Lee Falk (1911-1999), born Leon Harrison Gross, a Jewish-American writer from St. Louis, Missouri, was only 23 years old when he brought his creation, Mandrake the Magician, to King Features in 1934. After Mandrake’s massive success as an action-adventure comic strip, King Features invited Falk to submit a second comic. Falk’s first attempt at a new creation was a King Arthur comic, which was rejected by King. Going back to the drawing board, Falk created The Phantom in 1936.
King Features Syndicate introduced readers to the daily narrative on February 17, 1936. The Sunday narrative debuted three years later on May 28, 1939.
Falk’s inspiration for the Phantom’s skin-tight suit came from depictions of the legendary outlaw, Robin Hood. The design for the Phantom’s costume subsequently inspired the classic superhero look that is worn by many popular characters from Batman and Superman to Captain America. Another iconic aspect of The Phantom’s costume that has been adopted by many superhero characters is the pupil-less look of his face mask. Falk credited this look to ancient Greek and Roman statues.
The themes, action-adventure premise, and jungle setting of The Phantom were inspired by Falk’s childhood love of magic and fantasy, his reading of Greek, Roman and Nordic mythology, legends of King Arthur, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robin Hood, Zorro, and the tales of Hans Christian Andersen and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
The Singh Brotherhood, the Phantom’s first great enemy and key adversary in many stories to follow, were inspired by Falk’s fascination with stories of the thuggee organized crime gangs of India (though modern scholarship is skeptical of their existence).
In the jungles of the fictional African country of Bangalla, there is a myth featuring The Ghost Who Walks, a powerful and indestructible guardian of the innocent and fighter of all types of injustice. Because he seems to have existed for generations, many believe him to be immortal. In reality, the Phantom is a legacy hero, the most recent in an unbroken chain of crime-fighters descended from the same family who all adopt the same persona.