The Phantom was published by Feature Publications in Wellington, New Zealand from October 1949 till 1965, running for 556 editions in black and white print, containing approximately 20 pages of reprinted daily and Sunday newspaper comic strips. A single Phantom story would generally run over various comic books.
The comics were published monthly from 1949 till 1952, then fortnightly till 1955, then weekly till 1962, then monthly till 1963 and finally weekly until the last issue in 1965.
The first 20 comic covers were printed in landscape format, then in portrait for the remainder of the series, however the comic strip within was printed in landscape format for the entire series. Due to this fact, very little editing or formatting was required by Feature Publications, making the stories quite complete and true to the originals. A sample of internal pages are shown below.
The inside front and back covers are void of any print, with the outside back covers containing general information about the publisher, changing over the years as the series went on. A sample of back covers are shown below.
You will also see that the Phantom’s costume color on the covers of the comics is a very unique brown/green (especially on the covers of later numbered comics). This Phantom costume color isn’t seen on any other comics from anywhere around the world.
The Phantom 