The Phantom is an American adventure comic strip, first published by Lee Falk in February 1936. The main character, the Phantom, is a fictional costumed crime-fighter who operates from the fictional African country of Bangalla. The character has been adapted for television, film and video games.
First Sunday strip (May 28, 1939); art by Ray Moore
Photo of Phantom on shield
A comic strip is a sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with daily horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in newspapers, while Sunday papers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections. With the advent of the internet, online comic strips began to appear as webcomics.
Richard Newton Progress of a Scotsman 1794 (British Museum)
Thomas Rowlandson after G.M.Woodward. Opinions on the Divorce Bill 1800 (Metropolitan Museum, New York)
Thomas Rowlandson My Wife 1815 (Metropolitan Museum New York)
Illustrated Chips (1896). Harmsworth titles enjoyed a monopoly of comics in the UK until the emergence of DC Thomson comics in the 1930s.