The Phantom Adventure Books were published by Budget Books Pty. Ltd. in Melbourne, Australia from 1985 through to 1987. The series contains four comic books, exclusively produced and sold throughout book stores in Australia.
Budget Books Pty. Ltd. was a prominent Australian publisher and distributor founded in Melbourne in 1976 by the late bookseller and publisher Robert “Rob” Ungar. Drawing on his family’s deep roots in the book trade, Ungar established the company to specialize in the wholesale supply of value-driven books to grocery stores and discount department stores. The business filled a unique market niche by purchasing excess publisher returns and selling them at heavily reduced cover prices, making reading materials accessible to a broader, budget-conscious Australian public.
The publisher rapidly transitioned from a simple distributor into a creative production powerhouse by pioneering themed retail displays and securing highly coveted character-licensing agreements. Throughout the 1980s, Budget Books held Australian publishing rights to some of the world’s most famous pop-culture properties, including Disney, Warner Bros., Garfield, and Snoopy. For comic and pop-culture enthusiasts, they became particularly well-known for producing coloring books, activity sets, and unique landscape-format, black-and-white compilations of classic daily strip adventures, such as their collectible The Phantom and Flash Gordon adventure books.
In 1988, the company’s immense market success caught the attention of global media conglomerate Reed Elsevier, which acquired Budget Books and subsequently rebranded the division as Reed For Kids. Although the original brand eventually dissolved, its legacy continued to shape the Australian discount book market; after leaving the business in the early 1990s, Ungar and his partners used their foundational experience to establish Hinkler Books in 1993. Hinkler went on to replicate and scale the mass-market value model pioneered by Budget Books, cementing the original publisher’s profound, lasting influence on Australia’s retail landscape.
The Phantom Adventure Books comic books contain heavy stock softcovers with approximately 80 black and white pages and are printed in landscape format measuring 26.5cm x 16.5cm. At the commencement of the comic books, we see a page containing all the publishing and copyright information relating to the series, which can be seen below.
The front and back covers of all editions within the series are presented below. The first edition was released with variations in its front and back covers due to two distinct print runs, both of which are featured below. Additionally, three front covers within the series incorporate the name of the comic book series within a circular yellow logo, “Adventure Book”, accompanied by the double “BB” letters representing the Budget Books publishers name.
A sample of internal pages can be seen below.
