Writer of The Ghost Who Walks Talks
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… Or writes anyway.
Tony DePaul, writer of The Phantom, was supposed to join the daily and Sunday artists Mike Manley and Jeff Weigel, on the 300th broadcast of The Phantom Podcast. That didn’t happen due to health issues.
But Tony did promise to respond in writing to questions from Phans if the Chronicle Chamber would send the queries on to him. It all happened and the interview has been posted.
What do you believe will be your main contribution to the Phantom’s legacy when you finish? (Question by Glaucio.)
As Captain Walker of the carrack Matilda would say—God’s teeth! Did you really just ask a man in chemo for a preview of his eulogy?
It is, of course, very interesting for Phantom Phans to have DePaul answer questions about the State of Bangalla, past present and future.
… The ugly race baggage of the early years is a fact of history—but it is history. The Phantom’s no lawgiver, he rules over no one. He’s an African with African roots going back nearly 500 years. Jeff and Mike bring the tribal peoples of Bangalla to life with all due dignity…
… The 21st Phantom is as vital as ever, easily a dozen years shy of the prime of life (I think of him as 42, tops) and the presumed 22nd Phantom-in-waiting is coming into his own at 17, pursuing his secondary education overseas, courting Manju in the Mountain City, and, in the weeks ahead, maybe something will develop with Kadia Sahara in Mawitaan. Diana wants to see Kit with Kadia because it thwarts the Mozz prophecy. Heloise, who doesn’t know the prophecy, hopes to spark a romance because Kadia, a troubled soul, is her best friend and she thinks Kit would be good for Kadia. And, naturally enough, she misses her brother. She doesn’t want him to return to his studies in Asia…
… I outlined a sequence like that [where Kit the younger inherits family heritage] years ago and just recently thought about wrapping it into The Spark, the new daily story Mike and I are working on [link added]. It suddenly felt wrong, as if it were running counter to what The Spark is all about. It was pulling in too many elements from other adventures and just felt wrong to me. Kit’s debut as a Phantom is a story in its own right. It’ll happen.
Tony, who has written The Phantom comic strip for the past quarter century, also ponders the State of Newspaper Comic Strips.
The future of Phantom newspaper stories in newspapers? That’s over. Everything hangs on the uncertain online future. Of course, sometimes things seem to be unfolding in a certain way even if they’re not. In 2020, Hearst took KFS out of the Entertainment & Syndication Division and made it a part of Hearst Newspaper Group. I wondered then if Hearst wasn’t looking to unload the newspaper group, comics and all—and I hoped it wouldn’t be to Gannett, sharks known for gutting everything they buy. That was five years ago, hasn’t happened yet.
I see your question in two parts, really: Will the strips exist? And if so, will they be produced by professional artists and writers? I’d like to think Mike and Jeff and I aren’t the last of our kind, but we probably are. We’ve been professionally employed in the arts our entire lives but none of us earn our living on the Phantom…
and
… That said, the syndicate is a black box, I know as much about it as you do. I have no idea what it has for resources, what’s feasible, what’s a nonstarter…
Also touched on is the collaborative effort:
… My background is in journalism, so you might think of the script as a reporting job on the Who, What, Why, When, Where and How. It’s a fully formed continuity. As visual storytellers, Mike and Jeff very capably take it from there. They bring to life flat words on a page. They might add panels or delete panels to serve the art; as long as the same narrative work’s getting done, that’s fine with me. The artists have composition issues to solve. In that, my role is abstract and strictly on the front end: Keep the word count down so as not to restrict the artists’ options…
An interesting and informative Q&A for Phantom Phans and followers of newspaper comics.
Comics are preposterous. Done well, they’re preposterous in a way that delights or intrigues the reader, who willingly slides up or down the suspension-of-disbelief scale as needed. If a man greets the day in a cave, gives his intrepid mountain wolf a pat on the head, dons a purple costume and rides off on a white horse, that’s already an easy 3 on a suspension-of-disbelief scale from 1 to 10.
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