Number 1137: Phantom and the Phlying Saucer

There's something familiar about this story from Gold Key's The Phantom #2 (1963). The script, attributed by the Grand Comics Database to Bill Harris, has the same basic plot as several stories by Stan Lee. Alien comes to earth with invasion in mind. Alien encounters a person who convinces him that Earth people are not pushovers. Alien calls off invasion and leaves.

Pardon me, but if aliens planned an invasion of Earth, traveling untold numbers of light years to get here, would one guy—even if it is the Phantom—discourage them? I think not. But for story purposes it worked for the Phantom, and it worked for Stan Lee .

Bill Lignante did the artwork. Lignante, who also worked for Hanna-Barbera, had begun work on the Phantom comic strip when artist Wilson McCoy died, and was picked to do the Phantom comic book when Gold Key began publishing in 1962. He had a nice run, through 28 issues beginning with Gold Key, then for King Features when they got into the comic book business for a couple of years.

Lignante also did courtroom drawings for ABC News, doing sketches for trials of Sirhan Sirhan, Charles Manson and Patty Hearst. The last Bill Lignante story I showed was for The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. comic book in Pappy's #1096.

Number 1096


"You may be a lover, but you ain't no dancer..."


April Dancer (catchy name) was the "Girl" from The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., an NBC television series that was a spin-off of the popular Man From U.N.C.L.E.. Stephanie Powers, in all her youthful pulchritude, played April. The show lasted 29 episodes in 1966-'67. The comic wasn't much more successful, going for five issues. This issue, #2, was illustrated by Phantom artist Bill Lignante, who drew three of the five.

As a reviewer observed, April got into messes and was rescued by her coworker, Mark Slate, played by Noel Harrison. Harrison had a career that included this series and a couple of hit songs, including the outrageously campy "A Young Girl."*

In this comic notice the character, Miss Harshley. This was the 1960s, and a manlike woman wouldn't be a caricature of a sexual stereotype, especially not in cleancut Gold Key comics...not overtly, of course, but inferences can be drawn.































*I recall my girlfriend at the time loved this song. I, being Pappy, just in a younger body, made fun of it whenever I could. I thought the song was stupid, but I was also jealous of modish and handsome Noel Harrison.