The Phantom No. 29 Cover by Jim Keefe

Created by Lee Falk in 1936, The Phantom comic strip has endured to this day, outliving other adventure strips long gone. It has also travelled well around the world, supporting comic book sales in the Nordic countries and Australia.

Jim Keefe is known now for being the artist on the Sally Forth comic strip, but he also spent time on another great adventure strip – Flash Gordon – as its writer and artist. And he’s a go-to guy for classic comic strip illustration.

This piece originally appeared on the February 2013 issue of Comics Revue, a long-running magazine of comic strip reprints. Back in the 1960s, King Features had its own line of comic books with their characters, and The Phantom ended with No. 28. When Charlton Comics took up the licence, they began with No. 30 which is perfectly in keeping with that company’s history of wacky issue numbering.

So we’re going to repurpose Keefe’s art here and make it the cover for King’s mythical issue No. 29.

Colour and packaging by me.

As published.

Pencils by Jim Keefe.

Final art by Jim Keefe.

Art made production ready.

New colour version.

Re-created trade dress added.