The Phantom: The World's First Superhero Premiered In 1936
By February 13, 2021
The Phantom is a rarity among superheroes. As one of the first costumed superheroes, he paved the way for characters like Spider-Man and Batman while creator Lee Falk showed independent writers and illustrators the importance of holding onto their creations. Phantom fever may not grip audiences in the same way as characters from the Marvel and D.C. universes, but this hero who's a little bit Tarzan and a little bit Sherlock Holmes will always have a place in the hearts of true superhero fans.
The Phantom: Origins
Before the Phantom made his way through the mysterious jungles of Bangalla, Lee Falk was just a student at the University of Illinois, where he submitted stories and poems to the college paper before pitching his first comic strip, Mandrake The Magician, to King Features Syndicate. The young writer and illustrator waited all day to meet with the company's general manager, Joe Connolly, who promptly forgot about the meeting and left the young man in his waiting room. Upon realizing his mistake, he took Falk out for dinner, a show, and drinks, and at that point, he couldn't very well reject him.
Mandrake The Magician premiered on June 11, 1934, and fortunately, it was good. In fact, it ran for the next 80 years under various writers and illustrators. Falk continued writing it until his death in 1999, but he quickly begged off illustration duties in favor of developing his next idea. He poured himself into the concept of The Phantom, structuring the first few months of the comic before presenting it to K.F.S. He got the green light almost immediately, and the comic premiered on February 17, 1936, just before Falk's 25th birthday.
Growing Pains
Initially, the Phantom was going to be a wealthy playboy who fought crime by night, but Falk soon had a change of heart and moved the character to the jungle. Inspired by the work of Rupyard Kipling, he gave the Phantom a wolf companion named Devil, a horse, a group of pygmies that worked alongside him, and his own hideout, the Skull Cave. If Falk had stuck with his original conception, Batman and Superman would be even more indebted to the Phantom.
Falk was influenced the adventure stories of his youth and wanted the Phantom to be the same sort of hero, but it took him some time to figure out exactly how to use the purple-suited protagonist to tell his pirate and detective stories. Less than a decade after the Phantom's first Sunday strip, America entered World War II, and the stories in the comic turned more toward themes of espionage. At the time, Falk was serving as the chief of a foreign language radio division of the Office of War Information, which understandably influenced his work.
