Phantom Stranger #41. A Time For Endings.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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 Phantom Stranger Quote of the Day:

"Men call me the Phantom Stranger and say that I have seen the beginning of this World. Perhaps they are right... ...for each man's world begins with his memory, and ends at the furthest borders of his dreams!"

Everyone knows how much I love the Phantom Stranger. His capacity for strangening phantomly, when I was a child, set him apart from all other heroes and bestowed upon him a wisdom at which the rest of us can only marvel.

But, oddly, it seems not everyone loved him as much as I did.

And so it was that, after just 41 issues, his comic came to an end.

But, having never read it before, what do I make of that end?

And will the presence of Deadman affect my perception of it?

It all begins when, during a presumably typical day at the Sanders School for the Blind, two of its teachers Cassandra Craft and Adam Shapiro go to the assistance of fellow blind person Nathan Seine - only for him to capture Cassandra and knock out Shapiro.

For this is no ordinary blind man. This is no less than the villain from Phantom Stranger #35. The one who tried to revive his dead wife by draining the protagonist's lifeforce into her.

Needless to say, that bid failed and, now, Seine's out for revenge against the titfer-topped tormentor of tyrants, terrors and troublemakers. And he's going to get it by sacrificing Cassandra to his masters the Nether Gods.

But it turns out they don't want her. They want the Phantom Stranger.

Taking advantage of the fact that she's still alive, Cassandra sends a psychic message to the Stranger who's stood around, arguing with Deadman. The Stranger knows that saving Cassandra's bacon is more important even than arguing with a ghost and instantly teleports off to save her.

But the Nether Gods have granted Seine the power to kill our hero and it looks like it's all up for the plucky man of mystery, until, as a last resort, he summons Deadman who takes one look at the situation and possesses the unconscious Shapiro.

Not that that does him much good because Seine promptly kills Shapiro.

But that's all our the Stranger needs. Now he can channel, into Seine, Deadman's pain at the knowledge that he caused Shapiro's death. And that pain robs the villain of his powers before he's taken away by the Nether Gods who don't take kindly to failure.

But not everyone on Team Good Guy is happy either because Deadman's angry about the death of Shapiro and his own part in it.

Not that he can do anything about it because, clearly tired of the conversation, the Stranger teleports away to wherever it is he teleports away to whenever he teleports away.

And that's how the Phantom Stranger's series ends. Not with a bang but with a disappearing act.

It would be nice to say it's a great finale to a great series but the truth is it all feels very rushed, with the story and its characters possessing no time to breathe.

It's nice to see Cassandra Craft and Nathan Seine return from previous issues but I'm not so sure it's nice to see Deadman again. A man who's always seemed, to me, to be a one-note character in the few appearances I've experienced. Not to mention that his constant complaining quickly starts to feel like a contractual obligation, rather than forming organically.

Fred Carrillo's art does its job and sporadically carries echoes of both Gerry Talaoc and Alex Niño but it's mostly routine in comparison to the work of those two. While Paul Levitz's dialogue feels clumsy and ineffectual.

But if little in the story itself satisfies me, at least the issue does boast that mean, moody and magnificent Jim Aparo cover to remind us of the strip's glory days.

But have I fallen into a trap? Is it possible that it was always the covers alone that had lent the book the air of it being a title experiencing its glory days?