For Those Who Came in Late – How The Phantom is Writ

For those of us following The Daily Phantom (not an easy task) writer Tony DePaul has written a large summary of how he writes the adventure comic strip and the basics of the Wrack and Ruin story to date.

The Phantom from June 2021 © King Features Syndicate

From Tony’s (December 27, 2022) The Nickels of the Man:

As for this morning, here’s a bit more on what we talked about in October with the Wrack and Ruin saga, the narrative running in the Monday-through-Saturday strip.

I’ve been writing the story on a serial basis. I have notes on where the closing chapters are likely to go, and how they might get there, but we’ll see. When I sit down to write the story in script format it may choose to sort itself out in an entirely unforeseen way. These things have a life of their own.

On the material I have scripted, I’m pretty far ahead of the reader at this point, maybe 35 weeks or so.

A fascinating look into the mind of the writer and his objectives.

Tony admits:

This isn’t an easy tale to read two and three panels at a time. When overseas publishers reprint it in comic books or trade paperbacks, I hope a certain aesthetic dimension might become more apparent.

We can only hope some publisher in the U.S. publishes it as a graphic novel.

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