220 pages, 10 stories
Cover Art: Signed by Jason Paulos
Mint condition.
In this year’s 2023 Phantom Annual we have decided to focus on the Phantom as seen through the creative lens of Graham Nolan.
Here is a brief biography of his contribution to the world of comic art.
“Graham Nolan’s career as a comic artist started in the mid-1980’s for various US comic publishers. His first long run was on Airboy, written by Chuck Dixon and published by Eclipse comics. He began to draw comics for DC Comics, including long runs on Power of the Atom and Hawkworld before landing a job on Detective Comics.
Nolan drew Detective Comics from 1992 to 1998, scripted by Chuck Dixon. In 1998, Nolan created and published his own comic strip, “Monster Island”. This was reprinted as a back-up feature in the Scandinavian Phantom comic books (Fantomen and Fantomet). Nolan was asked to provide painted Phantom covers for three issues. This, combined with the Phantom story “Death’s Dark Path” which Nolan and Chuck Dixon had made previously for a trading card series, led to Nolan being offered the job as artist on the Phantom Sunday strip in 2000. Nolan quickly accepted the offer, as the character had been one of his favorites since childhood.
By the time he was offered to work with The Phantom he was already the daily and Sunday artist on another newspaper strip, “Rex Morgan, M.D.”. He had hoped to syndicate his own “Monster Island” strip, but when it was rejected, he was offered work on “Rex Morgan” and later on “The Phantom”. In 2006, Nolan also drew a story for Moonstone Books’ Phantom Annual, which was written by his former Batman-partner, Chuck Dixon. He left the Phantom strip in 2006, with Paul Ryan taking over for him on the Sunday pages, to work on other projects. During his tenure he also wrote one Phantom Sunday story, “The Sinbad Stone”, which is included in this collection which were originally published between mid-2000 and early 2004.” He has written another story for Team Fantomen” which we will come to at a later date. Graham Nolan’s work throughout his time with the Phantom is of an outstandingly high quality and certainly worth a reprint some 20 years later.