# Any fans of The Phantom? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** comic-strips\ **Created:** [April 23, 2021, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626 "2021-04-23T16:19:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626/41 "2021-04-24T02:34:19Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > The Phantom is very rarely seen-his very existence is doubted by most. If a lowlife happens to give his/her opinion that the Phantom is really a woman, it will be given no more credence than any other rumor. Or, indeed the opinion that the Phantom is a man. Random Criminal: “Wait, I thought the Phantom was dude?!” Heloise/The Phantom XXII: “That’s because no one wants to admit they got their ass kicked by the Ghost Who’s a Girl” [proceeds to kick ass]. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626/42 "2021-04-24T09:27:28Z")
> **[Costume](https://thephantom.fan/phantom-mythos/costume/)** > > The Phantoms Costume As part of the official uniform, the Phantom wears a black mask and a purple skintight bodysuit, and carries two .45 pistols in a special belt with a skull-buckle. While there … > Over the years, the Phantom’s costume has been published in an array of colors: > Purple in USA, Australia, Canada, Egypt, etc > Blue in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, etc > Red in France, Italy, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Lebanon, etc > Brown in New Zealand > Green sometimes in Yugoslavia ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626/43 "2021-04-24T11:29:16Z")
I recall Diana finding a woman’s Phantom suit in the old comic that is being rerun. ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626/44 "2021-04-24T12:04:06Z")
Well, there you go. If having a female Phantom would ruin the whole bit, the whole bit’s already been ruined in canon since the late 1800s, when Julie Walker took on the mantle. Also, the Phantom is, by rumor, an actual phantom, the Ghost Who Walks, a spirit of vengeance, not an immortal living human. And spirits often don’t play by our normal rules of sex and gender. In medieval demonologies, for example, the male incubus and female succubus were often considered to be not two different demons but the same demon of lust in two different forms. A phantom that sometimes appears as a man and sometimes as a woman would be far from the most illogical or inconsistent element of legends about a Ghost Who Walks. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626/45 "2021-04-24T13:03:58Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > If having a female Phantom would ruin the whole bit, the whole bit’s already been ruined in canon since the late 1800s, when Julie Walker took on the mantle. Is that from newspaper comics, or comic books? ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626/46 "2021-04-24T13:14:27Z")
It was the [32nd Sunday Phantom story](https://www.phantomwiki.org/The_Female_Phantom_(story)), written by Lee Falk, and originally ran in Sunday newspapers from July 20 - October 12, 1952. (Upthread, I bungled the cite, and wrote that the story ran in 1969; I think I got the date of publication of a reprint collection mixed up with the date of publication of the original newspaper serial). ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626/47 "2021-04-24T14:29:05Z")
Thanks, gdave. Which Phantom is the 21st century guy? I presume he is the grandson or great grandson of the Comics Kingdom Phantom, about 1940. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626/48 "2021-04-24T14:31:46Z")
All I can recall about Diana finding the female Phantom suit is that she puts it on, there are the two standard pudgy, light haired, not terribly intelligent bad guys, who refer to her as “a dame in a funny suit” and the Phantom rescues Dianna from being trapped in a mine. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626/49 "2021-04-24T14:56:48Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > (which “coincidentally” recapitulate all of the various iconic eras of his comics history, while getting in a kind of mean spirited dig at Joel Schumacher). I’d read somewhere that Schumacher actually thought it quite funny. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626/50 "2021-04-24T17:17:52Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > The Phantom would look very different being a woman than a man, dispelling the rumor that he is an immortal ghost, Are you familiar with the comic? If the Phantom can be an immortal ghost, is it that much more unbelievable that the Phantom can sometimes be a man and sometimes be a woman? Which characteristic is more fantastic? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626/51 "2021-04-24T19:22:42Z")
It would go over better if it had begun three hundred years ago. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-fans-of-the-phantom/940626.md?page=2)