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Not sure. I'd imagine, worst case, you could wait for the trade if you miss the single issues.

http://www.comicsintheclassroom.net has a short review of sorts in their Cat's Meow column. It's more for bringing it to the attention of parents and teachers than as a review for your average comic reader, however.

Hm, waiting an eternity for the paperback will be torture, so I guess I might have to make an exception from my "order together" rule and get these issues as soon as they're released.

I must say it's great, though, having to order a US Phantom book fast because it might sell out quickly. It's great to see the character do so well.

I read it at work and got a few at the office interested who used to read the Phantom "back in the day".

I enjoyed the story a lot, I liked how teh Phantom used Fraka, Bander, Devil etc to help him mess with the bad guys. I did not see HIM looking the same as the 1st Phantom. Interested in how that pans out...

I will post a review of it next week, when I get time (busy with big website release at the moment)

I don't know about any yet, but, if you want check out mine :mrgreen:

My review is over hear:
http://germworks.net/blog/2007/07/09/rev...ldren-pt1/

Considering the amount of hype that came along with the release of this issue I'm a little bit shocked at the amount of discussion surrounding this issue

BTW, another solid review Germ

Yeh to be honest so am i brucey...

On one of my blog posts, I had about 5 odd different article etc but have not heard any reviews besides yours and mine

I heard Broken Frontier has reviewed it, but last I checked the review hadn't been posted yet.

Maybe one of you guys should write a review for a comics website and submit it to the editor. Most comic websites are looking for fresh reviewers all the time.

I just received and read PHANTOM #17 from Moonstone this week, and here are my thoughts.

The variant cover by Darryl Banks and Terry Austin is spectacular. I'm usually pretty oblivious to the work of inkers (much to my apology) but Austin has something special about his inkwork that I've loved ever since the days I first "met" him in the pages of Uncanny X-Men over John Byrne's pencils. Even here, today, 30 years later, his work retains that same richly detailed quality that gives depth and texture to everything. I would love to see a comic book fully inked by Austin, not just the cover.

When I cracked open the book, my first reaction was, "wow, this looks better than I expected". This is my first exposure to interior artist Silvestre Szilagyi's work, and I found my expectations exceeded. Whether we like to admit it or not, Marvel and DC have larger artist budgets than smaller outfits like Moonstone, and resultantly, "indies" often have art of lower caliber. You rarely see Jim Lee, Bryan Hitch or George Perez working on an indy. I was very pleased to encounter art in this issue that puts much of Marvel and DC to shame.

Szilagyi's art has a nice old-school vibe to it which pleases yours truly greatly. He actually uses spotted blacks for depth and shadowing, as opposed to many modern artists who just provide lineart and let the colorist use digital gradients to deepen and shadow the art. It's a real treat to see those lush, large black areas that I've come to miss on modern comic books. The clarity is also excellent; Szilagyi demonstrates an excellent grasp of just how much background is needed. He gives us enough to know where we are, but doesn't overdo it so that panels get cluttered and unclear (a VERY common mistake among modern artists). The aforementioned spotted blacks also help a lot with clarity.

If I had to liken Szllagyi's work to some other artist, I would perhaps say his work looks like that of a young John Romita Jr, circa the early 1980s. His faces have that little bit of angularity to them that reminds me of Romita, but his bodies still have natural curvature, instead of having become composed of rectangles like Romita's more modern, more "boxlike" art.

As for the writing by Mike Bullock, I wasn't as impressed with it. It was perfectly serviceable, but felt perhaps a little decompressed. However, that could be chalked up to focusing the first issue on setting the mood. Not really all that much happens in the first issue, other than establishing the problem, giving it a few warm-up punches, and then heading to the bad guy's fortress. I'm hoping that with the set-up of plot and mood out of the way, the remaining two issues will feel "meatier".

I was delighted that Bullock did not feel the need to give us an "origin" flashback despite this being a high-PR issue that will no doubt bring in new readers. It seems he just assumes that everyone is familiar with the Phantom, and quite frankly, I 100% agree with that call. There was no need to waste precious pages on introducing this jungle guardian, and so he didn't. Good call.

I think my main problem with the substance is the complete lack of subplot. There's only one plot whatsoever. You watch the Phantom go from scene 1 to scene 2 to scene 3, but there is nothing outside that main plot that we interlude to. Especially considering the very subject of the story -- children used as slaves -- I would have liked to see the Phantom's children Kit and Heloise depicted, as they would have been thematically very appropriate to reference, juxtaposing their happy home life at the Skull Cave (or wherever they are at the moment) with that of the slave children.

It would have been terribly cliche if Bullock had included Kit and Heloise's kidnapping to the army of HIM as the Phantom's motivation -- much like Judd Winick had Arsenal's child Lian kidnapped by slave traders in the pages of OUTSIDERS. That kind of angle tends to make the hero look self-serving, as if they only go to solve problems when it touches their family. I was glad to see Bullock didn't go with that angle. But it still would have been nice just to SEE Kit and Heloise, and establish their existence in the arc, as it gives additional emotional depth to the story if the reader realizes that the Phantom has children of the same age himself.

I also would not have minded at all, if Bullock had included some kind of flashback to an earlier Phantom, as he seems to be going with the angle that HIM has met a Phantom before. ("He's using the same costume as the first...") Perhaps that was too early in this issue, but when he explores that particular speech bubble further in coming issues, I hope he will give us a full-on flashback to an earlier Phantom, rather than just covering it with a speech bubble or two, ("The Phantom! But I killed you sixty years ago!") and leaving it at that. In all, I thought it was a good angle to take, as it lends an air of importance to HIM, that he isn't just a one-shot opponent, but has fought a Phantom -- or, possibly, PhantomS, plural -- before.

It was also a bit bizarre to see (what I presume to be) Guran showing up in one panel with a single line, without any establishing who he is. Considering the important role that he and his tribe played in liberating the slave camp, I would have liked a few panels at least devoted to establishing who they are. I also would have liked if Devil had been mentioned by name at some point, like Hero and Fraka were, to establish his identity. But these are minor nits to pick.

Overall, the plot is good, but as mentioned, pretty straightforward. Meating it up with a few interludes/cuts to Diana taking care of Kit and Heloise at the Skull Cave, establishing Guran and his tribe better, and a flashback to an earlier Phantom, would have rounded the issue out nicely. As it is, I am hoping that some of those things will show up in the remaining two issues.

Overall, I give the book a solid B+. Subplots/interludes would have bumped it up to A-.

Does anyone know what Frew annual features that panel of Diana Boxing?