"The Secret of the Golden Ransom" in Charlton's first issue of
The
Phantom--#30--may or may not
have been a ghosting job as far as the
editors knew, but it certainly ended up one
for fandom, as the pencils as well as the inks have ever since been
attributed to Sal Trapani. The penciller is José Delbo,
artist on Billy the Kid at Charlton at the time.
The script was evidently passed along out of inventory from King,
like Gary Poole's in the same issue and Dick Wood's in the
next few. The writer is Pat Fortunato, who wrote the earlier Girl
Phantom story, "The Riddle of the Witch," in #24. Note the profusion of
exclamation points and question marks in one panel; this would be a noticeable
characteristic of Fortunato's work in her credited (and uncredited)
work on
UFO Flying Saucers
at Gold Key.
This post was just going to ID that one Charlton story, but upon seeing how
other issues have been attributed on the Grand Comics Database, I ended
expanding it by a lot. On the Gold Key issues, the GCD notes that some
40 years after these were published, Bill Harris said he wrote all the
Phantom stories.
The
Comic Reader 40 is cited for
attributing the story in #11 as by "Dick Wood?" in addition to "Bill
Harris?" That story's note does suggest that actually Harris said he wrote
the
adaptations of Lee Falk strip stories, which makes more sense.
TCR
32 also mentions Wood: "Dick Wood is still scripting SOLAR, and he'll
be handling the original PHANTOM scripts." The source of the
contemporary
Gold
Key news at
TCR?
Gold Key editor Bill Harris.
For your perusal: panels from the Claw story in
Daredevil
Comics 22 (Feb/46, Lev Gleason), "Interplanetary Olympics" in
Jigsaw
2 (Dec/66, Harvey), and "The Terror Tiger" in
Phantom
21, all with the use of "Kazar" for "Huzzah"--like "Great
suffering Hannah" elsewhere, a sign of Dick Wood's scripting.
I suppose most of the stories not listed here through #30 are indeed by
Bill Harris.
Some
Phantom
writers
Gold Key/King/Charlton
| Apr/65 |
11 |
Blind
Man's Bluff |
Dick Wood |
| June/
|
12 |
The
Beast of Bengali |
Wood |
| Aug/
|
13 |
The
Phantom Chronicles |
Wood |
| Nov/66 |
19 |
The
Astronaut and the Pirates |
Wood |
| |
|
The
Masked Emissary |
Wood |
| Jan/67 |
20 |
The
Adventures of the Girl Phantom |
Wood |
| |
|
The
Invisible Demon |
Jerry Siegel |
| Mar/
|
21 |
The
Terror Tiger |
Wood |
| Mar/
|
22 |
The
Secret of Magic Mountain |
Wood |
| Mar/
|
23 |
Delilah |
Wood |
| Aug/
|
24 |
The
Riddle of the Witch |
Pat Fortunato |
| Oct/
|
26 |
The
Pearl Raiders |
Wood |
| Nov/
|
27 |
The
Story of Hero |
Gary Poole |
| Dec/
|
28 |
Diana's
Deadly Tour |
Wood |
| Feb/69 |
30 |
The
Secret of the Golden Ransom |
Fortunato |
| |
|
|
p: José Delbo
i: Sal
Trapani |
in Mandrake
the Magician
King
| Nov/66 |
2 |
The
Pirate Raiders |
Wood |
| Mar/67 |
4 |
The
Girl Phantom |
Wood |
