Broken Base: Should the comics be in color or black and white? In many regions, The Phantom comics were printed in black and white for decades, and still are in some places, which means the comic has a distinct look, one which several generations got used to growing up.
An even smaller subset prefer the monochrome look because the aesthetic more closely matches up with the gritty, pre-superhero pulp fiction from where The Phantom was born.
What color should the suit be? It sounds like a silly question, but international versions of the character has worn anything from blue, to green, to bright red tights. Some readers outside the English speaking world were genuinely shocked to find out his "official" suit color is purple, or that The Phantom wore any color other than the one they grew up with.
Can he be called a "superhero"? It's a tough question, not only are there many other famous superheroes without any special powers, but the Phantom essentially invented the modern superhero costume. That said, unlike a similar character like Batman, the Phantom has remained fairly grounded, not to mention that the character itself is more like a blend of Tarzan and a noir-era gumshoe than any sort of conventional superhero.
Creator Worship: Lee Falk is highly respected among fans. Not only is he the creator, but he consistently worked on the Phantom strip for 63 years, despite also working as a director and producer of theatre. The only thing that stopped him was passing away at age 87 and even then, one of the last things he did in life was to tell his wife how the current Phantom storyline was supposed to end because he couldn't bare the idea of the story he was working on going unfinished.
Ethnic Scrappy: Pygmy chief Guran in the early years of the comic.
The Phantom has a big following in Scandinavia, where he has his own comic book (Fantomen in Sweden, Fantomet in Denmark and Norway, Mustanaamionote "The Blackmask", from the Weird Age of Finnish Character Name Translations in Finland), publishing new original adventures by other hands. In fact, the Phantom is now the only superhero comic that is still published in Scandinavia, as localized versions of Marvel and DC comics gradually died out around the turn of the millennium. Members of the Fantomen talent pool have also kept the newspaper strip going since Lee Falk's death in 1999. Australia is The Phantom's other fan stronghold, with Australian sales of The Phantom (a locally-produced comic book that reprints both newspaper strip storylines and translations of Fantomen stories) reportedly being ten times those of the top-selling Marvel and DC titles. The Scandinavia-made adventures in the 1970s had frequent anti-colonialist plot-lines, like the caricatured Rhodesia (the "Republic of Rhodia," which has since become a People's Republic of Tyranny) and with real people, such as bishop Abel Muzorewa, appeared in equally thin disguises. That reflected the widespread anti-apartheid sentiments in those countries. In the 2013 issues of Fantomen Rhodia's apartheid regime was finally overthrown by the black RLA (Rhodian Liberation Army), with their leader and longtime political prisoner Nelson N'Dela (a thinly disguised Nelson Mandela) becoming the country's new democratic president.
The Phantom enjoyed a brief stint of immense popularity in India during the 80's and 90's, and was regularly published (including collected newspaper clips) by the now-obsolete Indrajal Comics, and later, by Diamond Comics of Mumbai. Indrajal's volumes from this period, including Phantom, are now rare collector's items. Although news of the 1996 Phantom movie initially boosted sales through the roof, after the actual release itself fans were not pleased. The film seems to have been the turning point leading to the character's decline in the region, and Phantom soon went zooming down to hit rock bottom in terms of obscurity. Indrajal's bankruptcy during that period didn't help.
Memetic Mutation: Old jungle sayings.ExplanationThe authors have written a number of sayings that are used throughout the jungle to describe the Phantom, emphasising his mystique and the fear he inspires. These are a frequent target in affectionate parodies, such as artists drawing what happens when you interpret the phrases too literally or making the Phantom say a rare sentence and tacking on "... as they say in the jungle".
My Real Daddy: To some hardcore fans, the Swedish Team Fantomen is this because of how much their original stories expanded the Phantom universe. Specifically, Team Fantomen fleshed out the Phantom's mythology by making fully-fledged stories featuring the previous generations of Phantoms who at most got passing mentions in international publications as the majority of Phantom stories either focus on the current Phantom, one from the future and occasionally the absolute earliest ones.
In Sweden, "The ghost who walks" is translated into "Den vandrande vålnaden," which literally means "The wandering wraith." Among Swedish fans this is unanimously considered a better epithet than a literal translation like "Det gående spöket."
In Finland, the "The Man Who Cannot Die" was changed to "The Man Who Never Dies" (Mies joka ei kuole koskaan) because it flows better in Finnish.
1989-1990 comic
Complete Monster: In the short-lived DC Comics series from 1989-1990, by Mark Verheiden & Luke McDonnell, this darker take on the Phantom had quite a few nasty villains:
Issue #3 ("Pirates"): Adix is a modern day pirate who uses an armed ship to board civilian boats off the coast of Bangalla. Adix would kidnap the rich male and female passengers aboard these ships and would order his crew to kill everyone else on board. Adix would then take his hostages to his ship and keep them in his hold, where he would torture the male hostages for information and would rape the female hostages. In contrast with romanticized pirates, Adix is a repulsive psychopath with no code of honor.
Issue #10 ("Blind"): Ansah is an enterprising criminal who learns of an African village struck by a disease that causes blindness. Ansah bribes a doctor who was taking care of this village to give him information on them and then he and his gang kidnap everyone in the village, including the women and the children. Ansah then enslaves the villagers, forcing them to work in a giant rice field. After the villagers gather enough rice for him to bring to market, Ansah plans to kill the villagers. After the Phantom thwarts that scheme, Ansah takes a villager hostage. After this cowardly act, Phantom asks Ansah what kind of man he is, Ansah justifies himself by saying the strong have the right to victimize the weak.
Issue #11 ("Famine"): Black marketeer Lancombe is a wealthy, corrupt resident of Khagana who helps to fund a civil war in the country. Making his money by stealing food supplies and international aid, Lancombe sells them to the highest bidder, while knowing the country is undergoing a horrific famine that hits children the hardest and condemns thousands to a slow, wasting and agonizing death. Lancombe is shown to care not one bit about the suffering he inflicts, gleefully prolonging the famine to feed his own insatiable greed.
. It's believed that American soldiers brought Phantom comic books to New Guinea in World War II, and the local people adopted him as a symbol of power