We have a theme week to end March and begin April: Jungle Jive week. We'll feature four tales this week from the comic book Africa.

First up is the second and final story from Harvey Comic Hits #56 (1952) by Lee Falk and Ray Moore. The Phantom faces a dragon god, in an edited version of the Phantom’s Sunday newspaper continuity from July 6, 1947 to November 16, 1947. Thanks to reader Darci for pointing out where to find that information, and if you’re interested in the Phantom, you can find the website here. The site has not been updated since 2007, but for our purposes it is still a valuable resource.

In “The Dragon-god of Death!” the Phantom rides off alone to fight the dragon menace, telling his girlfriend, Diana, to stay home with the Bandar tribe. He gets himself in a mess so the pygmies and Diana have to ride to his rescue. But it takes the Phantom’s dog, Devil, to save the day. See? It pays to be prepared with back-up. I hope the Phantom learned a lesson.

There’s an ad in the back of the issue promoting one of the most iconic of the “drug menace” comics, Teen-Age Dope Slaves. It’s a very salacious title for a reprint of a sequence from the Rex Morgan, M.D. newspaper comic strip.

The other story from this issue; click on the picture:

I never thought much about where the Phantom is headquartered. Some jungle, somewhere, in a cave. One jungle and one cave is much like another, I thought. But then I read that originally the jungle-based Phantom stories were set in India (even using the derivative name, “Bengali,”) but were at some point re-set in Africa. In the Evansville Courier and Press of January 19, 2012, writer Andrew A. Smith, discussing his lifelong love of the Phantom comics wrote, “Sometimes The Phantom's jungle adventures seemed to be in India, sometimes Africa. (For the record, the strip was set in India in the 1930s, but The Phantom's home turf gradually shifted to Africa by the 1960s, and has been there ever since.)”

Okay, sounds good enough for me, and the only reason I point it out is in this story the Phantom’s girlfriend Diana is arrested for stealing a necklace from a maharajah, who is strictly Indian. The story itself...well, it’s fairly typical Phantom business, i.e., getting Diana out of trouble. What would that woman, born of privilege,* do without the Phantom? She'd probably be home in America married to a banker, spending afternoons having cocktails with her friends at the country club, that's what. Which would mean the Phantom wouldn't have much to do except hang around the Skull Cave, sitting on his stone throne.

From Harvey Comic Hits #56 (1952):

*According to a Wikipedia entry on Diana Palmer: “Diana was born into a wealthy family, to mother Lily Palmer and father Henry Zapman.” Zapman! I like that name.

As a comic character, the Phantom has been around for three-quarters of a century. Of course, that’s nothing compared to the 400 years of ancestral history the original 1936 Phantom had behind him. Phantoms all: an unending line of physically perfect men who chose to live their lives in a jungle, in a cave, wearing a purple suit and hood that just must’ve been hotter than — well…to each his own.

Lee Falk

The Phantom didn’t start out his comic strip career as that descendant of the first Phantom, a shipwrecked sailor who donned the purple union suit. Nope, the Phantom started out as Jimmy Webb, a rich playboy who became the Phantom. Within a short time Phantom creator Lee Falk had a brainstorm and dismissed that early incarnation of the Phantom as if it had never been, then re-made the former playboy into the cave-dwelling jungle hero. It worked. The Phantom has been one of the most consistently popular comic characters ever, well-known in many countries, even if not so much known nowadays in the country of his origin, the U.S.A.

In 1943 he was popular enough to get his own movie serial starring Tom Tyler, who had also played another iconic hero, Captain Marvel. The Phantom serial from Columbia was Tyler’s last starring role. He died a few years later at the young age of 50. The Phantom serial is available online here, where you can watch all 15 episodes.

This story, “The Terror of the Tiny People” is from Harvey Comic Hits #51, 1951. Diana, the Phantom’s squeeze, looks air-conditioned in her mini-sundress, much more so than the Phantom, wearing his usual uniform of purple sweatsuit with mask and hoodie.

I showed another story from this issue in Pappy's #1065.