To my surprise, I found out that I never shared these mashup comics anywhere other than my Facebook profile. Now seems as good a time as any to preserve them here as well.
It began thus:
Already in the first strip I was faced with editorial dilemmas, and I ended up offering this alternate version with some of the Fred Basset dialog preserved:
Egged on by enthusiastic friends to continue the series, I found more excellent mashup candidates.
It took a little longer for the next candidate to appear, and even then I was breaking more rules! And once again the editor in me couldn’t choose which way to present the strip.
My final entry to the series came in December.
It came with the following essay:
Newspapers across Australia, and indeed across the world, feature these strips on a daily basis. Both Fred Basset and The Phantom are long-running syndicated comics that have entertained readers for generations.
Many readers look upon Fred Basset somewhat derisively – the attempts at humour can seem strained – and sometimes, there’s seemingly no attempt at humour at all. There is however something enjoyable about Fred’s daily adventures. He seems to be a dog that enjoys life and takes simple pleasure in just existing and observing the world around him.
The Phantom is a comic with an esteemed history. In its newspaper incarnation, it tells long-form stories three-panels at a time. The Phantom carved out his place as the first costumed hero, and loyal fans in Australia have been following his adventures for decades in both newspapers and comic books.
Nestled among other comics on the “funnies” page of the newspaper, both the Phantom and Fred Basset have one thing in common – neither comic tends to end with a punchline. However the pacing between each panel still leads to an ending “beat” to each strip. This brief crescendo, usually played out over three panels or less, causes the characters in each comic to seem somewhat melodramatic.
So of course it was only natural to mash these two worlds together. Fred Basset has no continuity, so it works as a canvas onto which The Phantom’s dialogue can be projected. I hope you find the resulting Fred character strangely familiar – after all, he’s still intrepid, inquisitive and incapable of forming a punchline.
Not long ago, both strips were dropped from Australian newspaper syndication. Perhaps one day I will pick up this project again in their honour.
EDIT:
It never ceases to amaze me how exceedingly compatible these strips are – I checked the latest aligned comics for both Fred and The Phantom and they go perfectly together to create this gem.
