One of Archie’s earliest superheroes, Bob Phantom, will return in November in a new one-shot by writer James III of Netflix’s comedy sketch show Astronomy Club and artist Richard Ortiz, who worked on Archie’s The Fox.
Bob Phantom debuted in 1939 in the pages of Blue Ribbon Comics #2. The character was created by Harry Shorten and Irv Novick. By day he was theater critic/gossip columnist Walt Whitney, who was very critical of the local police. He was one of the first superheroes published by MLJ, the precursor to Archie Comics.
“With Bob Phantom, I wanted to explore what it means to write news today when everyone gets their news from the headlines on their Twitter feed without reading the articles, and you can’t tell what’s legitimate and what’s fake. (To use loaded terminology.) This might make you question your validity as a journalist and your worth as a person in society,” James III said. “I was heavily inspired by crime stories with news elements like Road to Perdition and Nightcrawler. What brings a person to snap pictures first and provide assistance later or not at all?”
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