Fantomen Nr.25/2004
by Paul Ryan & Tom Smith
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- The Black Widow
- Script: Claes Reimerthi
- Art: Paul Ryan
- First published in Fantomen Nr.25/2004 by Egmont, Scandinavia. Original cover shown on the left, thanks to Ulf Granberg.
- Message from the Publisher:
You will meet one of the most evil - and thoroughly warped female villains in Phantom history in this issue!
The Black Widow, written by Claes Reimerthi and illustrated by Paul Ryan, is part nine of our long-running First Year of The Phantom series. In this story, The Phantom meets a woman who specialises in "marrying" rich men and disposing of them as quickly as possible for financial gain. Read into "disposing", killing them or having them killed! The most chilling aspect of the story is that she is already legally married and her husband "takes care" of the new men in her life! She makes all the real life and fictional Bluebeards look like angels! To prove her guilt, The Phantom has to adopt a new image and this time around, he plays the part of an apparently wealthy and carefree playboy of impeccable manners.
Reimerthi and Ryan team brilliantly to transform the image of The Ghost Who Walks and build the adventure to a spine-tingling climax. Even The Phantom is amazed at the wickedness of the woman in question. Yet at the end of the story, he sees another side of her personality.
In a forthcoming adventure called The Eye of the Hurricane, The Phantom remembers this same female maniac, not with sympathy, let alone tenderness, but with astonishment that she was able to participate in so many illegal marriages and murders - and yet remain in love with the man who helped her in these despicable deeds her own husband!
Our 100-page Christmas Special will be the next issue (Frew #1403, on sale 17 December) and you can look forward to three new stories wrapped in Antonio Lemos covers. In the following edition, we will bring you the quite amazing new adventure, The Eye of the Hurricane. That will be issue #1404 which will be on sale on 7 January 2005.
To follow will be our 2005 Annual Special, which will be loaded with Lee Falk-Ray Moore-Sy Barry classics, most of which have been out of print for around 18 years and all of which will be finally presented in their original entirety. Naturally, we will include a replica edition as a special bonus and to maintain continuity, the replica will be of Frew #13 which originally appeared in mid-1949. The featured story is the first part of The Golden Circle, that classic Falk-Moore adventure which originally appeared in 1939-40. Have a good look at the replica edition and spot the many examples of modified artwork! In more recent times, we have brought back a great many old stories in their original state and will continue to do so until we re-issue the entire Lee Falk output. The 2005 Annual Special edition will go on sale on 14 January 2005. Including the replica edition, it will amount to some 300 pages and will again retail in Australia for only $11.00 (Including GST). That represents incredible value, because it means the retail price for the Annual Special has not increased since the appearance of the first Annual way back in 1991! As usual, we will include all the regular editorial features and lists of best-selling issues, most popular stories and most popular covers!
Some reminders on behalf of regular advertisers! Comic Quest has a wonderful back issue list of Frew Phantom titlesl including the much sought-after 1000th issue from 1991 ... Big Sky Video will shortly have a re-mastered version of the Tom Tyler Phantom movie serial on DVD and videotape ... the 2005 Phantom Diary from Mallon Publishing is now on sale!
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