On August 25 2016 a new concept was released by Frew called "Phantom's World" which consisted of stories from around the world never previously published by Frew (and in many cases English). Four years later the series has stopped and we look at the series in retrospect.
Frew #1761 was the first Phantom's World issue and along with issues #1770, #1771 and 1780 it was part of the regular Frew series. Middle of 2017 with an influx of Frew's own created stories it made sense for the Phantom's World concept to be ran as a separate series. That separate series stopped in 2020 with Phantom's World #12.
16 Phantom's World issues were released and we saw in total 43 stories majority of the readers had never seen before. This includes counting multi part stories like "The Queen of Saba" which had three parts. A further breakdown of these stories are:
31 stories in total were previously published stories
29 are Fratelli Spada stories
2 other stories published by RGE (Brazil) and Charlton (USA)
12 stories are new never previously published stories
This includes four stories that were previously created for other companies but where not printed. These are "Expedition in the Jungle Pt1 & Pt2" and "The Honglong Kidnapping Pt1 & Pt2".
"Expedition in the Jungle Pt1" was completed and planned as a sequel in 1973-74 but Ferri stopped working on the Phantom. Around 2000, Ferri and Felmang completed the story and the second part.
One of things that many loved about the series was the range of writers and artists many Frew readers have never seen before. Unfortunately many of the creators are unnamed but some of the creators Frew readers had never seen prior included:
Angelo Todarao
Osvaldo Grassetti
Giovanni Fiorentini
Senio Pratesi
Antonio Sciotti
Raul Buzzelli
Mario Pedrazzi
Raul Buzzelli
Santo D'Amico
Dino Leonetti
Frank Verola
Giorgio Cambiotti
Annibale Casabianca
José Menezes
Walmir Amaral
Wanderley Mayhé
Joe Gill
Pat Boyette
This list does not include Felmang, Germano Ferri and Pidde Andersson who had previously published Phantom stories.
in this podcast we go over the stories, the issues, our positives and negatives with the series plus more. Did you enjoy the series yourself?
At the end Jermayn goes through a list of stories that he would suggest anyone to dig through. That list is:
Venus of the Jungle (Frew 1761)
Scandal in High Society (PW1)
Play with Fire (PW2)
HongLong (PW4)
Racing the Devil (Pw5)
The Queen of the Apes (PW6)
The Return of Grover (PW7)
Operation Brazil (PW8)
Witness for the Prosecution (PW9)
Assassination / Mystery Saga (PW10)
Wild Olympics (PW12)
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