Regal Publishers

I first met Lee Falk in 1974 when he and I were the two guest speakers at our mutual friend Jerry Robinson’s evening cartooning class at Manhattan’s New School. I was at the very beginning of my quarter-century career at DC Comics, so I was probably there to demonstrate that almost anyone could get a job in comic books. However, Lee was there because he was one of the true legends in the world of newspaper strips and popular culture. He had already been scripting his world – famous MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN for forty years, and his even more famous THE PHANTOM for almost as long. The world of newspaper comic strips is dominated by famous cartoonists and illustrators, but in that arena Lee Falk was a standout star: the ONLY superstar writer! In the field of adventure strips, scriptwriters like FLASH GORDON’s Don Moore were ignored as the spotlight focused exclusively on illustrators like Alex Raymond and Hal Foster and brilliant writer-artists like Milton Caniff and Harold Gray. In the first century of newspaper comic strips, Lee Falk was the only one writer who became a world-famous legend, and he remains a legend today, more than twenty years after his death. Amazingly, comic scripting was largely a sideline for this talented creator, whose true love was the theater. During his long life, Lee produced some 300 plays and personally directed 100 of them, working with famous actors such as Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston and Paul Robeson. He’d also spent some of his early years writing and directing audio dramas and melodramas at St. Louis superstation KMOX during the Golden Age of Radio.

I was lucky to reunite with Lee Falk many times over the decades. I interviewed him for COMIC BUYERS’ GUIDE on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of THE PHANTOM. A couple of years later, in 1989, I produced a MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN radio recreation that Lee directed that reunited Falk with an old friend from his World War II Army days, Raymond Edward Johnson (radio’s original Mandrake) with whom he’d worked alongside in the Office of war Information. It was also my great pleasure to present Lee Falk with a special award from the annual Friends of Old-Time Radio Convention honoring his early career in broadcasting.

Around the same time, I served as the colorist on all of DC’s PHANTOM comic books, and as editor of Comics REVUE I was responsible for adding THE PHANTOM as a regular feature which has continued for more than 400 issues, giving American comic strip fans the opportunity to more easily collect Lee Falk’s most famous creation. My motive for doing so was simple; I personally wanted an easier source to collect THE PHANTOM, since the newspaper feature is nowhere near as prominent in its homeland as it is in India, Australia, the Scandinavian countries or South America.

Today, nearly a quarter century after the death of his creator, all four of my living room walls are adorned with original artwork from THE PHANTOM, the first great comic strip crime-buster who paved the way for such iconic superheroes such as Superman and Batman. For nearly fifty years, I’ve devoted much of my professional life to those legendary characters who are loved around the world. However, I never forget that it all started with THE PHANTOM, and that the late, great Lee Falk was the man who started it!

Anthony Tollin

(Anthony Tollin (USA) was the colorist and historian, for the DC comic series, “The Phantom”, and became friends with Lee Falk after a 1986 interview, at Lee’s Manhattan apartment, for the Comic Buyers Guide. During Anthony’s tenure at Comic Revue, Anthony added the Phantom as a regular feature.)