The Phantom: The Complete Newspaper Dailies : 1937-1939: 2 Hardcover – December 28, 2010

I've been a fan of the strip for fifty years; and aside from the exquisite artwork, the best features of the strip have always been it's unique mythology and the beautifully written stories and dialogue. It's astonishing that the creative team behind The Phantom from the outset never gave their readers less than their best. Lee Falk, unlike many of his contemporary strip writers, never succumbed to stereotypes when casting his creation - Diana Palmer, the Phantom's longtime love-interest, is depicted as a strong and fiercely independent woman from the very first strip; the African tribesmen were never caricatured either, despite the fact that racial stereotyping was largely considered acceptable in the Jim Crow America of the 1930s. Whites and blacks alike were treated as equals.The stories in this volume, like the first, are just superb. The dialogue is uncharacteristically literate for the comics, the characters are complex and credible, and the action speeds ahead relentlessly. Buy this for yourself or for someone who wants to know what the Golden Age of comic strips was all about.

The Phantom, hero and adventurer, dressed in the tights of a circus strongman with the hood of an executioner, has delighted children and adults for decades! From the furthest, most exotic locales of the imagination, the Phantom is a world traveler and adventurer fighting injustice and piracy wherever he finds it. Generation after generation, the Phantom's mantle passes from father to son (and sometimes daughter) to be upheld and perpetuating the legend of the Man who Cannot Die!These stories contain nothing unseemly or tawdry, they are simple good clean fun with good triumphing over evil, the bad guys being punished, men want to be him and women want to be date him. His only match is that of the lovely, capable, and independent Diana Palmer, the love of his life.Open this collection of the predecessor of the modern day superheroes and open the door to adventure!

Good quality paper with black and grey tones in most panels. Ray Moore's Art is consistently good. He deserves more recognition for his work. Hermes added a few reproductions of Big Little Book panels and a few Gold Key Comics covers, but the artwork is why to buy this book. Very 1930's stylish with figures and surroundings usually in good proportion.

I liked very much The Phantom, Vol. 1 and I placed my order for Vol. 2 about a year ago. It is my all time favorite newspaper strip. I commented in my review of Vol. 1 that the reproduction was outstanding, with blackest blacks and whitest whites. I had no problem with 2 strips to a page, though given the amount of space on the page they could have been reprinted a bit larger to fully showcase Ray Moore's art.The same applies to Volume 2. The stories range from great to outstanding. Fishers of Pearls, Prisoner of the Himalayas, etc. The art in most of the book is also outstanding with solid blacks and white and shades of gray, EXCEPT for what is for me the very best Phantom story in the book: The Slave Traders.Yes the blacks are black-- so much so that the little nuances in the art showing little white spots against a dark sky illustrating the stars over the desert night sky were obliterated. And the whites? The whites are there but the grays are gone. Ray Moore's art is very nuanced, with a glorious gray tint sometimes in the background and sometimes in the foreground, giving the strips a 3-dimensional look. They were obliterated. You have individual black panels showing the desert late at night right next to white or muddy white panels (instead of gray) as if it suddenly turned to high noon and back to night time in the next panel. The Phantom's costume that should have been a dark gray is transformed into an off-white color.The overall impact is that one of Lee Falk's and Ray More's greatest and most cinematic stories was reduced to two flat surfaces-- one white and one black, with washed out backgrounds and foregrounds. . It reminded me of what Greg Theakston did to some early color comics when reprinted to books.People complained about the quality of the reproductions in volume 1 but that criticism was not justified, as those strips were faithful reproductions of the originals. Moore's art evolved and got much better- as noticeable in most of Volume 2. I should have fairly rated this book a 4-star since the story only makes up about one fifth (or less) of the book. But to do such violence to a great comic art story deserves a subtraction of one star. I hope Hermes will do better with volume 3, which I again have pre-ordered from Amazon.

Brought back old memories of reading the Sunday(I realize these are daily) King Features comic strips. I was just learning to read.I thoroughly enjoyed them!I just wish the projected publication dates were more closely met instead of being delayed by many months.However they are well worth the wait.

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Great book

Great series.