Mortadelo y Filemón – Especial Superhéroes (which translates to Mortadelo and Filemón – Special Superheroes) was published by Ediciones Bruguera in Barcelona, Spain in 2007. The hardcover album style comic book contains comic strip stories which was written and illustrated by Francisco Ibáñez featuring an array of characters in parody style, including the Phantom.
Mortadelo y Filemón (or Mort & Phil in English) is a Spanish comics series designed by Francisco Ibáñez in 1958 by Francisco Ibáñez, quickly becoming highly popular in Spain. The comic books are known for slapstick comedy. At first the characters were a parody version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters Sherlock Holmes (Filemón) and Dr. Watson (Mortadelo).
The first edition to be released was titled ‘Mortadelo y Filemón: Agencia de Información’ containing just the main characters. At the beginning, the comic strip contained approximately one to four pages. Throughout the years, the characters have evolved. At first, Mortadelo used to wear a bowler hat. He used to wear disguises. He was known for his shapeshifter abilities. Filemón, called by Mortadelo “Jefe” (Chief or Boss in English) had a beaked nose and use to smoke a pipe as Sherlock Holmes used to do.
Their names are wordplay. For example: Mortadelo comes from Mortadela (“Mortadella di Bologna”) and Filemón from Filete (“Steak”).
In 1969, Francisco Ibáñez designed more characters. We also start to see a new organisation appear in the comic strips, the ‘TIA’ or ‘Técnicos de Investigación Aeroterráquea’ (which translates to ‘Aeroterrestrial Investigation Technicians’), an organisation that is a parody to the USA based CIA. With these additions, the comic books started to contain more pages.
Mortadelo y Filemón – Especial Superhéroes is a hardcover comic book containing 96 color pages measuring 21.5cm x 29.7cm in Spanish text. The Phantom is seen on the front and back covers amongst an array of other characters as a parody, including Batman, Tarzan, Spiderman, Superman, Prince Valiant, Manadrake the Magician and more, an illustration by Francisco Ibáñez as can be seen below.
The comic book contains 2 comic strip stories, with both titles found on the front cover, ‘100 Años De Cómic’ (which translates to ‘100 Years of Comics’) and ‘Bajo El Bramido Del Trueno’ (which translates to ‘Under the Roar of Thunder’), with a parody of the Phantom only appearing in the ‘100 Years of Comics’ comic strip story.
100 Years of Comics
Professor Bacterio has conducted an experiment to extract the powers of comic book characters. When he finally succeeded, the machine exploded and scattered all the powers into the air.
Just at that moment, the Orzuelo gang was passing by, being led by the agents towards the prison. The members of the gang acquired these powers and escaped.
Now they use their superpowers to do evil. Between them they have acquired the powers of Spiderman, Tarzan, Mandrake the Magician, Prince Valiant, Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Batman and Superman.
Mortadelo and Filemón must arrest all the members of the Orzuelo gang.
Under The Roar Of Thunder
Captain Trueno, a classic Spanish comic book character, finds all his fiercest enemies gathered together: Sir Mortdefham, the Sorcerer Filemoncio, Bofelia the Witch, Captain Super-Repellent and the Anti-Pope Bacterius IV.
Thanks to a potion devised by Bofelia and Filemoncio, everyone manages to escape to another time. Captain Trueno, accompanied by his companions Goliath and Crispín and his lady Sigrid also ingest the same concoction and are also teleported through time and space… right next to the TIA headquarters in the present day.
TIA agents Mortadelo and Filemón are mistaken for Sir Mordefham and the Sorcerer Filemoncio due to their extreme resemblance and are pursued by Trueno and Goliath, entering the TIA headquarters.
A sample page can be seen below, with a parody of the Phantom seen on the commencement of the comic strip story ‘100 Years of Comics’, along with an array of other characters including Spiderman, Tarzan, Mandrake the Magician, Prince Valiant, Flash Gordon, Batman and Superman.
thephantom.fan 