Wayback Whensday – Comic Strips (and an Editoon)
Skip to comments
The Phantom is 90, Modesty Blaise is 63, Hugo Hercules is 123. and the 100 year old cartoons of Billy Bornes.
The Man Who Cannot Die is Born
Next month is the 90th anniversary of Lee Falk and Ray Moore‘s The Phantom.
The Phantom Fan begins their celebrations early:
In February of 1936, a young writer named Lee Falk ushered into newspapers across America a new kind of adventure hero — one that would go on to inspire generations of readers, influence the very idea of what a costumed hero could be, and endure for 90 remarkable years. That hero was The Phantom, known to his contemporaries as “The Ghost Who Walks” and “The Man Who Con Not Die”, a mysterious masked crime-fighter whose legacy was almost mythical even from the outset.
Fast-forward to 2026, as the Phantom celebrates his 90th anniversary, it’s worth taking a thoughtful journey through the milestones, transformations, creators, cultural impact, and timeless spirit of the comic strip…
Criminal, Spy, Detective, Adventuress
Daniele Tomasi for The Fumettomania Factory begins a deep dive in the history of the Modesty Blaise comic (via Google Translate):
Welcome to the first article of the new Fumettomania Special, titled "MODESTY BLAISE, THE PRINCESS," a dossier dedicated to the famous English comic strip created in the early 1960s for newspapers, featuring a beautiful young woman and her assistant who conduct investigations and solve cases for the British secret service.
From Monday, May 13, 1963, Modesty Blaise was published daily for 95 stories over 38 years, and subsequently translated into 16 languages. An unexpected success.
Comics First Superhero
Cabran Gray for Looper writes a short biography of Hugo Hercules by W. H. D. Körner.
Believe it or not, superheroes weren’t always this complicated. Before Marvel and DC were dreamed up, the world’s first superhero came with an extremely straightforward sales pitch: He’s a guy who can lift really heavy things. Meet Hugo Hercules, the first superhero in comics. Artist Wilhelm Heinrich Detlev Körner began publishing stories about Hugo in the pages of the Chicago Tribune on September 7, 1902. The newspaper continued publishing small comic strips about his adventures for five months.
The year that Körner died was also the year that the very first issue of “Action Comics” was published. The rest is history.
With Just a Little Tweaking…
Thomas Calder for the Mountain Xpress takes us back 100 years to the editorial cartoons of Billy Bornes in The Asheville (N.C.) Citizen where, with some minor changes are relevant to today.
Topics featured in Borne’s 1926 collection include concerns about inflated real-estate prices, tourism, the authorization of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, city expansion, traffic woes and financial distress.
Some things just don’t change, do they?
Comments 4
Comments are closed.