How the Phantom has infiltrated PNG
The Phantom has left his mark in PNG. RichardAndrews reports on the cult figure’s influence in the country.
Newspapers (in PNG) published Phantom comic strips during the 1970s and some of his derring-do exploits appeared in Tok Pisin.
How did a costumed superhero fighting foes in the fictional African country of Bangalla end up fronting real-life battles in the Papua New Guinea Highlands and help develop PNG’s film industry in the process?
The answer lies with Lee Falk’s 1936 creation, The
Phantom. This masked avenger, resplendent in a purple body suit, was a big hit in newspaper comic strips, comic books, novels and movies. Art historians believe that
The Phantom comic books were first brought to PNG by US troops during World War 2. During that time, Falk also worked as a US propagandist and wrote The Ghost Who Walks, in which the superhero leads an allied defence of jungle people against the invading Japanese.
The Ghost Who Walks captured the local imagination in PNG. Newspapers published Phantom comic strips during the 1970s and some of his derring-do exploits appeared in Tok Pisin. One adventure shows the Phantom strictly warned not to bagarap (ruin) a dangerous mission.
Falk depicted the first Phantom as a 16th-century English nobleman whose ship was attacked by oriental pirates. Washed ashore, he was found and cared for by natives who had never seen a white man before. The young survivor swore an oath to fight injustice. US filmmaker, Mark Eby, believes the Phantom became popular in PNG “largely because he befriended the indigenous people of Bangalla and lived among them, rather than inhabiting the large cities other superheroes call home.”
In addition, he vanquishes enemies with his “strength, intelligence, and fearsome reputation” rather than super powers.
Eby agrees with anthropologists who theorise these qualities help explain why Wahgi warriors displayed Phantom images on ceremonial war shields carried into battle during clan conflicts in the 1980s.
Galleries, museums and private collectors around the world now display these shields, spurring renewed interest in a short documentary Eby made about them in 2008.
“I grew up in the Highlands with Phantom comics,” he says. “My parents were missionaries and took me there at the age of two. I returned to the US to attend college and pursue a career in film production, but never got over the experience of growing up in PNG.”
As a result, Eby jumped at the opportunity, years later, to make a documentary for San Francisco’s de Young Museum about the origin of Phantom shields – part of the extensive Jolika Collection of New Guinea art.
“I tracked down and filmed the (shield) artist, Kaipel Ka, who had a sign-writing business by the side of the road in Banz, Western Highlands Province,” says Eby. “Sadly, he passed away three months after I made my documentary,
The Man Who Cannot Die.
“I really liked reading comic books,” says Ka on camera. “It quickly occurred to me that the leaders of the battle should be carrying these symbols. Those that led the battle were the toughest fighters, just like the Phantom. I combined the ideas of the white man with the man in the village.”
The visit to PNG rekindled Eby’s love of the country and he returned to teach film production at the University of Goroka until 2015. He then joined RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, to research ways he could help PNG develop its own community based film industry.
With support from Canberra and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Eby’s first movie,
Aliko and Ambai, premiered in 2017. Co-directed with Diane Anton, the coming-of-age feature about two young village women is currently doing the rounds of international film festivals.
Eby has no plans to make a Phantom movie, but says he’ll continue to focus on “PNG’s own stories and social issues.”
Meanwhile, Lee Falk’s creation has achieved its own immortality since he died in 1999. Publishers say the Kaipel Ka story has renewed interest in the Phantom, and a book about the warrior shields is in the works.