Fantomen Nr.10/1984
by Rolf Gohs
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- The Phantom's Unknown Sister
- Script: Idi Kharelli (Eirik Ildahl)
- Art: Georges Bess
- First published in Fantomen Nr.10/1984 by Semic, Sweden and now appears in Australia for the first time. Original cover shown on the left, thanks to Ulf Granberg.
- Message from the Publisher:
Presenting - an adventure from the Scandinavian archives, circa 1984. The Phantom's Unknown Sister appears in a Frew edition for the first time, which allows us the liberty of claiming it to be a "new story"!
Just as interesting as the story is the artwork! Georges Bess portrays The Phantom as a very youthful, slimly-built figure. However, what he lacks in physical bulk, he makes up for with athleticism and a fierce determination to make a ragtail gang of criminals pay for their misdeeds! The Bess approach to the art is fascinating. All the characters are heavily stylised and Bess has injected a delicate touch, often dispensing entirely with background to highlight the players - especially The Phantom! There are touches of Ray Moore's style and many highly inventive action scenes built around a realistic jungle background. The Bess style changed quite dramatically in later years as he began to bulk out all his characters and especially The Phantom! Bess has been in retirement for many years, but if you check the Frew Phantom chronology, you will find many stories he illustrated commencing with Black Ivory and The Moment of Freedom - we published way back in 1985. Easily his most popular story to appear in a Frew edition was The Story of Devil which first appeared in #1013 in 1992 and was reprinted by demand in 1996. The Story of Devil had a huge impact with readers and was easily the biggest standard issue seller in 1992.
[Comment from Guran: see the following Frew issues for other stories by Georges Bess: #825A, #858A, #872A, #878, #887A, #895, #896, #897, #951, #952, #1030, #1013, #1068, #1215, #1359, #1403. There are another 21 stories by Georges Bess from the Semic/Egmont archive (1977-1986) that have never been published by Frew and hopefully more will be printed soon.]
Writer "Idi Kharelli" (Eirik Ildahl) puts together an engrossing script and a powerful and unexpected climax! The story shows off The Phantom at his vengeful best, gambling against the odds on a few occasions, but gambling as only The Ghost Who Walks can - and should!
I hope you enjoy the adventure!
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