The Phantom 35: An elemental force for good.

This Phantom post is somewhat of an anomaly for The Dad Who Walks. As with Halley's Comet, you may not see its like again during your lifetime: it doesn't feature the writing of Lee Falk or the drawing of his three great artists, Ray Moore, Wilson McCoy, or Sy Barry.

This modern tale makes the intriguing suggestion that The Phantom is the unwitting agent of an intelligent, unseen power, and that this universal intelligence deploys "powerful unseen forces" on his behalf.

I don't have a problem with this idea. In fact, it actually makes a lot of sense. Although practically none of the Phantoms die peacefully at home in bed, each one lives long enough to beget a son and raise him to young manhood.

And, what's more, not only is each son unusually good, strong and courageous like his father, but he also has that amazing Phantom "luck" -- or tendency to make it through the most horrendous of scrapes by the skin of his teeth.

As to what, or who, this universal intelligence actually is, well... I don't have to spell everything out, do I?

And later...

WRITER: Tony De Paul

ARTIST: Paul Ryan