Writer: Ben Raab Artist: Pat Quinn(p), Quinn and Ken Wheaton(i), Joe Bucco(c) Publisher: Moonstone
The revolving writers of The Phantom exemplify the way continuity with reference to a long-standing character should work. Ben Raab's continuity naturally stands out from the previous issues' continuity, and yet there's no real doubt that both featured the bona-fide character. The Ghost Who Walks. The Phantom
Raab positions his players in the roles that he helped establish for them. Diana Palmer-Walker is the U.N. Director of Afro-Asian Affairs. Kit Walker is her aide de husband--essentially the role that Bill Clinton would fulfill if his wife becomes President, that is of course assuming we survive Bush' reign of terra.
Little does the outside world know that Kit Walker is actually one of the many men and women who wore the guise of the Phantom. Raab then gives the Phantom a real secret identity. Traditionally, Kit Walker is merely a name the Phantom used to assume when traveling out of Bangalla.
It is from the continuity roles Raab weaves his story of skynappings that leave a familiar feeling among the Walkers. Raab quickly involves the Phantom through Diana's ties to the United Nations, and this leads to Pat Quinn, and his fellow artists Ken Wheaton and Joe Bucco, putting the Phantom into action, action and action while not contradicting the continuity of Lee Falk. Instead, the creative team makes the peculiar line item in the Phantom code a running joke that also serves as a way to plausibly weaken the odds of his winning.
My one caveat, and I'm sure Raab saw this coming, is that the story hinges on a very old character, and there seems to be a discrepancy in Pat Quinn's artwork depicting a thirties styled flashback and Raab's contemporary story. Unless a sliding time scale or true immortality is employed in the plot, the conversation between Diana and the Phantom simply cannot have happened. Since by rights it was another Phantom who met the age-old Phantom adversary.
Raab cannot be chastised too much since Lee Falk himself originated the conceit. The contemporary Phantom seen in the strips and the comic books, published all around the world, I may add, is the same hero who fell in love with Diana in the thirties, and this is the same thirties Diana who fell in love with him. You could argue that perhaps the Phantom legacy has just been falling in love with brunettes named Diana--Freud would love it, but it's a tough argument to cut with Occum's Razor. Still there's some real confusion plotwise though not as much as another time-line muddled story that in addition made the reader nauseous.
