The Phantom: A Short History of the Ghost Who Walks

[Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] hello there everybody I've been putting together short videos showing some of the great Golden Age characters that inspired my character Captain Lancet that's in featured in we are scarlet Twilight so today I wanted to get to one of my favorites the Phantom In addition he's probably I think one of the most obvious influences if you look at my character and story so it's uh it's gonna be fun to take a deep dive into the character show you some great art and show you some points where he inspired my character design and some of the the things he does Phantom was created in 1935 by Lee Falk an interesting fact he was the first of what we generally consider a superhero while other characters Zorro Tarzan had a lot of superhero super heroic elements uh the Phantom was the first guy to sort of have the tights and The Mask all together in a way that we kind of understand to be a superhero so fun fact there this is a great painting of him that was used on a comic cover the uh the thing I wanted to point out here in addition to the mask shaping a lot like Captain Lance uh my character you can kind of see here the other thing I really really liked about the Phantom in a few other classic golden age heroes is they had the two guns uh the two revolvers in each hand was a real cool in my opinion just a golden age thing I see that and I think of the time period so as I was kind of putting Captain Lancer it's Lance its weapons together and if you've read the story so far you kind of know what those weapons are and that they're a bit of a uh bit of a cover-up for something else he does he doesn't really need guns but he just having that that visual that silhouette of the masked hero with the two guns is directly from the Phantom and I think just a really cool way to always reinforce the time period one of the cool things about the comic when I was put together is I just wanted to highlight all these great things you'd see in Gold age comics and anytime I'd find something that would fit in the story or in most cases would enhance the story I'd always take pains to throw it in there and just really immerse the reader hopefully in those in a lot of the things that make those old Comics stand out foreign as you can see here's the the same thing here we got the guy with the thick belt holsters uh and the two guns is is right from from The Phantom and his costume design as well uh the Phantom has that sort of shape up here um but uh this mask is pretty much the way it is a lot of Heroes have this type of mask but it pretty much is that way because of the Phantom I wanted him to really resemble that character uh which I think is a nice nod to the first superhero but back to the Phantom uh here's some of what the comics looked like uh this one's I think from the 40s it's a little later on but uh is a good look at how the drawing style was done Wilson McCoy was Lee Fox assistant and uh and you know helped out with the comic uh even when Falk was uh drafted or joined during World War II and a funny story about lethal not really funny but interesting is he created the character in 1936 and worked on it until his death in 1999 so a pretty incredible run if you think about it some cool stuff here again I love that they leave these the the silhouette of this character open uh like they do in a lot of the comics because it really accentuates you know this the stripe design the darks on the boots The Mask it really makes him more of an icon and less of a drawing which I think really works in these old Comics I've mentioned that in a few other videos some more looks this one obviously a much more modern uh Phantom strip but uh very cool stuff this is kind of the iconic image of him with the uh the arms cross and we'll see a lot more of that later here he's fighting some more animals but to be truth you know he's kind of breaking it up I guess he kind of like an animal bouncer here taking care of this fawn kicks better than a bullet I guess I agree with that but it's a weird thing to say uh anyway here's another strip this one obviously a lot more feathered um I'm not crazy about this drawing but I included it a a because it's just cool this I like the drawing but I I think it really contrasts with that other strip I showed a few pages back where it was left open for uh you know these weren't colored but just it being open as a silhouette really makes him more impactful and looks like he's more of a an iconic image he's more of a symbol and I think that really is something that when you're dealing with superheroes that tends to work better than getting in there and really shading this all out this is obviously I think some uh Alex Raymond influence here um you know with the background the dry brush stuff like that it does look cool I love the way this guy draws the belt but I I think that's something that I'm setting up for more Scarlet Twilight I mean looking a lot of these old Comics really helps me think of hey what what really works for these types of characters the the poses they strike the costumes they wear um lots of drawing Styles out there and and it's really important I think to find the one that works best and highlights what's cool about your character what's interesting about it and the Phantom like I said really really helps highlight that when you look especially at the same character done in many different ways Diana um his his love interest usually in the movies um uh one thing you'll see and I I found you know a lot of these images that I didn't save and put in the videos the Phantom has like no game at all he's really blows it a lot of times so here he is getting in the doghouse with his with Diana and uh sitting outside talking to devil complaining uh as if it's uh her fault and I don't think it's her fault at all be honest uh another one here again really leaving him open as a shape which is very cool I love this is a great scan so it's nice to see these really rich blacks but I really love the graphic nature of these it mixes even well when you when you do get in some textures and some Grays the Phantom really jumps out which I think is is a good move is what really makes these look look very cool some more recent uh version of The Shadow or I'm sorry the Shadow the uh the Phantom by the late Paul Ryan has always been a favorite of mine very cool stuff here kind of has that 90s Jurgens you know artsy bear feel to it but uh and Paul Ryan was definitely somebody who who did a style that really takes you to that period so it's a cool image here again love to see the the double guns and the ring which is another cool feature he has he's got that ring he hits people with them um as part of his uh his legacy so as you probably know he's a uh the idea of the Phantom is that it started in the 1500s and each Phantom passed down to his son the uh the mantle the Phantom so he's been going back a ways uh fighting fighting crime in bengala which I believe is his fictional country another look at you know again this was I think a collection book here very cool stuff very graphic love these thick lines really you know they really knew how to make these characters pop and it's always nice to see examples of that uh and here's a later look from when DC published this I think Jim apparel one of my all-time favorite artists uh did some Phantom work this is if you look at a paro's work in the you know 60s and early 80s you'd see a lot of this Feathering you'd see this in his his early Batman stuff um it's not my favorite of his Styles but it it does really shine uh when he's when he's has a really good page so it's cool to see that and kind of place it in the context of his career career there's a few more pages uh again via Paro great motion here I mean he was one of the best at just making characters look Dynamic strong heroic uh you know every you know this is an incredibly Dynamic piano so it's good stuff to see there's some other merchandise uh spin-off from from back in the day there's some Flash Gordon here and uh some very cool Phantom covers I love these these big little books they had great design even if the illustrations themselves were a little crude as these are they really look good when you have such a good character design and uh another thing to note here is sometimes they'd make him red I'm not sure why he looks pretty cool both ways I think I think purple is certainly his more iconic look initially he was going to be gray and was going to be called the gray ghost but uh they decided to change that and give him his purple look which I think is certainly what sets him apart you don't see a lot of purple superheroes so cool to see another look at him here again very simple lets the color shine cool stuff here is again him is demonstrating his uh incomparable charm uh this one I like a lot this is such a cool cover I love this this effect they have in the clouds the planes look cool with the color you know the lines kind of dropped out this type is amazing and this is a really cool illustration of the Phantom radioing I think to somebody very very cool stuff one of my this is something I'm definitely going to base a variant cover on one of these days and there's a more modern drawing um just kind of a fresetta style but uh really works for the character I'd certainly like to see more of this guy's Phantom work and I will have to track that down and then a few painted covers by Don Newton who was a legendary Batman artist in the 80s great great artist very much like a Ross Andrew Jim aparro type style really strong stuff is another one of his kind of fighting a mad scientist which is cool to see I always love to see this mad scientist Machinery really puts you I think in the time period and there's one more color version of that drawing we saw before unfortunately color makes the scenario no less comprehensible and one last painting from Mike Grell who you probably know from his green arrow work or Shaman's tears from image in the 90s a great artist and a very cool look at the Phantom on his uh throne in his cave which is sort of his affirmative uh Proto Batcave Batman in fact takes a lot from The Phantom and adapts in really cool ways there's a little bit of the merchandise you'd see um again doing his classic cross-arm pose which is very cool this is I love how crude these old these old statues look there's a lot of Superman ones like this the paint's always chip there's just something about them that looks so weirdly cool so he's been in the movies a few times mentioned the 1996 movie earlier but he was also one of the first uh this actually probably was the first superhero movie uh star Tom Tyler who also played Captain Marvel in that cereal uh this was a pretty good one as far as cereals go uh pretty faithful the character um he had the cave he had all the cool stuff uh kind of all the things you want to see in the Phantom movie so in addition to being a cool poster it actually was also a pretty good movie there's a few more looks at that they had individual for each chapter as you know the cereals were just short things and made out of Cliffhangers so each one of these got their own poster really cool stuff I like what they did with the costume they didn't you know it's not perfect but they didn't really mess with it that much so here's a poster from the 1996 film which probably is what most of you are familiar with that's what I'm more familiar with I always liked this one a lot I think got lost in the shuffle of Batman and the Phantom and Dick Tracy but I was very faithful to character villain was not so great but everything else was pretty cool I would I would advise checking that one out and to bring it back to Captain Lance it a little bit an interesting fact maybe interesting I hope it is this is a look at the costume in the 96 film and uh that Billy Zane wore or some mock-up of it uh they did this thing where because there was really not that much going on you didn't want to mess with the silhouette of it being basically purple they did kind of a smart thing was just to screen some textures back and give a little bit of stuff here um I was going to do something like that with Captain Lancet where I wanted his costume at big bold areas like a lot of the golden age heroes but I was going to maybe screen back some patterns like this by Frank Lloyd Wright in the way that you see happening in this Phantom costume what happened is I actually had two images like this they weren't these ones exactly it was a different window pattern but uh were similar to it I had two mirrored sets of transparencies and when they overlapped they gave me something that was pretty much Captain Lance's logo design so I adapted as soon as I saw that realized it was going to make a great costume uh you know kind of saved my file made sure I made a note to do that and while I didn't adapt that visual exactly there was enough there for me me to say if I change this this and this that becomes a really cool logo and kind of gives you the pattern you see that became Captain Lance's costume so sort of a fun coincidence there that I guess I really do owe to the Phantom so like I've said um if you're into these old Comics if you like the Phantom the shadow Flash Gordon Batman the Animated Series those are all things that really inspired the creation of my character here Captain Lancet and his adventures which you can get for two more days on zoo we have the campaign that's going to end up in a very short amount of time but you can get the entire story there in a collected hardcover format you can get each of the individual issues you can get digital we have some fun add-ons so if you're into this stuff and you haven't checked out the book yet I would ask you to go give it a look and if it's something you're interested in and check it out thanks again and I'll see you again soon

Channel: Benjamin Morse, Comic Book Artist

Views: 9,807

Keywords: phantom, comics, lee falk

Id: 2ICyh4JiGhg

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 21 2023