Cultivating the reading habit in me was my father’s initiative ( which I have mentioned in my earlier blog “ The Reader in Me “), however my mother too was not far behind in helping me inculcate the habit of reading in a defining way.
She was an avid reader and had a membership of the Victoria Library located just adjacent to the Sitla Devi Temple , on the main road , in Mahim , Mumbai. My alma mater, Victoria High School was just across the road on the same side and I often used to accompany my mother to the Library which was very efficiently run by the Merchant brothers.
Barely 6 or 7 , I got hold of a variety of reading material for kids at the Library .Champak, Chacha Chowdhury, Mandrake the Magician and Bahadur used to be my favourites. But the one which held most of my attention was Phantom. The masked and costumed crime fighter, who was alive since 400 years ( a myth ) and referred to as ‘ The Ghost who Walks ‘, was not an ordinary comic character, and so I decided to dig a bit deeper into the Phantom Story.
Lee Falk, a very talented cartoonist and story teller, started a daily newspaper strip by the name of Phantom, depicting the brave crime buster, on the 17th of February 1936 in America and graduated to a coloured Sunday strip in May 1939. Lee Falk wanted a grey outfit for Phantom, however due to a mistake by the colourist at the printing stage, the colour of the outfit instead of grey turned purple and so it stands till this day.
The fabled Skull Cave, the abode of the Ghost who walks, in the deep woods of the jungles of Bangalla, somewhere in Africa and Guran, Phantom’s friend and chief of the Bandaran Pygmy tribe, alongwith Devil, Phantom’s mountain Wolf and his horse Hero, became famous alongside the great Phantom. His ring with a skull imprint leaving a skull mark on the chin of the baddies from a Phantom punch, won accolades too. The comic series went on to get International acclaim and was printed and distributed almost across the world .
The Phantom, under an oath to destroy crime, greed and injustice is a legend that has survived the test of time as compared to many other masked supernatural comic heroes and has been able to hold on to millions of readers across the world, since several decades. There is no doubt that the Ghost who Walks is a legendary fable, he is a bringer of peace and justice and a hero who will never die. Hats off to Lee Falk for creating Phantom. Lee Falk died in 1999, but his creation still lives on.
We the mortals of this world need a Phantom in real life too…..don’t we ?.