Tony DePaul Out, Alex Segura In As The Phantom Writer
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Tony DePaul has informed readers of his Nickels of the Man blog that he has been dismissed as the writer of The Phantom after more than a quarter century of plotting and scripting the comic strip.
DePaul writes:
“On September 21, the desk at King Features went dark on me when I started asking questions. A couple of emails from the desk had really pinged my radar.
“The first: Hold off on writing a new story for Jeff Weigel, the Sunday artist.
“The second: How many more weeks left in the daily story Mike Manley’s working on?
“You don’t have to be Columbo to put 2 and 2 together on that. They’re either getting ready to end production on the Phantom strips, put them into reprints, or they’re easing me out the door.”
DePaul continues:
“Yesterday [Oct. 14], our boss, Amy Anderson, calls to tell me the syndicate’s taking a new direction with the Phantom, hoping to attract younger readers.
“Alex Segura will write the strips published December 7 and thereafter. I don’t know Alex but he’s well regarded in the business, talented, a great guy by all accounts. And he’s a comics guy, which I’m not. I’ve never been in the comics business. I came to the newspaper strips out of newspapers.”
DePaul says his last daily strip will be December 5, 2026 but the current story “The Grudge,” which began on April 27 of this year does not end then, still having a ways to go:
“My working draft shows 109 panels to go after that, plus an epilogue I had sketched out but not yet written.”
DePaul doesn’t know if Segura will continue that story from DePaul’s notes, take “The Grudge” in a new direction, or start fresh with a new story on Dec. 7.
The Sunday Phantom story that just began with the Oct. 4, 2026 page is set to run until April 2027.
Alex Segura had been the co-writer of Comics Kingdom’s online vertical comic Phantom 2040: A New Shadow that ran from Sept. 2025 to June of this year. He has been mentioned here most often as the writer of Mad Cave’s Dick Tracy comic book, though he has written many more comic books than that.
Whether The Phantom‘s “new direction” includes artists Mike Manley and Jeff Weigel is unknown at this time.
Tony DePaul’s The Phantom credits:
Dailies: July 12-Oct. 20, 1999; Jan. 17-May 6, 2000; Aug. 7, 2000-Aug. 30, 2003; Dec. 29, 2003-Dec. 5, 2026.
Sundays: April 6, 2003-Sept. 28, 2003; April 4, 2004-April ?, 2027
DePaul began writing The Phantom with the Swedish comic book Fantomen in 1993.
Ivan Petdersen details and reviews DePaul’s career writing The Phantom.
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