Daily Comic Strips
1936-1942
Ray Moore (1905 – 13 January 1984)
Raymond S. Moore was born in Oklahoma, but lived in Missouri for most of his life. The son of a jeweler, he attended the Saint-Louis University and started out doing commercial work. He entered the field of comics through Phil Davis, whom he assisted on ‘Mandrake the Magician’. Moore is best known as the original artist of ‘The Phantom’, together with writer Lee Falk. The series began with a daily newspaper strip on 17 February 1936, followed by a color Sunday strip on 28 May 1939; both are still running as of 2017.
Moore’s art is characterized by it’s moody and dark atmosphere, and it often features beautiful women. Ray Moore had to quit the comic in 1942 to serve in the US army. Due to an injury, he had to retire from the comic in the 1940s, leaving it to his assistant Wilson McCoy. Moore, who was as mysterious as the character he co-created (he rarely gave interviews), passed away from natural causes in Mancheter, New York in 1984.
1942-1961
Wilson McCoy (6 April 1902 – 20 July 1961)
Born in Troy, Missouri, Robert Wilson McCoy studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, The American Academy, and the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, where he later served on the faculty. As a commercial artist, he made paintings for Liberty Magazine covers, calendars, prints, pin-ups and advertisements for major companies. When his friend Ray Moore served in the military during WWII, McCoy took over the responsibilities of illustrating the syndicated newspaper strip, ‘The Phantom’. His wife, Dorothy, did the lettering.
In his artwork for this adventure comic, McCoy could draw from his own experiences as a world traveler, since he had visited far-off jungles and native tribes himself. McCoy continued to produce the strip with creator Lee Falk until his death from a heart attack in 1961, after which it was continued by Bill Lignante for a short while, and then Sy Barry. Wilson McCoy’s popular work on ‘The Phantom’ has been featured in comic books and continues to be reprinted today.
1961-1994
Sy Barry (12 March 1928 – )
Seymour Barry, brother of comic artist Dan Barry, studied at the New York School of Art and Design. When he graduated, he went to the Art Students League, while working as an assistant to his brother. In the late forties and early fifties, Sy Barry did freelance work, mainly as an inker, for comic book companies such as Gleason, Marvel and especially National, where he worked on the features ‘Jonny Peril’, ‘Rex’ and ‘Phantom Stranger’.
In the late fifties, he assisted his brother again with the inking of ‘Flash Gordon’. This job put him in contact with the King Features editors, who asked him to take over ‘The Phantom’ after Wilson McCoy’s death in 1961. After drawing the adventures of the Ghost-Who-Walks for over 30 years, he retired in 1995.
1994-2005
George Olesen (6 December 1924 – 15 October 2013)
New York-artist George Olesen had been drawing since he was at Manual Training High School in Brooklyn, doing art for school yearbooks, art magazines and murals. While being a pilot during World War II, he drew a daily cartoon for the Officer’s Mess. After the war, Olesen studied at both the American Art School and the Pratt Institute, where he majored in illustration. He then divided his time between drawing for comics and for advertisements.
Olesen started as a penciler for Sy Barry on the ‘Phantom’ Sundays in May 1962. He worked on these Sundays for several periods, first on and off until 1974, then again in 1979-1986 and finally from 1988-2000. On the dailies, Olesen came on board as a penciler in 1980/81, with Barry inking, and continued after Barry retired in 1994, by now credited for his artwork. Olesen additionally worked on stories for the Scandinavia Phantom magazine. He retired in 2005, leaving the syndicated strip to Paul Ryan.
2005-2016
Paul C. Ryan (23 September 1949 – 6 March 2016)
Paul Ryan studied at the Massachusetts College of Art, and began his career in comics the mid-1970s, while still maintaining his dayjob as a graphic designer for an engineering firm. His earliest comic efforts were doing backgrounds for Bob Layton. Shortly afterwards, Ryan got assignments from Marvel, doing inking on ‘The Thing’ and pencils on ‘Squadron Supreme’, a ‘Thor’ graphic novel, ‘DP7’, ‘ Quasar’, ‘The Avengers’, ‘The Avengers West Coast’, ‘Iron Man’, ‘Fantastic Four’ and ‘Ravage 2099’. Ryan was the penciller and co-plotter for ‘The Fantastic Four’ for nearly five years, being behind only Jack Kirby and John Byrne as the artist with the longest run on the comic. He additionally co-created ‘Breed’ for AC Comics in 1984, and worked on ‘Phantom’ stories for the Scandinavian magazine.
In 1996, he switched to DC, where his credits include ‘Superman’, ‘Man of Tomorrow’, ‘Flash’, ‘Legion Science Police’, ‘Legends of the DCU: Crisis on Infinite Earths’, ‘Batman: No Man’s Land’, ‘Shadow of the Bat’, ‘Aquaman’, ‘Gotham City Secret Files’, ‘Superboy’ and ‘Green Lantern’.
Paul Ryan returned to Marvel in 1999, and worked with Tom DeFalco on ‘Fantastic Five’. He then worked on titles like ‘Maximum Security’, ‘The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine’, ‘Phanteon (Lone Star’)’ and ‘Tribulation Force’. He pencilled such CrossGen titles as ‘Ruse’, ‘Crux’, ‘Mystic’ and ‘Solus’. He has had a three year run on the syndicated ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ Sunday page, and took over the daily ‘Phantom’ newspaper strip after George Olesen’s retirement in 2005. He also drew the Sunday page between April 2007 until July 2011. Ryan continued to work on ‘The Phantom’ for King Features Syndicate until his death in March 2016.
2016-Current
Mike Manley (19 October 1961 – )
Mike Manley was born in Detroit, Michigan and has been drawing and working in comics and commercial art since he was fifteen. He has been a working comic book professional since the age of 23. In 1984 Manley moved to Philadelphia and started working for Marvel and DC comics. Mike finally landed at Marvel with the popular ‘Transformers’ comic and quickly moved on to other established characters like Conan and Spider-Man. Some other characters he worked on include Barbie, He-man, Captain Power, Tiny Toons, Ghost Busters and the Muppets.
In 1990 Manley co-created and drew the character ‘Darkhawk’ for Marvel. In 1993, Mike moved back to DC Comics and became the regular artist on their most popular character, ‘Batman’. While at DC, Manley also worked on ‘Superman’ and ‘Shazam’. In 1994 Mike drew ‘Barb Wire’ and ‘Comics Greatest Worlds’ for Dark Horse Comics.
Mike returned to Dark Horse again in 1997 to draw ‘the Predator’, based on the popular movie. In 1995 Mike formed Action Planet Inc. to publish his own comics, starting with Action Planet Comics, featuring Monsterman. He took over the ‘Judge Parker’ newspaper strip from Eduardo Barreto in 2010.
Paul Ryan, the previous artist of the daily strip, passed away suddenly on March 7, 2016. He had recently finished a new Phantom story for Team Fantomen, and had only one week of strips left of what became his final daily strip story, “The Baronkhan Sedition”. Manley was then brought in to take over the daily strip.
Sunday Comic Strips
1936-1942
Ray Moore (1905 – 13 January 1984)
Raymond S. Moore was born in Oklahoma, but lived in Missouri for most of his life. The son of a jeweler, he attended the Saint-Louis University and started out doing commercial work. He entered the field of comics through Phil Davis, whom he assisted on ‘Mandrake the Magician’. Moore is best known as the original artist of ‘The Phantom’, together with writer Lee Falk. The series began with a daily newspaper strip on 17 February 1936, followed by a color Sunday strip on 28 May 1939; both are still running as of 2017.
Moore’s art is characterized by it’s moody and dark atmosphere, and it often features beautiful women. Ray Moore had to quit the comic in 1942 to serve in the US army. Due to an injury, he had to retire from the comic in the 1940s, leaving it to his assistant Wilson McCoy. Moore, who was as mysterious as the character he co-created (he rarely gave interviews), passed away from natural causes in Mancheter, New York in 1984.
1942-1961
Wilson McCoy (6 April 1902 – 20 July 1961)
Born in Troy, Missouri, Robert Wilson McCoy studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, The American Academy, and the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, where he later served on the faculty. As a commercial artist, he made paintings for Liberty Magazine covers, calendars, prints, pin-ups and advertisements for major companies. When his friend Ray Moore served in the military during WWII, McCoy took over the responsibilities of illustrating the syndicated newspaper strip, ‘The Phantom’. His wife, Dorothy, did the lettering.
In his artwork for this adventure comic, McCoy could draw from his own experiences as a world traveler, since he had visited far-off jungles and native tribes himself. McCoy continued to produce the strip with creator Lee Falk until his death from a heart attack in 1961, after which it was continued by Bill Lignante for a short while, and then Sy Barry. Wilson McCoy’s popular work on ‘The Phantom’ has been featured in comic books and continues to be reprinted today.
1961-1961
Carmine Infantino (24 May 1925 – 4 April 2013)
Born in Brooklyn, New York City into a family of Italian origins, young Infantino began his career in comic books while in high school. He was part of the first generation of comic book fans. Too young to be drafted during the war, he got the opportunity to replace the men he had idolized just a few years before. He did his first jobs for comic book packager Harry “A” Chesler, and worked with Frank Giacoia as the inker of the ‘Jack Frost’ feature for Timely’s USA Comics in 1942.
Infantino’s best remembered work is the revived and redesigned version of DC’s ‘The Flash’, which he drew from scripts by Robert Kanigher for eleven years, from 1956 to 1967. This new boost to the superhero genre is generally called the beginning of the Silver Age of Comics. During this period, he also drew the comics ‘Adam Strange’ and ‘Deadman’ in Strange Adventures. He was responsible for the revival of the ‘Batman’ comic with writer John Broome in 1964.
After the death of Wilson McCoy in 1961, Infantino helped finish the Sunday story strip ‘The Limper’. It is believed that Infantino only drew one Sunday page while the remainder of the story was continued by Bill Lignante.
Infantino was a strong candidate for taking over the Phantom Sunday strip after McCoy’s death, however the job was ultimately given to Sy Barry.
1961-1962
Bill Lignante (20 March 1925 – 27 February 2018)
Bill Lignante was a longtime artist of ‘Phantom’ comic books. After a three-year-stint in the US Navy, he enrolled at the Pratt Institute in New York. Upon graduation, he began his career as a cartoonist, starting with ‘Ozark Ike’ and later ‘Let’s Explore Your Mind’. Lignante’s first involvement with Lee Falk’s ‘The Phantom’ was finishing a daily strip after Wilson McCoy’s death in 1961. He then did the Sunday comic for a while, before becoming the main artist of the Gold Key and King comic books featuring the character. Lignante had also worked on animated cartoons for Hanna-Barbera. In 1968, he settled in California and began a career as a courtroom artist for ABC Network News.
1962-1994
Sy Barry (12 March 1928 – )
Seymour Barry, brother of comic artist Dan Barry, studied at the New York School of Art and Design. When he graduated, he went to the Art Students League, while working as an assistant to his brother. In the late forties and early fifties, Sy Barry did freelance work, mainly as an inker, for comic book companies such as Gleason, Marvel and especially National, where he worked on the features ‘Jonny Peril’, ‘Rex’ and ‘Phantom Stranger’.
In the late fifties, he assisted his brother again with the inking of ‘Flash Gordon’. This job put him in contact with the King Features editors, who asked him to take over ‘The Phantom’ after Wilson McCoy’s death in 1961. After drawing the adventures of the Ghost-Who-Walks for over 30 years, he retired in 1995.
1994-2000
George Olesen (6 December 1924 – 15 October 2013)
New York-artist George Olesen had been drawing since he was at Manual Training High School in Brooklyn, doing art for school yearbooks, art magazines and murals. While being a pilot during World War II, he drew a daily cartoon for the Officer’s Mess. After the war, Olesen studied at both the American Art School and the Pratt Institute, where he majored in illustration. He then divided his time between drawing for comics and for advertisements.
Olesen started as a penciler for Sy Barry on the ‘Phantom’ Sundays in May 1962. He worked on these Sundays for several periods, first on and off until 1974, then again in 1979-1986 and finally from 1988-2000. On the dailies, Olesen came on board as a penciler in 1980/81, with Barry inking, and continued after Barry retired in 1994, by now credited for his artwork. Olesen additionally worked on stories for the Scandinavia Phantom magazine. He retired in 2005, leaving the syndicated strip to Paul Ryan.
1994-2000
Fred Fredericks (9 August 1929 – 10 March 2015)
Fred Fredericks is a veteran cartoonist, who has drawn ‘Mandrake the Magician’ for King Features for many years. He was born as Harold Fredericks Jr. in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Fredericks drew the military comic strip ‘Salty Ranks’, after joining the Marine Corps in 1950. He went to the Cartoonists and Illustrators School now the School of Visual Arts on the GI Bill.
From 1953 to 1960, he drew a number of historical strips and panels for regional papers, such as ‘New Jersey’s Patriots’, ‘The Late Late War’ and ‘Under the Stars and Bars’. Fredericks started his career as a comic book artist in 1960. He worked with Dell and Gold Key on such titles as ‘Daniel Boone’, ‘King Leonardo’, ‘The Blue Phantom’ and ‘The Twilight Zone’.
He was accepted to succeed Phil Davis on ‘Mandrake the Magician’ after Davis’s death in 1964. Since that time, Fredericks devoted most of his career to drawing both the daily and the Sunday feature. He also took over the writing over the strip when creator Lee Falk died in 1999. He retired from the Sunday page in 2002, and from the daily strip in 2013. He also inked the ‘Phantom’ Sunday comics between 1995 and 2000, after which Graham Nolan took over.
2000-2007
Graham Nolan (12 March 1962 – )
Graham Nolan studied at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art. Before debuting in comics, Nolan worked in the advertising field and as a freelance graphic artist. He had his first published comic book work in the DC Comics Talent Showcase issue 16 in April 1985. He then worked on the UK run of Marvel’s ‘Transformers’ comic book before returning to DC for twelve issues of ‘Power of the Atom’. He also pencilled the first 26 issues of ‘Hawkworld’ by John Ostrander and Tim Truman until 1992. He was a prominent artist of ‘Batman’ stories for Detective Comics throughout the 1990s, and is the co-creator of the ‘Batman’ villain Bane, together with Chuck Dixon.
Between 1986 and 1994, Nolan produced artwork for the ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ game. He created and published his own ‘Monster Island’ strip in 1998, and subsequently illustrated covers for the Swedish Phantom magazine. He was the artist of the Sunday comic of the syndicated ‘The Phantom’ strip for King Features from 2000 to 2006.
2007-2012
Paul C. Ryan (23 September 1949 – 6 March 2016)
Paul Ryan studied at the Massachusetts College of Art, and began his career in comics the mid-1970s, while still maintaining his dayjob as a graphic designer for an engineering firm. His earliest comic efforts were doing backgrounds for Bob Layton. Shortly afterwards, Ryan got assignments from Marvel, doing inking on ‘The Thing’ and pencils on ‘Squadron Supreme’, a ‘Thor’ graphic novel, ‘DP7’, ‘ Quasar’, ‘The Avengers’, ‘The Avengers West Coast’, ‘Iron Man’, ‘Fantastic Four’ and ‘Ravage 2099’. Ryan was the penciller and co-plotter for ‘The Fantastic Four’ for nearly five years, being behind only Jack Kirby and John Byrne as the artist with the longest run on the comic. He additionally co-created ‘Breed’ for AC Comics in 1984, and worked on ‘Phantom’ stories for the Scandinavian magazine.
In 1996, he switched to DC, where his credits include ‘Superman’, ‘Man of Tomorrow’, ‘Flash’, ‘Legion Science Police’, ‘Legends of the DCU: Crisis on Infinite Earths’, ‘Batman: No Man’s Land’, ‘Shadow of the Bat’, ‘Aquaman’, ‘Gotham City Secret Files’, ‘Superboy’ and ‘Green Lantern’.
Paul Ryan returned to Marvel in 1999, and worked with Tom DeFalco on ‘Fantastic Five’. He then worked on titles like ‘Maximum Security’, ‘The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine’, ‘Phanteon (Lone Star’)’ and ‘Tribulation Force’. He pencilled such CrossGen titles as ‘Ruse’, ‘Crux’, ‘Mystic’ and ‘Solus’. He has had a three year run on the syndicated ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ Sunday page, and took over the daily ‘Phantom’ newspaper strip after George Olesen’s retirement in 2005. He also drew the Sunday page between April 2007 until July 2011. Ryan continued to work on ‘The Phantom’ for King Features Syndicate until his death in March 2016.
2012-2017
Terry Beatty (11 January 1958 – )
Terry Beatty, who is from Iowa, teamed up with writer Max Allen Collins in 1979 to create ‘The Comics Page’, a weekly syndicated comics page of jokes, activities and puzzle-comic, starring private eye ‘Mike Mist’. The feature didn’t last long, but the character continued its career in issues of Mystery Magazine and as a back-up feature in the ‘E-Man’ comic book. Beatty worked with Collins on several other projects, including the ‘Mrs Tree’ comic book (1981), which also featured ‘Mike Mist’. They then cooperated on the fourt-part mini-series ‘Wild Dog’, published by DC, and revived Pete Morisi’s ‘Johnny Dynamite’ series as a mini-series for Dark Horse.
Beatty published his underground comic ‘Tales Mutated for the Mod’ at Kitchen Sink in the early 1980s. He made strip parodies, called ‘The Phony Pages’ in The Buyer’s Guide, and contributed to ‘Dr. Wirthim’s Comics & Stories’ and Kitchen Sink’s ‘Bop’. Beatty has worked regularly as an inker on ‘Batman Adventures’. He has also worked on ‘Batman Beyond’.
In recent years, he has also been active in the production newspaper comics. He has been drawing the Sunday comics for ‘The Phantom’ by Tony DePaul since moving to the Kansas City area in 2012. He also replaced Graham Nolan as the artist of ‘Rex Morgan, M.D.’ in late 2013. Beatty is additionally a published author, with numerous short stories to his credit and is also an accomplished sculptor. He has worked in the model kit and toy industry, and taught in the comics program at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
2017-Current
Jeff Weigel (9 September 1958 – )
Jeff Weigel is an illustrator and author who lives in Belleville, Illinois. His career began at Warner Books and Warner Publisher Services in New York City, working on promotional materials for books and magazines as diverse as Mad and Playboy, novelizations of major motion pictures, and national best sellers. He was a staff designer and creative director in St. Louis, Missouri for more than 25 years, working on a wide variety of projects such as product packaging, annual reports, national and local print advertising, and corporate identity. He has done work for large corporate clients like Monsanto, Energizer, Purina, Peabody Energy and many others, as well as for many small, privately owned businesses. His work has earned him many awards over the years.
Jeff is a frequent speaker at schools and libraries across the American Midwest. He has also taught illustration at Webster University, and comics and cartooning at St. Louis’s Center of Contemporary Arts (COCA).
Since 2017, Jeff has been working on the Sunday comic strip, The Phantom, which runs in Sunday newspaper comics sections all across the globe. He also contributes work to Australia’s long-running Phantom comic book series from Frew Publishing. He was a regular contributor to Image Comics’ anthology title, Big Bang Comics, for more than ten years.
Other Phantom Comic Strip Artists
Alex Saviuk (17 August 1958 – )
Alex Saviuk is an American comic book artist. He graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1974 and began his professional career with DC Comics three years later. For this company, he illustrated characters such as ‘Superman’, ‘Green Lantern’ and ‘The Flash’ for DC Comics Presents. In the 1980s he was a regular artist for Action Comics, drawing features like ‘Steel Man’, ‘The Atom’, ‘Air-Wave’, and ‘Aquaman’.
By the mid 1980s, Saviuk moved over to Marvel, where he started out doing cover work for titles such as ‘New Universe’ and a run on ‘Defenders of the Earth’. But he became best known for his work on ‘Spider-Man’, starting a seven-year run on ‘Web of Spider-Man’ in 1988. Between 1994 and 1996 he drew the series ‘Spider-Man Adventures’, that later became ‘The Adventures of Spider-Man’, and that was based on the animated series. He draws the ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ Sunday newspaper strip from scripts by Stan Lee since 1997 and since 2003 he also serves as the inker of Larry Lieber’s daily ‘Spider-Man’ strip.
In 1997 and 1998 Saviuk also drew a lot of ‘The X-Files’ stories for Topps comics. He is also an artist with the Swedish publisher Egmont and the Australian publisher Frew on stories wit ‘The Phantom’. He also assisted Will Eisner on a story of ‘The Spirit’ in 2005 and he also does storyboards and conceptual art for use in advertising and films.
Donald L. Newton (12 November 1934 – 19 August 1984)
Donald L. Newton was born in 1934 and became a professional comic book artist and cover painter in 1974, drawing for companies like Marvel, DC and Charlton. Born in Virginia, but mainly raised in Arizona, Newton began his career in the fanzines of the Science Fiction and Comics Association (SFCA) in the 1960s, while also being a grade school art teacher.
Starting in 1974, Newton worked for Charlton’s horror titles (‘Baron Weirwulf’s Haunted Library’, ‘Ghost Manor’), while also doing a successful run on ‘The Phantom’. After a while, Newton found his way to Marvel, where he did painted covers and inking jobs on the Kung Fu titles, as well as ‘Ghost Rider’. He left the company for a while, but returned in 1979 to work on ‘The Avengers’.
Newton eventually began a career at DC in 1977, starting with ‘Aquaman’. He became a regular on the title, and gave up his dayjob as an art teacher. That same year, launched his first series, ‘The New Gods’, inked by his old Marvel colleague Dan Adkins. He was also assigned to the ‘Shazam!’ title in the eponymous comic book and World’s Finest Comics, and began a regular run on ‘Batman’ in Detective Comics. In the final stages of his career, he also worked with ‘Green Lantern’ and ‘Infinity, Inc’. He was known for the humanity he brought to his characters. Don Newton’s career in comics was tragically cut short by throat cancer in 1984.
Juan Boix (1945 – )
Born in Badalona in 1945, Joan Boix had his first comic published in Bruguera’s magazine Sissi in 1962. Around the same period, he started working for publishers Toray and Galaor. He was an artist for the Toray collections ‘Hazañas Bélicas’ (createdy by Boixcar), ‘Relatos de Guerra’ and ‘Serenata’. He wrote and drew ‘La Tierra del Futuro’ for Galaor, while also drawing for the publisher’s titles ‘Ben-Hur’ and ‘Batallas decisivas de la Humanidad’. He also remained active for Bruguera with the serials ‘Celia’ and ‘Capricho’.
Joan Boix took a step forward in his career by the mid-1970s, when he produced and owned the copyright of a number of horror and suspense stories that he first published in Dossier Negro. Another personal creation of this period was ‘Robny el Vagabundo’.
In the 1990s Swedish publisher SEMIC Press selected Joan Boix as a member of the so-called Team Fantomen. As a result Joan Boix, who had previously drawn the series ‘Kerry Drake and Lefty Drake’ for the publisher, became an illustrator for the Swedish production of ‘Phantom’ stories.
Among the Lee Falk successors that collaborated with Boix were Ben Raab, Tony de Paul and David Bishop but most of the scripts were provided by Claes Reimerthi. Joan Boix found the time to alternate his rendering of ‘The Phantom’ with ‘Jonathan Struppy’, a personal project that he had begun in the early 1980s. He took it up again for SEMIC Press to publish it, before self-publishing it in Spain.
Kari T. Leppänen (1945 – )
Kari Tapio Leppänen is a self-taught Finnish comic artist, who started working of Swedish publisher Semic in 1977. He has drawn many comics for the girl’s magazine Min Häst, and is an artist for the Scandinavian production of ‘Tumac’ and ‘Fantomen’ stories.
Leppänen is also the artist of several science fiction and fantasy series for Fantomen, such as ‘Achilles Wiggen’, ‘Dödsspelet’, ‘Det Okända – Myter och Mysterier’, and ‘Xellana’.
Keith Chatto (1924 – 1992)
Ronald Keith Chatto was born in New South Wales, Australia in 1924. He studied in Sydney, where Jim Russell of Smith’s Weekly encouraged him to take art classes. Keith Chatto was employed by the Greater Union Thetares art department and drew recognition cgarts for the Air Training Corps before joining the RAAF. In 1946, after his demobilization, he created the comic strip ‘Destiny Scott’ for the Sydney Morning Herald. He went on to produce the comics ‘Bunny Allen, the Glamour Girl’ and ‘The Buccaneer’, as well as ‘Lone Wolf’ for Atlas Publications.
He also drew a lot of covers for Page Publications, where he made the comic ‘Skippy’, based on the television series. In 1972, Keith Chatto started ‘Flame and Ash’ for Flame Magazine and a year later ‘Randy and Cee Cee’ for Fury. In 1977, he took over the Sunday paper version of ‘Air Hawk and the Flying Doctors’ from John Dixon. Keith was the first Australian artist to illustrate a full-length ‘Phantom’ story, ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, which was followed by two more stories, ‘Return of the Singh Brotherhood’ and ‘The Kings Cross Connection’. Other works include ‘Twilight Ranger’, ‘El Lobo’ and ‘Kane’. Keith Chatto left the comics field to become a cameraman and television film producer, and died in 1992 at the age of 88.
Romano Felmang (1941 – )
Romano Felmang was born in Rome, Italy in 1941. He made his debut in comics in 1964, drawing titles like ‘Fantax’, ‘Wampiroo’, ‘The Invisible Woman’, ‘Johnny Beat’, ‘Kriminal’, ‘Belfagor’, ‘Silman’ and ‘Phantom’. Following the success of his work, he founded the Cartoonstudio in 1968, providing work and space for a new generation of comic artists. During the 1970s, Romano Felmang produced pocket comics such as ‘Sylvie’, ‘Oltre Tomba’, ‘Loana’, ‘Makabar’, ‘Zip’ and ‘Sabata’, but his main activity was creating stories for several magazines like Intrepido, Monello, Bliz, Albo dell’Intrepido, Skorpio and Lanciostory.
Outside Italy, Romano Felmang worked for publishers like Fleetway in England, Lug in France and Pabel-Moewing and Bastei in Germany. He also contributed to magazine TV2000 in Holland. During the 1980s, he started drawing the Phantom in Sweden, which was published in several other countries.
Sal Velluto (1956 – )
Sal Velluto is an illustrator for comic books, trading cards and video game designs. he studied at the Academy of Fine Art, and did commercial art in Italy during the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1984, he moved to the USA, where he broke into comics as a professional in 1988, drawing ‘Power Pack’ for Marvel. After a few issues, he graduated to ‘Moon Knight’, which he did for a couple of years. After some more assignments for Marvel, he went to work for more independent companies, doing ‘X-O Manowar’ (Acclaim), ‘Green Hornet’ (Now Comics), ‘Armor’ (Continuity) and Lazarus Ledd (for the Italian market)
He landed at DC Comics in 1991, where he debuted on ‘Justice League Task Force’. After two years, he co-created ‘Firebrand’ with writer Brian Augustyn. He then returned to Acclaim to do a revamped version of ‘Bloodshot’. In 2003, he did some work for Cross Gen, and then drew ‘Captain Gravity and the Power of the Vril’ and ‘The Victorian’ for Penny-Farthing Press from 2004.
Sal started working for Egmont in 2007, and has drawn the Phantom for Hermes and Frew.
The Phantom 