Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities The Phantom Stranger

Lately, for no particular reason, i have been thinking about how much i enjoyed the old phantom stranger appearances in the Justice League.

So i have started looking for the old back issues.

Anyone know of any place i can find them relatively cheap besides ebay?

Thanks.

Can't help much Rick on those, but chalk me up as a huge fan of the Stranger. Love his JLA appearances, his Vertigo appearances, and most especially his part in the four issue "Books of Magic" mini by Gaiman in the 90's.

Possiby my favorite 'mystical' character in comics.

Gaiman originally pitched a PS series before he ended up doing Sandman.

Rick, you might want to try Graham Cracker Comics which is located here in the Chicagoland area,at www.grahamcrackercomics.com.I recently got several back issues of PS at reasonable prices,even the Neal Adams #4...BTW, was there ever any mention of PS or the Spectre in the 30th & 31st century??

Whoops, that web address was www.grahamcrackers.com/ sorry about the typo...

No mention of him that i know of. It would be kinda cool to see what the writers and artists would think of for the Stranger then, though, wouldn't it.

And thanks for the link. I will check them out.

I would kill to read a Gaiman Stranger series!!!!

He's one of my fave DC characters.

Jorge

I just got four issues from someone on ebay. The art jumped from 'eh' to wow in those four non-sequential issues. But i got one deadman and two Black Orchid backups, and both were pretty good. Didn't read the son of frankenstein yet.

So, Phantom Stranger #1 wins the prize for WORST comic of the DCnU...and thats saying something. Utter shit.

Ha-ha! You bought it, sucka!

(Seriously, wasn't the Brent Anderson art good, at least?)

The art was good but not as dynamic as it should have been. Lots of talking heads where Anderson couldn't show off his stuff.

I could write paragraph after paragraph on why this was so bad but I'll just say its the worst comic I've bought in a good 2 years or so. It has no real redeeming value.

I wasn't going to buy it but I love the Phantom Stranger. So I gave it a shot. Might as well take $2.99 and thrown it in a public urinal.

You got to hand it Didio though, he's industrious: he manages to ruin two great characters for the price of one.

My first Phantom Stranger encounter was, IIRC, an issue of Justice League where they went up against 'the Demons Three,' Abnegazer, Rath and Ghast (making up spelling, 'cause I'm too lazy to look them up). The only specific scene I remember is Batman leaping down off of something (a roller coaster? something circus-y) and one of the demons manipulating space magically so that the ground rushed up and slammed into him!

I loved the 'origin' special they had for him, with four different origins (one a fallen angel, one the last survivor of a previous universe, etc.). Other than Moore referencing the fallen angel option in the Heaven & Hell arc of Swamp Thing, I don't think it was ever nailed down, and that was kind of perfect for the character, IMO.

I've heard that the DCnU origin for the Phantom Stranger sucketh mightily.

They've gotten some flack for making him Judas. Is that why it sucked so much, Cobie? The general fact that he's less mysterious?

The idea that he's Judas Iscariot doesn't seem like a bad idea in and of itself to me. I'm quite sure that Alan Moore could rock it anyway.

Personally, I think that if you do a series featuring him, you have no choice but to lift the veil of mysteriousness around the character to make it engaging. So to be effective as an enigma, he should really be relegated to guest appearances. His previous solo series and their short runs attest to that.

Cobie, you must say more about this! You can't just declare it the worst comic of the last two years and leave it at that!

First and foremost, the #1 problem with the story is that it reads like an eighth grader wrote it. And not Jim Shooter, 8th grader, mind you. The pacing is slow and boring, with nonstop talking heads. There is nothing exciting about the issue from that perspective.

The dialogue reads like a cheesy 80's action movie meets a spoof of a 70's soap opera I wish I had the pages in front of me so I could put them up. It's stiff without any emotion attached to the words, and is loaded with cliches.

Clearly, Didio is trying to echo the Geoff Johns approach of posting page after page of "big moments" rather than telling an actual story. These days Johns does this with little substance added, but he does it in a splashy way that can tap into the elusive "iconic moment", particualrly for longtime fans. Here, Didio fails miserably in every attempt. He tries to get the reader to go "oh crap, are these the 7 dudes who make up SHAZAM?" and instead all I'm left thinking is "oh brother, how hard is this guy trying to make this book more important than it is?". He tries to play into Phantom Stranger being a critical anchor of the new 52, yet he can't deliver a single moment in the issue that feels like it has any value. As said above, it doesn't help that there isn't actually anything exciting about these moments.

(Another moment where Didio is clearly trying to appeal to continuity cops and those compelled to guy what matters to continuity is by having the Question show up for a few panels. Instead, it shows the Question so far removed from what he used to be that its another epic fail that only makes the issue even less readable).

As Lardy says, one of the reasons the Phantom Stranger as a character has worked is because there's an element of mystery to him. That is all ripped away now. I'd prefer his origin remain mysterious, or be the "one of many", as the Secret Origins issue presented him. So telling his origin at all seems a mistep in the first place. But okay, I guess telling his origin isn't the worst thing in the world and if its the right execution, could actually work. But the telling itself, being so poor, heightens this sense of clear bad decision.

The Phantom Stranger is clearly Judas Iscariot. As a concept it's not that this necessarily couldn't work; given the right method of storytelling, that could be a pretty decent origin. But in tihs issue it's just kind of laid out there, half-ass. Judas betraying Christ is an act that is etched into the subconscious of history; for 2,000 years generations have thought about it at length. There is a heaviness to it that could make for a very dramatic and powerful narrative. Instead, DC introduces the Judas concept and then kind of moves on, skimming past it without delivering on any of the tension and impact such a plot device could give.

Even more, this major twist is done in a way that never fully commits. They try to be vague yet Didio is Captain Obvious. This subsequently creates a sense that DC doesn't have the balls to go 100% with the concept. Instead they go about 95% of the way there; the end result is another reason for that mega lack of heaviness and tension I mentioned. If you're going there--fucking go there. Get into the Apostle who infamously betrays Christ and the ramficiations for the entire world and its history. And why not go further into Judas' well documented motivations for doing so, which are more complicated than "doing it for the money"? None of that is touched on.

On top of all of this the Phantom Stranger himself offers nothing exciting or interesting. He's basically shown to be a huge whiner, with no real redeeming qualities or even any qualities that show he's an active participant in the story. He surpasses Pariah from Crisis in feeling sorry for himself. This is a common trend at DC anyway these past few years as Superman tends to fall into this category. Rule #1 of telling a story with a lead character: he needs some form of agency in the story. He needs to be working towards something, whether its something the audience believes in or something the audience is horrified over.

By the end there was a whole sequence with the Spectre but I had stopped reading. I couldnt bring myself to actually read the words in the panels.

The major problem stems from two things: first, Phantom Stranger #1 has no value as a story by itself. It only exists to capitalize on suckers who would buy it because its important to the larger continuity of the DCnU. So, in effect, its a marketing gimmick / "event" book. By itself, it tells no story. No character within it does anything or says anything that evokes an emotional response from me, the reader. Secondly, because Didio makes no effort to tell an actual real story beyond pushing the DC hype machine, the usage of the idea that the Stranger is Judas actually fails to make that aspect valuable to the series in anyway.

BTW, that entire sequence is lifted from Johns' free Comic Book Day story, just redrawn.

I'd say for a PS book to ever be successful, it would require a really gifted writer to pull it off. I bet that Morrison, for instance, could pull it off. Didio? Ugh.

All this being said, it looks like the PS series from the '60s-'70s had some top-flight talent working on it. I might have to pick up those Showcase reprints in the future.

Anyone here read any of that run? Cobie?

Lardy, I've read that run and I highly recommend the Showcase collections that reprint it.

Sorry I'm not elaborating right now, but I'll try to another time when I'm not in a hurry.

Check out my Quick Showcase Reviews thread for my take on it!

I HIGHLY recommend the 50's series if you can ever find those issues reprinted.

Actually, aren't some of the 60's - 70's stories reprints of those? Maybe not in the Showcase.

The great rumor of the last 15 years is Neil Gaiman has a whole pitch / first few issues written for a PS series that he never found the time to do (or wouldn't unless DC gave him a little something extra ownership wise on something he did for them). He'd do a phenomenal job, obviously.

I believe the first few stories in the Showcase are reprints from the 50s series. As I recall, I remember vastly preferring those to the later stories.

DC from 1950-Ish to 1954 skirted the line with horror comics: never going over the line with true horror tropes like its contemporaries yet firmly telling stories in that genre. The result was actually some very well written stories that did not rely on shock value.

Phantom Stranger is the best of these, though very early House of Mystery and Sensational Mystery (formerly Sensational Comics, the Wonder Woman led anthology) were also good. The early Dr. Thirteen back ups in PS are also fantastic--the very best that character has ever been.

Lardy, as promised, here are my thoughts on the Phantom Stranger Showcase volumes:

I enjoy the early, horror-anthology-type stories, but they're not my favorites. The same goes for the stories which introduce recurring enemies, because they tend to be repetitive (they do have typically gorgeous Jim Aparo art, though.)

Then, with issue #14, Len Wein in his early-70s could-do-no-wrong prime takes over the writing, and combined with Aparo's artistic talent, the quality skyrockets. The first volume ends halfway through the Wein/Aparo era.

The second volume opens with three issues of other titles -- B&B and JLA -- in which the Stranger guest-starred. Wein wrote the JLA one, so it's the best, natch.

The Wein/Aparo era ends after #26, and though none of the stories which follow match those heights, it's still consistently readable. And one of the writers which followed was a young Paul Levitz.

Hope this helps you decide whether or not you want to buy the Showcase volumes.

As I recall, Showcase #80 (the Phantom Stranger issue) was a pair of reprints, one starring the Phantom Stranger and the other starring Dr. Thirteen, with a new framing sequence that led to a final segment featuring both characters.

This formula was in effect for the first year or two of the PS series, as I recall, although at some point the reprints were replaced by new material. The book also picked up a Scooby-Doo type gang of teenagers that drove the framing sequence. One particularly grating feature of these early issues was Dr. 13 sounding like a broken record with his "I'm going to prove you're a fraud, Stranger" bit.

Eventually the Stranger started actually participating in the stories themselves (as opposed to being more of a narrator type like Cain and Abel in their respective houses), and the series took off under the guidance of writer Len Wein and artist/letterer Jim Aparo.

Various backup strips were tried over the 40+ issue run. Some were pretty decent, while others weren't worth the paper they were printed on (which was pretty cheap stock in those days). The main stories, though, were actually pretty consistent in quality overall, and even at their worst were far better than what's coming out of the DCnU these days.