Moonstone Forums

Now that The Phantom is gaining popularity in America and is still a huge cult hit in Australia and Scandinavia I reckon it's high time we see nice, high quality collected editions of all of Lee Falk's stories, all in the correct order. Preferably hardcover, but I'd settle for soft.

I realize that such a project would be a HUGE undertaking so a small publisher may not quite be able to afford it. However perhaps one of the smaller publishers could work in conjunction with a larger one to get it done.

Personally I'd love to see Frew put such a project together, but with Jim at the helm I can't see it happening as he has said before he has no interest in doing such a thing.

Moonstone has shown how passionate they are about the character and I believe they'd be able to pull it off well, the only problem for them would possibly be the cost of putting it all together and perhaps they'd have to sort out the rights to print the stories (?).

Egmont would probably have the money to pull this off, but would they be interested in the project? The Phantom is only a small part of Egmont's business so perhaps they wouldn't want to invest the money into such a project?

The ideal situation would be if all three publishers came together to work on this. With the support of each publisher and with each publisher’s individual experience in various areas of the Phantom and his audience such a project could be pulled off.

Perhaps it's just a Phan-boy's dream to have a huge, sexy hardcover collection of Lee Falk stories, but I do feel that the Phantom, a comic that has lasted 70 years, and it's creator deserves such an honour.

:sly02:

I agree! However, I'm afraid that you're right about this being a too big project for Frew or Moonstone. They don't have the staff or money for this kind of project, but they could help with marketing and selling the books in their respective markets.

Egmont on the other hand seem to be very reluctant about publishing books in English. I actually think it's more likely they will start a project like this in Swedish or Norwegian, despite the additional translation costs and the smaller market for the books!

A few projects of this kind have recently started in the states: Fantagraphics is publishing the complete Peanuts and Dennis the Menace (previously they published the first ~40 years of Prince Valiant), and I believe projects with Popeye and Mary Perkins, On stage (adventure/soap strip) and whatzit Tracy are in the works. So, maybe a publisher that is not at all publishing the Phantom right now could be interested in this kind of project?

I would prefer a softcover edition first of all (maybe a limited edition hardcover). Softcover is cheaper = more buyers = more likely the project will succeed and that more books can be published each year. I wouldn't want to wait 60 years for it all to finish

Au Contraire...

Fantagraphics is a small publisher doing big things:
http://www.fantagraphics.com/peanuts/peanuts.html

Moonstone is a small publisher...

Feel free to prove me wrong

What I'm most worried about would be if Moonstone could commit to such a long-running project and put out books at a reasonable pace. The Fantagraphics reprint of Peanuts covers 50 years of strips and is scheduled to last 12,5 years. Lee Falk worked on the Phantom for 63 years and the strip itself has kept going for 7 years after that (and counting). How long would the fans have to wait for that series to end (or catch up with current strips)?

Even if it didn't last, a few nicely done volumes of even just the earliest strips would be fantastic!!!!

Must...not...read...anything...into....that...

Basically, this thread is about 2 months behind real world events. That's all I'm going to say for now...

Somewhere I have a huge book of Buck Rogers complete strips.
With Lee's long tenure on the project, it would be a very expensive gamble. Maybe after a movie, or after Moonstone raises awareness of the Phantom to viable commercial audiences...

However, it would be less costly to put together a DVD or CD set of all of Lee's stories. It would be a lot of scanning and the licensing would have to be worked out, but that is a more reasonable alternative at this time. Such a project would give fans a chance to see all of Lee's work without agressively collecting publications out of print.

^I assume that means Moonstone are intending to release some earlier Phantom stuff then (the Ray Moore stories would be natural, since they've inspired the publisher's take on the character anyway).

If you publish the early Ray Moore daily strips, just don't colour it. His art is stunning in black and white, and colour would take away the mystery.