The Phantom (Gold Key/King/Charlton)
The Phantom, published between 1962 and 1977, is the longest running American comic book dedicated to The Phantom. Launched by Gold Key in 1962, it was overtaken by King Comics in 1966, and finally, in 1969, by Charlton Comics. Its last issue, #74 was published in January 1977.
History
During the Gold Key years, Bill Lignante served as sole artist. The scripts were generally based on Lee Falk stories, although three all new stories were written by Lignante himself. Lignante continued during the King era, which featured more rewritten Falk stories, as well as new stories by Bill Harris.
When Charlton took over the title, Jim Aparo was appointed main artist for a little more than a year, until he was replaced by Pat Boyette, with Joe Gill [citation needed] serving as writer. Another change following the title being passed onto Charlton was that each issue included three shorter stories instead of one longer, which had been the standard during the previous publishers.
In 1974, starting with #60, the magazine was renamed "The New Phantom", and each issue once again included only one story, initially from the production of Fratelli Spada. The last 11 issues included new, original full length stories written by Gill and several other authors, and with art by a handful of different artist, most notably Don Newton who also wrote the story in the last issue published.
In total 73 issues was released, since #29 doesn't exist. When Charlton restarted the series they decided not to continue where King Comics had left off, but instead chose #30 to be their first issue. It has been speculated that #29 had been published in foreign countries instead, but that was not the case. All produced stories were published in the US, and it was only a case of creative issue numbering that led to the disappearance of #29.
Issue overview
Gold Key
| 1962 | 1 | |||||
| 1963 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 1964 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | ||
| 1965 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 1966 | 16 | 17 | ||||
King Comics
| 1966 | 18 | 19 | |||||||
| 1967 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
Charlton Comics
| 1969 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| 1970 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 |
| 1971 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 |
| 1972 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 |
| 1973 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 |
| 1974 | 60 | 61 | 62 | |||
| 1975 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 |
| 1976 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | |
| 1977 | 74 | |||||
See also
