Colección Heroes Modernos, is a series published by Editorial Dólar in Madrid, Spain from May 1964 till October 1965. 75 editions were published in the series, bearing the title ‘El Hombre Enmascarado’ (the Phantoms name in Spain) and were released on a weekly basis.
Colección Heroes Modernos were published in landscape format, measuring 29.5cm x 21cm, containing 20 black and white pages with matt color only seen on the outside covers. We see either a letter ‘A’ or/and the wording ‘Series A’ on the front cover, indicating that this series contains Phantom comic strips. Series B contain Flash Gordon comic strips and Series C containing a mix of 12 comic book characters, such as Mandrake the Magician and Prince Valiant. Below we see the back cover of comic book number 2, with the publisher advertising the 3 separate series labeled A, B and C.
A small sample of the covers published can be seen below.
First seen on the back cover of Colección Heroes Modernos comic book number 34, published in 1964, an advertisement appears, amongst other publications, for a 104 page hardcover book titled ‘Editorial Dólar Presenta El Hombre Enmascarado’.
Editorial Dólar Presenta El Hombre Enmascarado measures 20.4cm x 15cm and is published in full color. It was only available for purchase from December 1964 until January 1965. On page one we see the wording, ‘Typolithographic Workshops of Manufacturas ANRO, SA – Madrid – Spain’.
The hard cover book contains a compilation of 2 daily comic strip stories:
- The Singh Brotherhood – Lee Falk and Ray Moore (published in 1936),
- Queen Sansamor and the Sixth Man – Lee Falk and Wilsom McCoy (published in 1955).
Both of these stories also appeared in the regular 75 edition Colección Heroes Modernos series seen above.
Biblioteca Eterna was published by Editorial Dólar in Madrid, Spain in 1970. The series contains 15 album style editions, 5 comic book editions of Colección Heroes Modernos (as seen above) can be found within the covers.
Each Biblioteca Eterna edition measures 20cm x 30cm and contains 88 pages. Internal pages are in black and white, except for the 5 comic book covers found within, which are in color. Again, ‘El Hombre Enmascarado’ is featured in the ‘Series A’ publications, with ‘Series B’ and ‘Series C’ also produced in-line with the above comic book characters.
The cover of each of the 15 editions are identical to each other, with the text and contents the only varying features seen from edition to edition. The back and internal covers repeated with the same imagery for all 15 editions. Below we see edition number 1, external front and back covers shown at the top, with internal front and back covers shown at the bottom.
The Phantom 