Tony DePaul on his, more-or-less monthly these days, blog chimed in on the just ended Wrack and Ruin:
On Phantom matters (which I’m always ambivalent writing about here), the dual-timeline Wrack and Ruin series came to a close last Saturday, after seven chapters and 32 months. It ended with Jeff Weigel’s Phantom reflecting for a week on various journeys the characters had walked in both the Mozz prophecy and the present.
Tony teased us about writing an extended commentary about the story:
I might write about the series here at some point … That said, condensing the Wrack and Ruin series, 465 pages of script, more than 1,500 images, packaging that in a way a non-Phantom fan (most readers here) might appreciate, that’s a heavy lift. It would easily take a week of daily posts, a chapter per day, an introduction, a continuity primer, nine posts…?
More from Tony:
In this new story that started yesterday [link added], Bret Blevins and I are revisiting a Lee Falk/Wilson McCoy tale from 1953. Our story shares the title of the original yarn, a conspicuous outlier in the canon. Falk wrote the Phantom as a boor, a manbaby, selfish, cranky, petulant, obnoxious (who does that sound like?). This 1953 Phantom is someone we don’t recognize. He’s wrong on personality, maturity, character, moral compass, how he talks to his wife—the works.
… Bret and I are going to deconstruct the original story, put a different lens on it, create a different way of thinking about it …
The moral of the story is patience – here’s a >spoiler alert< summary of the original tale – a virtue us fans of Tony DePaul’s Phantom have come to appreciate.
feature image by George Wilson
Tony certainly seems to be implying that the Ghost Who Walks was Ghosted by another writer for the original version of “The Chain.” Not being a hardcore Phantom Phan, I’m unaware of postulated identification of this Ghost writer. D.D., got any idea if they’ve done so? DePaul’s quote above dances around it if they have–and if he agrees with whoever that person may have been. I know King cartoonists employed plenty of ghost writers over the years, and I’m wondering if it Falk hired one of the more famous writers whom we’d know from another strip.
Maybe he hired the Mandrake the Magician writer to ghost The Phantom story?
I find nothing from the sites that would know more than me about Falk being too busy to script the 1953 story and none mention anyone ghosting The Ghost Who Walks during that time.
And I’m not sure if DePaul is talking about the 20th or 21st Phantom as being gruff.
I read the 1953 story via newspapers.com but Comics Kingdom subscribers can read it here:
https://comicskingdom.com/phantom-sundays/2018-03-11 (thanks, Joseph).