Americans Hate Tingle: While the American comic strips are popular all around the world, the same cannot be said about the American comic books. Only three stories from Charlton's comic book run were published in the Scandinavian Phantom books, as bad reception from readers meant the editors halted any plans they had to publish more stories from Charlton. Later on, as Moonstone published their own Phantom books, the Scandinavian editors did not even bother to publish any of their stories, anticipating how readers would react to them.
Archive Panic: The Phantom has appeared in stories since 1936, not only in conventional comic books, but in decades upon decades of daily newspaper strips, on top of even more strips published in Sunday papers.
In Sweden, where the Phantom is particularly popular, even his ancestors (the previous Phantoms) were given their own storylines, meaning that there are centuries of Phantom stories not even involving The Phantom from the main comics out there. At one point, all these stories were compiled into collected edtions, amounting to six hardcover books.
Bizarro Episode: There are two Lee Falk-written stories with the Phantom involving aliens from outer space.
A Swedish 1992 Phantom comic called "Jungle Snow" features at the time relevant public figures such as former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt and well-known entrepreneur/occasional politician Bert Karlsson. It's arguably more absurd from a Swedish context.
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. Even his "immortality" is explained as the Phantom being a familial tradition, passed along from father to son.
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 bear the idea of the story he was working on going unfinished.
Team Fantomen is generally revered, especially by Swedish fans, since they in large part helped carry Falk's torch while the character's success remained relatively modest in America and elsewhere. One noteworthy thing they did was chronicle the familial history of all the Phantoms, starting with the first one, who was alive and interacted with Christopher Columbus, all the way up to the father and grandfather of the current (main) Phantom.
Ethnic Scrappy: Pygmy chief Guran in the early years of the comic acted like a stereotypical superstitious witch doctor. In the very first story he tried to cure the Phantom by burning him with a torch.
In general, the people of Bangalla from earlier works are considered this, as they amounted to little more than some extremely dated, broad stereotypes. Modern comics have tried to address this by making the native people more fleshed-out, realistic characters.
Fair for Its Day: While the comic has shown the kind of chauvinism that can be expected from a long-running franchise about a Mighty Whitey fighting crime in a non-European country, already in the 1960s it started introducing explicit anti-colonialist messages (in one instance, a panel of neutral expository dialogue was rewritten to have the Phantom call Age of Exploration-era colonialism "sheer theft"), and also gave Bangalla a black president, Luaga, who is a staunch ally and friend of the Phantom. It is also worth mentioning that the Phantom inspires superstitious fear in villains and bystanders regardless of their race.
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 the only American superhero comic note the others are My Hero Academia, but it hasn't been translated into Swedish yet, but has been translated into Norwegian, Danish, and Finnish. There's also The Urban Legend exclusively in Norway. Not to forget the Swedish Handbok för superhjältar which has been translated into at least 10 languages. 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.
Just Here for Godzilla: In Scandinavia, The Phantom as a comic book has always featured The Phantom as the main comic, with almost every issue also featuring a side comic, and while there are many readers who are only interested in The Phantom and wish there weren't any side comics, there are also many readers who read the book just for the side comics.
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.
Salvaged Story: When the comic started it was set in Asia, but it was later retconned to be set in Africa. One problem with this is that there are barely any wolves and tigers in Africa, yet these animals lived in abundance in the forests when the comic started and still do in the forests of Bangalla. Two comic book stories, "The Thousand Tigers" and "The Wolf is Coming", were made to adress this. The former story explained that a prince in Bangalla raised many tigers in his palace but that they escaped into the wild.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Timo, the son of Guran and a reformed criminal, could make for an interesting supporting character, but so far he only appeared in two stories in the early 40s and has almost been completely forgotten since then.
It has often been debated if the depiction of natives in the comic is racist, but it is generally agreed that it was bad at the beginning, as the natives were depicted with big lips and silly clothing, and cannibalism, human sacrifices and general superstition were featured in many stories. Fortunately, many of these themes would later be retconned out or ignored.
Like many American comics published during WWII, "The Inexorables" or "The Phantom Goes to War" depicts Japanese military personnel as cruel savages who don't hesitate to torture prisoners.
In Sweden, "The ghost who walks" is translated into "Den vandrande vålnaden," which literally means "The wandering wraith" (Finnish translation also followed suit by translating it as "vaeltava aave"). Among Swedish fans this is unanimously considered a better epithet than a literal translation like "Det gående spöket" or "Spöket som går."
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