Moonstone Forums

Hi Mike. Hi Mr. Rhoades.
Thanks for such thoughtful replies. I too am intrigued and often amazed by what turns people's cranks and what turns them into cranks. For the record, I'm not the latter as I am looking forward to seeing what transpires with The Phantom during your run. I'm aboard for the long haul because, tigers or no tigers, it's fun. We all agree that suspension of belief can, and does, make reading comics - and likely creating them - so much fun. Nothing turns my crank more than fun, imaginative stories. But what often turns people into cranks is the NOT knowing. As I read I ask myself the questions that the writer should - who? what? why? where? - and where The Phantom, Diana, Skull Cave, etc., all that stuff is concerned, I know the answers because they've been explained. I know how Walker landed in Bangalla, how he became The Phantom, how he wed, etc. But when I read, "Bangalla is well known for its rather large population of tigers," and I'm neither privy to the lore or that particular aspect isn't explained, my first thought is, "How so? Since when??" I have no grounding other than my own beliefs, my knowing that there exist Siberian and Sumatran tigers. The point I'm making is, until told otherwise, readers might not always (sometimes, most times, but not always) be willing to suspend belief - it has to be spelled out for them. Sometimes they can get past it and enjoy the premise. Or in the case of the guy troubled by the box, sometimes they can't. And usually it's the simplest little things. Cheers!

Thanks for your thoughts, Brucey. Hopefully future issues will be more to your liking.

I completely understand what you're saying, SuperheroTV. Unfortunately, I fear that with a character whose history is as rich as that of the Phantom, these sorts of things are bound to happen here and there.

I'm sure this is exactly why some publishers chose to re-boot characters (such as Ultimate Spider-Man or All Star Batman) from time to time. I'd love to do something like that with the Phantom, but right now I'm having so much fun with the existing framework created by Mr. Falk that I'd be against any sort of re-boot for the forseeable future.

I want to write the Phantom re-boot darn it!

I don't want to see a Phantom re-boot darn it!

Compared to the short-lived attempts by DC and Marvel, Moonstone's take on The Phantom feels like a reboot... especially in North America. Everybody plays differently so just enjoy the toys already in the box.

A re-boot dosen't mean doing similar things to Marvel or DC.

Howdy Mr. Mike~

I just reread this issue. This is a good start for a new series. I am new to the Phantom books.... I have read his stories, on & off, in the newspapers.
I got this book because I thnik that Mike Bullock is one of the NICEST guys in comics (and that he has TALENT) I have known Mike for a few years... even though he his a Big Time Writer now, he still has time for the little folks in his life.

I was not overly impress with the art on this book.... and the color seemed too be too dark for me. i'm not sure what was going on... weather it was too short of a deadline to get the book done the way it should have been done or what happened... but the overall story was good and I made a mental note to pick up the next issue.

Since I know Mr. Bullock, I look at these books as me buying him a latte and having him telling me a story....and that's worth the $3.50 that I pay....


Mike, you should be Proud of this book and I know that you shall have a long (Popular) run on this title...

Brian

Hi Brian,
Long time no see. I'm glad you liked it. I'm not really proud of what's out yet, but I am proud of what's to come. Stay tuned!

I liked how the story builds up, the mystery that surrounds both the Phantom and Manuel Ortega. I have no problems with tigers in Bengali and the small coloring errors are something I can live with. Not that much actually happens though, it's more like a build-up, but that's expected for a 22-page story. What really bothers me though, is the bad guys. Here we have four guys with typically Spanish names (Manuel Ortega, Miguel, Carlos and Javier – some of thses names can be Portuguese too, but Ortega is Spanish and so is Javier) who speak English with Spanish (señoritas) and Portuguese (o deus conserva-nos, o ghost que anda, meu deus – constantly misspelled as meu dues) expressions added to the mix. What the...? Where are they supposed to come from? It seemed like a typical American B-movie where the bad guys speak in broken English to seem more exotic and/or evil. That just made me cringe. Logically, the tiger hunters would speak to each other in one language that all of them understand, since they seem to come from the same place.

"O ghost que anda" was particularly bad. Mainly Portuguese, but with one word of English added... why? Because the readers wouldn't understand "O Espírito que anda"? (even though the expression was explained to mean "The ghost who walks" when it was first used)

The artwork was not as detailed as I had hoped (after seeing some of Gabriel Rearte's previous work). If this was the amount of effort he had planned to put into his Phantom work, I'm glad we only got one story from him.

All in all, it was OK but nothing special. The uninspired artwork takes it down to 2 out of 5 points from me.

I finally got this issue, as part of the prize in the Walking with the ghost contest. Thanks again, Moonstone!

I loved the story. It's great to have a mysterious, stalking and most importantly menacing Phantom back again. I always loved these kind of stories; where he scares the crap out of evildoers in the dark jungles, and I hope this characterization of the Ghost will be evident also in the future stories from Mike Bullock.

Manuel Ortega seems to be a cool character. When I saw the skull mark he carved into the table at the end of the comic, it truly made me excited to see what the guy is really up to. I can't wait until my copy of issue 13 arrives (yeah, I'm late, but these books are expensive to get for a Norwegian).

I like the art; as moody and mysterious as the story, it suits it well. I would like to see Mr. Rearte draw another Phantom story one day. The splash page is awesome, and the final image of the book gave me goosebumps. However, his work looks even better in black and white (judging from the beautiful page of original art which I also won   ), as some details are lost in the colouring.

On the negative side, the colouring was not as good as in some previous Phantom books (like issues 7 and 8). Also, we could have seen even more of the "hunters being hunted" by the Phantom, but I realize the writer only had so many pages available (it's a very short story, after all).

Overally, I'll give it 8 out of 10 points. Nice debut from Mike. I didn't really think it would live up to my expectations, but it did.