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A Phantom birthday

Happy birthday to you…

Happy birthday to you…

Happy birthday dear Phantommmmm…

Happy birthday to you…

He’s 71.

Today.

He doesn’t look it, does he? If you turn to the comic strips in today’s newspapers, no doubt you’ll find him bustling away in Skull Cave, whipping up a soufflé or somesuch.

I have a confession to make… I’m not a Phantom phan. He might have been the first superhero to wear Lycra, but he doesn’t do anything for me.

Come to think of it, why’s he a superhero? I mean, great pecs and all that, but he can’t see through walls, or swing between tall buildings on gossamer threads. He can’t even fly for heaven’s sake! He rides a horse!

And saving the noble savage is darkest Africa is somehow passé in 2007, when we have terrorists, climate change, metropolises of glass and steel and John Howard.

He was created by an American, Lee Falk, and first appeared in American newspapers on February 17, 1936. Mr Falk didn’t expect him to last more than two years, but sometime you can’t have what you want. The Phantom is not quite the phantom that I, personally, would like him to be.

I don’t know why he never appealed to me. Maybe because he was, at bottom, just an ordinary bloke. As a kid, you can ache to be Superman (faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive) or Batman (Kkkpow! Thwwwwack!) But a bloke on a horse, in a cave? I don’t think so.

He’s too human. Not that I don’t have high regard for him. You have to respect someone who has survived snakes, lions, marauding tribesmen and saddle sores for 71 years and who, in all likelihood, will keep going for another 71, which is more I’ll manage.

But I am nearly as old as he, and I know (he being just an ordinary bloke) that he’s really just me in a mask. Same doubts, frailties, insecurities and concerns.

Not that he ever expresses them. Even Superman sometimes questions what he’s doing and why he’s here (besides saving the world) but not The Phantom.

And he’s not even saving the world. He’s not even saving Africa; just some bits of it.

Nope… he’s an anachronism. He’s hanging in there because he’s an old bloke in the corner at the pub and no one likes to say to him: “Listen granddad… I’m sure you had an interesting life, but the past is a foreign land… they do things differently there. How about you pipe down? I’m watching the footy.”

So he just goes prattling on about the time he stepped on a deadly scorpion, while the whole family knows he’s actually incontinent and if he puts his glasses down it’ll take eight grandchildren to find them again.

Personally, I can relate to that. I’m not incontinent yet, and I don’t wear glasses, but my wife calls me the Grey Ghost, too. Not because I turn up in unexpected places, saving bits of Africa, either. But because my hair is grey… what I’ve got of it… and my complexion.

Anyway… happy birthday to The Phantom… and remember to be nice to the older generation.

They used to be people once, too.