The ghost walks again

In Sarnath Banerjee’s debut graphic novel Corridor,his protagonist,a lanky Bengali from Calcutta,reminisces how he would spend lazy afternoons reading from the nine leather-bound volumes of Phantom – The Ghost Who Walks till his friend Bambi makes off with Volume Four. “Phantom by Lee Falk influenced my life. The protagonist in Corridor and I share a history of such a grandfather and such a passion for Phantom,” smiles Banerjee,36,who remembers reading his first Phantom comic in Bengali,at age seven. “I was in the Congo recently, travelling through Phantom country. My friends joked about how I might be received by Guran,chief of the pygmy tribe and Phantom’s best friend,” adds Banerjee.

Phantom turned 70,on May 28. There was not a word from the publishers,comic book aficionados or bookstores about this unforgettable comic hero. But long ago,when the first regular series of Phantom comic books in India were published by Bennet Coleman under the name of Indrajal Comics from March 1964,the superhero without superpowers captured the imagination of a nation’s youth. “I used to draw comics as a child and my biggest influences were Tintin,Phantom and Mandrake the Magician,” says Orijit Sen,46,renowned comic book illustrator. “Stories of the first Phantom were all so familiarly entwined in the childhood of that generation. That is not the case today,” says Sen.

There are only a few bookstores who still sell Phantom comics but none of the original comics remain. “We stocked the new lot a year ago and those who grew up reading them bought them out of a sense of nostalgia. But the sales have shaken no trees,” says Ajit Vikram of Fact & Fiction,Delhi.

But all is not lost. Euro Books,the company that has taken over the Phantom franchise in India since 2000 has reformatted the Phantom comics,although many fans of the original Indrajal comic might not take to it. “Our market is the teen group and since Falk’s demise in 1999 we’ve converted Phantom into a graphic novel format and they’re priced accordingly,at Rs 199 each,” says Uday Mathur, Managing Director,Eurokids International. The company sold about 10,000 copies last year. “We’re trying to revive interest in Phantom. We’ll have 12 brand new titles in October,” says Mathur.