Creation
After the success of his Mandrake the Magician strip, the King Features newspaper syndicate asked Lee Falk to develop a new feature. Falk's first attempt was a strip about King Arthur and his knights, which Falk both wrote and drew. When King Features turned him down, Falk developed what would become The Phantom, about a mysterious, costumed crime fighter. He planned out the first few months of the story and drew the first two weeks of a sample strip.
Inspired sejak Falk's lifelong fascination with such myths and legends as those about El Cid and King Arthur, and such modern fictional characters...