Dr Hermes Reviews - THE PHANTOM

THE HYDRA MONSTER (Dec 17, 2001) From October 1973, this was adapted from Lee Falk's newspaper strip by Frank S. Shawn (actually Ron Goulart again), and it's decent but nothing special. The premise is extremely similar to the earlier THE SCORPIA MENACE but done a bit better. The secret conspiracy is more convincing, the looting of a country which has just suffered an earthquake adds a touch of genuine evll, and there is a little bit of mystery as to which of the secondary characters (or both of them, or neither) are working for Hydra. So this book is a pleasant couple of hours, but if you'd never heard of the Phantom, you wouldn't be excited by this and rush out to find more Phantom books. The Ghost Who Walks makes a competent, solid detective and crimefighter. He doesn't have any blinding flashes of deductive genius but he proceeds in a straightforward, manhunter sort of way and gets the job done. Sometimes things are made a little too easy for him-- all those unlocked windows and convenient secret records in plain view-- and it would be more compelling if he had to deal with some more desperate split-second decisions and escapes, but then he's been doing this all his life and he's good at manuevering his opponents. Once or twice, he tricks double agents into doing exactly what he wants. One of the most likeable things about the Phantom is that, despite his upbringing and wardrobe, he's basically a normal guy. He has a lovely, intelligent girlfriend and expects to get married and raise a family at some point. (In fact, the survival of the Phantom dynasty depends on his doing this.) Compared to the bitter, solitary heroes like the Shadow or Batman or even Sherlock Holmes, he's essentially well-balanced emotionally. We see him travelling with Diana Palmer, enjoying picnics and socializing with her friends completely at ease (although he does keep those shades on to hide the mask...) Devil makes a good showing as the Phantom's partner. He's not quite beyond the limits of possibility for a trained animal (although when he dives into the river to pull out a sack with his master in it is a bit much. Just how did they teach him to do that trick?) and his intimidation factor is a real asset. (My sister has two animals that are almost pure wolf, and although yes I know that there are no documented cases of wolves attacking people, still there's something about the sly gleam in their eyes...) By the way, does anyone know if a wolf could actually keep pace with a horse, and for how long? It always seemed a bit demanding on Devil to expect him to hurry along behind the Phantom on his white horse. On the other hand, they do chase deer and other animals, so maybe for a short distance, it wouldn't be asking too much. There are a couple of details about the sinister organization in this story that bother me. It's just not believable for a second that members of a super-secret, hush-hush, kill-yourself-if-you're-discovered group would all shave their heads, tattoo a V on their craniums and then wear wigs the rest of their lives. D'Oh! It's just asking to be found out! How about a secret handshake instead?! The other misstep is in the structure of the conspiracy. The branch which the Phantom tackles is called the Vultures, scavengers who specialize in looting disaster areas. Of course, this is a particularly vile crime and they make good villains. But the Vultures are only a section of a bigger, 400-hundred year old crime organization called Hydra. Now, Hydra itself doesn't really figure in this book and it seems a shame to not make more use of the concept before demolishing it. It would have been nice if the Phantom had later clashed with the assassination branch of Hydra and then in a third book actually tracked down the mastermind (maybe as a member of Parliament or a famous actor or something.) Of course, Marvel Comics made use of the concept in their "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." strip in STRANGE TALES, starting in 1965. Here, Hydra is a similar worldwide espionage ring, wearing singularly unattractive baggy green uniforms. The Phantom strip appeared in 1968, but to be fair, Falk was probably not drawing on the name of Fury's running opponents. The basic myth of the Hydra, two heads replacing one, obviously lends itself to the name of a villainous group.

THE GOGGLE-EYED PIRATES (May 22, 2003) From February 1974, this is the last Phantom novel still to be reviewed. I wasn't looking forward to the chore. It was written by Ron Goulart under the Frank Shawn name and it's just as lifeless, drab and unexciting as the other entries he did for this series. I really wish Lee Falk could have put in the time to adapt his own stories for more of these paperbacks than he did. The books he adapted personally had style and color; he was interested in them, and took care to make them do justice to his creation. THE GOGGLE-EYED PIRATES has all the earmarks of hackwork. Simple blunt sentences with no vivid settings or characters, and plenty of one sentence paragraphs. Perfunctory action sequences told with a bare minimum of description, which makes throwing a punch or taking a gun away from someone sound as trivial as lighting a match. Dialogue that not only is flat and uncreative, but doesn't even have a context to give it any interest. Characters with no noticeable personalities, only an arbitrary quirk or recurring obssession. It's pretty dire. To further drag the reading experience down, this wasn't even one of Falk`s better plots. The Phantom nonchalantly goes after a gang of modern pirates who wear goofy outfits on heists. With thirty years of great stories to choose from at this point, why did they go with the most mundane episodes available? Because they were recent and hopefully topical? It would seem so. Certainly there were many adventures in the Phantom's newspaper strip continuity that could have made these paperbacks match the best of the Doc Savage or Shadow books, but either the editor of Falk himself went with some poor choices. Toward the end of this book, though, there is a neat scene where, aboard a luxury liner with a time bomb hidden somewhere, the Phantom uses an old but believable ruse on one of the pirates. Diana Palmer shows up just long enough to get her silly self kidnapped and held hostage once again. Devil hangs around a bit and then seems to fall off the Earth. The book would benefit from both of their contributions; Diana usually is an active, resourceful heroine who should know better than to obligingly chug half a glass of wine offered by a creep who has just obligingly told her he's one of the pirates. And Devil adds so much charm to any story that his absence is another drawback for this book. The only good thing I can say about THE GOOGLE-EYED PIRATES is that Goulart does in passing mention a dive called Lance O`Casey's Bistro. Good old Lance was a freewheeling sailor who had a long-running backup feature in WHIZ COMICS through the 1940s. A dotting of similar references to appropriate characters from old pulps and comics might have given this book something to lend interest as the story plods along, but no such luck. Of the fifteen books in this series, some are excellent and a few more are enjoyable.... the remaining half are mediocre at best. It`s too bad more care wasn't taken on the adaptations, but we have to be happy with what gems we find in the gravel.

KILLER`S TOWN (April 16, 2002) From December 1973, this is more like it. KILLER'S TOWN is based on the original 1966 newspaper strip, but it was adapted by Lee Falk himself and that makes all the difference. To be honest, Falk did not write ornate prose or use clever stylistic tricks-- just straightforward, clear accounts with a great sense for the dramatic moment. You can see why Mandrake and The Phantom were so popular for long all over the world. This is one of the Ghost Who Walk's most important cases, too. Instead of rescuing a kidnapped child or retrieving a stolen idol, here he steps in single-handed to smash a genuine threat to innoccent people everywhere and a real challenge to law. In a disputed area bordering Bangalla, an old derelict named Matthew Crumb reigns over an abandoned ghost town and this is just the right set-up that American gangster Killer Koy has been looking for. He buys all rights to the place and establishes an independent free port, Killer's Town. Here he offers (for a hefty price) refuge to criminals of any country, where gambling and drinking and classy hookers are available. It's like the worst of the wildest Old West boom towns. The Bangalla police and the Jungle Patrol and even the United Nations are unable to lawfully enter this din of iniquity. But in the Deep Woods, sitting on the Skull Throne, a man rises whose family for four hundred years has lived just to smash this sort of thing... Falk presents The Phantom as a figure who deserves his legend. He's stealthy enough to prowl through the Killer's Town unseen (even leaving his Skull Mark on Koy's drinking glass next to the crook), tough enough to drop one thug after another with a single punch, but still a humanitarian who rescues an abducted young woman and treats a wounded trader. The hero closest to The Phantom would have to be Doc Savage --in this story, The Ghost Who Walks even arranges the founding of a new hospital for the natives. Personally, I preferred the earliest stories, where The Phantom operated in a mythical realm seemingly part of India. But (despite the occasional tiger) Bangalla has by now long been presented as African. Falk is non-judgemental in his treatment of the natives. They are certainly not servile subjects under The Phantom's rule, nor are they vicious savages aching to run amok. No, these are just people of different types and personalities, coming from different tribes of varying specialties (one group is mostly fishermen, another cattle raisers, some westernized, a few still warlike and troublesome. There is very little preaching about either the evils of colonialism or the ongoing civil wars in Africa. Falk seemed interested more in stories than lectures. The book has an odd structure, too. Halfway through-- just has you might think the main thrust of the story is over, The Phantom has to track down two thugs fleeing from Killer's Town. One is a murderous psycho named Pretty and his unwilling guide is a minor criminal (who's not hopelessly bad) called Moogar. KILLER'S TOWN also explains something I've always wondered about, too. The Jungle Patrol is not a police force of any nation, it's a peace-keeping organization funded by seven different countries. Its jurisdiction is the vast interior area claimed by no one nation. And although Falk has gotten a lot of mileage over the years from the way the mysterious Commander of the Parol leaves and receives orders, there are just SO many clues to the mysterious Commander's identity, that Colonel Weeks has to be playing dumb if he doesn't know it's a man in a mask who has two rings and two guns, and who has a thing for skull emblems. And although I always enjoy the way an old man will meet 'our' Phantom and think it's the same Ghost Who Walks he met forty years ago, you'd think that at least ONCE someone would say, "Hey, was that your daddy or something in the same suit?"

THE SWAMP RATS (Jan 7, 2003) From April 1974, this is another in the series of Phantom books adapted from Lee Falk`s original story by Ron Goulart (under the name Frank S. Shawn) Like the other entries by Goulart, it`s lifeless and flat. I give up on the guy. His own stories under his own name may well be clever and inventive, but none of that shows in the books he wrote to fill out a series started by other writers. The Phantom books, the twelve new Avenger titles, even THE CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN novel he did with the DC comics heroes... all are mighty poor. The basic premise of THE SWAMP RATS is perfectly serviceable, with all the elements needed to tell a tense thriller. There are a group of escaped convicts (all serving life sentences) who take up residence in the treacherous, nearly impassable Great Swamp of Bangalla. There`s a nubile young blonde bravely looking for a guide into that bog to find her lost uncle, there`s a basically good youth gone astray who ends up a fugitive in the swamp, and of course there`s the Ghost Who Walks and the Jungle Patrol, deciding the situation needs looking into. As well, there is the haunted figure of Diamond Jack, a demented millionaire who has been lurking in the swamp for decades, hoarding his treasure and setting traps for anyone who gets too close. Jack has the potential to be a poignant character, especially considering the ironic fate of his wealth. So the basic story is fine, another example of Lee Falk's experience and skill in setting up a worthwhile challenge for his hero and throwing in some twists and turns along the way. But Goulart does nothing to flesh it out. He simply sets out the plain sequence of events in a dry, uninvolved style that reads like the minutes of a business conference. His action sequences never come to life, the Phantom never seems imposing and the other characters never become more than one or two speech quirks. The swamp itself is never described in a way that makes it feel real, it`s a mere stage with a few props. We learn nothing new about the Phantom lore or history, and we don`t see the Ghost Who Walks say anything revealing or insightful; he seems almost determined not to let the reader know what`s thinking. And while Diana Palmer can take a novel or two off for some variety, I hate to see a Phantom book where Devil is not even mentioned. What, was he getting shots or something when this story happened? The partnership between the man and wolf is one of my favorite things about this series. It`s a shame because the potential is there for a really good adventure story, but this seems to have been just dashed off as quickly as possible to get a check. I wonder if Lee Falk read these novelizations of his stories and what he thought of them. Considering how well the ones he adapted himself turned out, it`s too bad he couldn`t have put the time into doing them all (and maybe a new story or two that he had been brewing in the back of his mind).