Once again, I’m going to write about something that’s not related to games in any way. But since it’s Pride Month, I thought it would be fitting to feature a memorable piece of Swedish pop culture that’s kind of related to that, namely an issue of the long-running Swedish comic book featuring the superhero The Phantom, or “Fantomen” as he’s known in Sweden, an issue with a quite spectacular cover (drawn by Henrik Sahlström):
The Phantom is, of course, originally an American newspaper comic strip character, created by Lee Falk. He’s notable for being quite possibly the first “costumed adventurer” wearing tights (including the classic “underwear on the outside” look), predating even Superman by a few years. Despite his historical significance, I’m under the impression that he’s not considered a big name among superheroes nowadays, at least not in his home country (though the strip is still running after all these years). What’s interesting is that he’s gained quite some popularity in other countries, including Sweden. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that he’s become something of a Swedish cultural icon, at least for certain generations of people. The Swedish “Fantomen” magazine was first published during the 1950s, and has been going on until the present day (though, again, I suspect that it’s not quite as popular among the kids these days as it was at the height of its popularity). At first, the material in the magazine consisted of translated reprints of the American comic strip, but beginning in the 60s, the book began publishing completely original Phantom stories, written and drawn by Swedes, specifically for the Swedish magazine. This has also continued until the present day, with the famed “team Fantomen” consisting of various artists and authors, not just Swedes, but from several different countries. The original stories are now also published outside of Sweden, mainly in the other Nordic countries.
The cover shown above was for issue 9, 2018, of the Swedish “Fantomen” magazine, which contained the story Den gyllene örnen (“The Golden Eagle”), written by Philip Madden and drawn by Alex Saviuk. In my purely personal opinion, the story inside the magazine is unfortunately not nearly as good as the cover, though I guess it’s “passable”. Which is too bad, since there have been many well-written and well-drawn Swedish Phantom stories throughout the years. The story is about The Phantom travelling to Poland, pursuing a murderer who has stolen a treasure (the titular Golden Eagle). He discovers that the treasure has been taken by a (presumably fictional) Polish rightwing nationalist political party, who are planning to attack the Pride parade in Warsaw. The Phantom is of course having none of that, and physically defends the parade, including by knocking out the leader of the rightwingers with a Pride flag (as depicted on the cover). Like I noted earlier, I don’t think the writing or art is anything spectacular, but it’s still pretty fun to see the Phantom thinking to himself “it’s useless to try and reason with the unreasonable”, and then punching out fascists while wielding a Pride flag:
The issue did get some attention in the mainstream press when it was published, since as I noted earlier, The Phantom has become a well-known and fairly beloved character in Sweden. I myself hadn’t bought any issues of the comic in several years, but that cover was just too good to pass up, no matter what I might think of the story itself. The magazine has a vote each year for “best cover”, with the winning cover being printed as a big poster in a later issue. In 2018 it was apparently this issue that won. I really wish I can someday get my hands on a poster of that cover image, without any of the text.
So, if you ever need some motivation to go out there and fight against fascism, remember the old jungle saying: “The Phantom is rough with rough-necks!”