Felix and the Phantom
"Felix and the Phantom" is an episode of the comic strip "Felix" which features a parody of the Phantom.
History
"Felix" was a newspaper comic strip created by Swedish writer-artist Jan Lööf, and syndicated by the Danish syndicate PIB. It started in 1967 and was published in newspapers, comic books and albums in several countries, but mainly in Denmark and Sweden.
The main character Felix is a young boy, who experiences many adventures. Lööf was greatly inspired by other comic strips and frequently used cameo apperances or references to other comic strips. "Felix and the Phantom" is more than a cameo appearance though, as the entire story is about Felix meeting a very twisted and parodical version of the Phantom.
King Features Syndicate and their Swedish representative Bulls was however not so pleased with the story, and the dispute with Lööf and PIB kept the story out of print for several years. The matter was however resolved, and the story was first collected in album form in 1980.
Jan Lööf is a great admirer of Wilson McCoy's version of the Phantom, and has even written an afterword for a Swedish album reprinting Phantom stories drawn by McCoy.
Plot summary
In the end of the previous episode; "Felix and the Flying Saucers", Felix returns to Earth after travelling through space and time. He is helped by a mysterious man wearing sunglasses and a trench coat, who tells Felix that the year is 1969, the same year that Felix left Earth. The man notices that he has lost his ring in the ocean when he helped Felix, and rents diving equipment to find the ring again. But while they are searching for the ring, the man, his dog Devil and Felix are taken aboard the submarine Nautilus, commanded by Captain Nemo.
Nemo explains to Felix that after a nuclear war in 1999, civilization restarted and also began with a new Year Zero. So Felix is not back on Earth the same year he left ,but actually thousands of years later. Nemo helps them find the ring, but when he sees that it is the Skull Ring he realizes the man in the trench coat is actually The Phantom. Nemo holds the Phantom for ransom, and sells him to the leaders of the underworld. They make the Phantom lead them to The Skull Cave, but Felix and Devil follow them. At the Skull Cave, they meet Guran, but the Phantom tells him not to fight the criminals and instead let them take all the treasures from the cave.
When Felix and Devil arrive, the Phantom tells the story of how the Phantom from 2000 years ago never had any children, so a man named Alex was elected to become the new Phantom. All Phantoms since then are descendants of the man named Alex, who incidentally is a character Felix met in a previous story. But the current Phantom has lost all his confidence and will to remain as Phantom. He leaves for America, but Felix does not want to give up on him yet and also travels to America. At the airport, he is greeted by Alexander Van Toomen, who is the father of the current Phantom. Guran had called him, and together they go to a carnival where the Phantom is working, to encourage him to become the Phantom again.
At the carnival, Felix provokes a gangster that threaten to return the next day to destroy the carnival. Felix persuades the Phantom to try and stop the gangsters, and succeeds. The gangsters are part of a crime syndicate led by the mysterious Doktor M, who mr Van Toomen has tried to locate for several years. Felix however discovers that mr Van Toomen is a sleepwalker, who in his sleep drinks a potion that turns him into the monstrous Doktor M. As Doktor M, he forces his son the Phantom to drink the same potion, which turns him into a monster also. They give the potion to Devil aswell, who turns into a giant flying dog. They fly to Transylvania on Devil, and Felix is given a reward for exposing the truth behind Doktor M's crime syndicate.
Reprints
Denmark
- Politiken (newspaper, 1969)
- Felix og Fantomet (1989)
Sweden
- Dagens Nyheter November 5, 1969 – March 10, 1970
- Jan Lööf's Felix (1980)
- Felix och Fantomen (1989)
- Jan Lööfs serier #2 (2009)
- Felix och Fantomen (2014, in color)