Number 2403: The phantom Fantoman

Fantoman was originally called The Fantom of the Fair, which is catchy, but it meant the Fantom’s raison d'être was to protect the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Once that was over it was time for a name change. Maybe the publishers of the Centaur line of comic books thought the character would only last until the Fair was over.

There is more information about Fantom of the Fair and his publishing history in a previous Pappy’s posting, which you can see by going to the link on the bottom of this post.

Centaur is known as the first comic book company to go out of business, and I don’t know why, but it could have been any number of things. Perhaps when they were originally publishing there was not as much competition. As soon as other publishers joined in and began pumping out super heroes it might have squeezed Centaur too much.

This Fantoman story, reprinted from Amazing Mystery Funnies #18, is shown here in scans taken from Fantoman #4 (1940); the last issue of that title. The story is drawn, and possibly written, by Paul Gustavson.

An earlier Fantom of the Fair story. Just click on the thumbnail.