, with the trunks, while the DOTE Phantom had a completely purple bodysuit.... . King Features has been a big reason why the Phantom has struggled in the US, as well as Flash Gordon. They have been very restrictive in what they will allow and comics have to pass muster. The license has bounced around a lot, since Charlton, in the mid-70s. DC had it for 2-3 years, then Marvel had Defenders of the Earth and Phantom 2040. Moonstone had it, marvel briefly had licenses for Phantom, Mandrake and Flash Gordon, but only put out a handful of issues for all of them. Dynamite had the license, for a bit, then Hermes, who published reprints of the Gold Key and Charlton stuff, as well as a series from Peter David and Sal Velutto, which is very good. Paul Hogan used to do sketches with the Phantom, on his tv show, in Australia.... By the same token, Flash Gordon hasn't lit American comic books on fire, over time. DC fared better with both the Phantom and Flash Gordon than Marvel did, as did Gold Key. He fared a bit better on screens, with three Universal serials, an early tv series, the 1980 movie and the New Adventures of Flash Gordon cartoon series. The less said about the 90s cartoon or the Sci-Fi Channel tv series, with the bully from Smallville, the better. The 1980 movie wasn't a huge hit at the American box office, any more than the 1996 Phantom was. In the US, both just kind of aged into more of a cult status.
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 22, 2022 22:41:24 GMT -5
ps Joke's on Hogan; Diana Palmer is a brunette!
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Post by commond on Nov 22, 2022 22:45:33 GMT -5
New Zealand had a very successful, long-running Phantom comic in the 50s and 60s. It was so successful it ran for 556 issues. Interestingly, the color covers featured a rather ugly yellow-brown costume rather than the traditional purple. The Phantom in New Zealand
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Post by tonebone on Dec 9, 2022 10:06:14 GMT -5
Here's Tom Tyler, as The Phantom, in the Columbia serial.... and there was one for the Sci-Fi Channel/SyFy... It's amazing how great the Tom Tyler suit looks... on the other hand... that Syfy one... that's... uh... a costume, for sure. Gotta love the era of surplus BMX armor, and spray paint.
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Post by tonebone on Dec 9, 2022 10:07:31 GMT -5
For me, I never liked the Phantom... never been a fan of "jungle" stories, for some reason.
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Post by Calidore on Dec 9, 2022 10:19:33 GMT -5
If nothing else, the ring that leaves a skull mark on the face of people he punches out is an exceptional badass touch.
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 9, 2022 11:11:47 GMT -5
After the early years, the Phantom branched out into other environments and even had historical adventures (an advantage of the Phantom generational line). The Charlton adventures tended to be in modern settings, apart from things like their last issue, set in 1776 (published in 1976) and "The Mystery of the Mali Ibex," which goes from the 30s to the modern period, in a big Bogart riff. Many adventures took place in the US, in urban environments or in the Southwest, with Western adventures. Plus, Bengalla got modernized to have a capitol city, with the problems that brings.
The Ghost Who Walks did a lot of walking outside of Bengalla.
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Post by dbutler69 on Dec 10, 2022 15:14:43 GMT -5
The Phantom's not alone. Bat Lash, for one, was very popular in Europe but flopped here in the states. I think the same is true of several other non-superhero characters as well. Aren't Disney (stuff like Donald Duck, that is) comics still being printed in Europe but not in the US?
By the way, I loved the Billy Zane Phantom movie, though I'd never read a Phantom comic before. Dude shaved his head for that movie so that the hood would fit right when he wore the Phantom costume! They had to film the scenes where he's out of costume first, so that he still had hair.
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 10, 2022 23:52:12 GMT -5
The Phantom's not alone. Bat Lash, for one, was very popular in Europe but flopped here in the states. I think the same is true of several other non-superhero characters as well. Aren't Disney (stuff like Donald Duck, that is) comics still being printed in Europe but not in the US? By the way, I loved the Billy Zane Phantom movie, though I'd never read a Phantom comic before. Dude shaved his head for that movie so that the hood would fit right when he wore the Phantom costume! They had to film the scenes where he's out of costume first, so that he still had hair. I liked the film, for the most part, except Treat Williams, as the villain. He never really seemed that menacing, to me. I thought Catherine Zeta-Jones should have been the main villain, as she had way more personality, or Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, as the leader of the Singh Brotherhood. Kristy Swanson was a bit uneven, as Diana Palmer. Wrong hair color, to boot! Simon Wincer did a great job with it, though. Shame it didn't do bigger business, here.
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Post by codystarbuck on Dec 10, 2022 23:56:02 GMT -5
ps My favorite scenes....for obvious reasons...
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2022 11:00:03 GMT -5
ps My favorite scenes....for obvious reasons...
You liked those boots too, huh?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2022 19:07:57 GMT -5
I would love to see a story/series based off of this image:
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