Issue 1640 - Fortnightly, 2012

• "Prisoner in the Skull Cave" - story by Claes Reimerthi and art by Hans Lindahl.

Writer Claes Reimerthi has come up with one of the year’s most unusual Phantom adventures! Prisoner in the Skull Cave delves into the near-impossible-to-imagine scenario….The Phantom being held captive in the fabled Skull Cave! Worse—his captor is the fiendishly clever Black Carnation, the master of disguise and a man tormented by demons and driven to commit evil.

Even worse still, the Black Carnation sets out to impersonate The Phantom and along the way, so oversteps the mark the jungle chiefs decide he has gone insane and needs to be killed. By—of all people, Guran! What a storyline! You will be tempted to look at the climax of this adventure to discover what eventually happens!

A very sincere request: Please, do yourself a big favour! Do not! The story is too good and far too exciting for anybody to have even an inkling of the outcome before the final pages! Hans (Hasse) Lindahl’s art is, as expected, superb!

His depictions of action scenes, facial expressions of the main players and especially, jungle scenery are the equal of any work to appear on Frew pages since the company began publishing The Phantom comic book in 1948. Now, that’s the highest possible praise when you remember how many great artists have poured their creative genius into The Phantom character over such a long period of time….from Ray Moore through Don Newton, Jean-Yves Mitton, Kari Leppanen, ’Felmang’, Jose Casanovas, Bill Lignante, Sy Barry and the modern greats like Paul Ryan and so many others….