Phantom Artist: Lou Manna

Lou Manna is a well know US based artist, with his illustrations commonly appearing in comic books and in our social feeds, a professional artist for almost 40 years.

Lou has a long career within the comic book industry, working for a variety of well known publishing houses including Marvel, DC, Heroic Publishing, Full Mag, Asta and JC Comics on titles such as All Star Squadron, What Ifs, The House of Secrets, The Unexpected, The House of Mystery, Young All Stars, Who’s Who, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Icicle, Burma Sky, Salem St. James and many more.

Besides his work as an illustrator, Lou has also branched out and worked on other creative projects throughout his career, including Storyboards, Posters, Concepts, Spot Illustrations, Toy Designs, Character Creation and more.

Lou has worked on the Phantom with a variety of publishers, including Moonstone Books in the US, Shakti Comics in India and Frew Publications in Australia. His work on the Phantom has appeared as both comic book cover art and within comic book as comic strip art.

Lou’s work on the cover of Phantom comic books can be seen below (with colors completed by other artists).

Lou’s comic strip art can be found within Moonstone Books, illustrating Phantom comic strips for stories titled ‘The Hunt‘ (a graphic novel published in 2003, story written by Ben Raab) and ‘Valley of the Golden Men‘ (a graphic novel published in 2004, story written by Tom DeFalco).

For Frew Publications, Lou’s Phantom artwork not only appeared on the front covers of editions 1776 and 1777 (as seen above), but he both wrote and illustrated the comic strip story within, a two part story titled ‘Full Circle‘.

Lou Manna’s work on the Phantom is both striking and appealing to the eye, especially when focusing on the shadow work within his illustrations. The Phantom is illustrated in a manner which is true to life, in scenes which make us wonder what adventures the Phantom may be on.

Lou has a large selection of Phantom art for sale (a small selection can be seen below), and is also open for commission work if you have a unique illustration in mind.