Fantomet - a brief look at the history of Fantomet in Norway
Tabloid press (noun) – Popular newspapers or news media characterized by a small page format and a sensational, attention-grabbing style of journalism, often focusing on crime, scandals, entertainment, and human-interest stories rather than in-depth reporting.
And let me add ... not to worried about the truth ... first time news is more important.
Whit that in mind, let me give you a brief summarizing on the publication of Fantomet in Norway. The regular Fantomet-magazine began in 1964 – but before that we had the Fantomet (called Phantom from now) in other publications that I will not cover here. Let us just say that the Phantom was very popular in the newspapers. After some stumbling, the magazine found its well-known form in 1967, but still with unregular publishing intervals. This changed in 1970, and from there we had 26 issues per year for a long time. The magazine 1967-2018, was more or less edited by Egmont Sweden, at first, they delivered stories, and these was used as they were in Norway, only in Norwegian, of course. Because of that, Norway also adapted the form of a Phantom story and other non Phantom in each issue. Norway had a certain freedom with non-Phantom stories. (There is a story behind that, but that is for another post).
In 1996, both countries did run the same contents in the magazine and continued that for a lot of years. For the last year, Sweden did also put together the magazine, just for Norway to translate and add some local input. But, sadly, in 2018 the magazine was cancelled. The Phantom had stopped in Norway, some say.
But that is not true. Since 1964 till today, there has been a Phantom publication in Norway, in some form. Let us look at these forms before going further … already in 1970, we got a special, mostly one or two per year. These where mostly in color. We also got pockets, reprint of stories in small format. In 1989 an extra Phantom publication, the Krønike, begun, and lasted till end of 2023, with a few changes in format - some of these where HC books - during the years. These was all reprints. But of course we missed the book with new stuff, and it did looks like the publishers did as well, but in a hard marked, it is not easy to tell what will sell. Some Fantomet like editions, but with size and contents as “albums” did come in 2019. During the years of 2021-24, a publication with only Kfs strips was tested for the Norwegian marked, but only once a year. These was only published in Norway, and was not like the old “yearbooks”, as these was edited for Scandinavia.
Whit all this in mind, I find it hard, and almost insulting, to accept when some say that there was no Phantom publication in Norway after 2018. Some try to exclude a publication and call it “not ongoing”, but is that important? With a certain number of stories per year, is it really that important if these books are weekly, monthly or bimonthly? Or even five times a year? There is one important thing here, fans should know. The price. In Norway there is a 25% tax on magazines. These taxes are not on books, albums or collection editions. Perhaps you can see the importance of not putting out a weekly or monthly magazine. The printing price may also be important here, all common sense tell that printing a thin magazine cost more per page than an album of the same size.
That bring us to the facts about the new Fantomet in Norway. I has no informatin about how often it will be published, but based on what I just wrote, a monthly publication is most unlikely. What I do know is that there will be 3 issues in 2025, and I suppose the interest will help the publisher to decide about coming years. There are four stories in in the first issue, and the page count is 110. Will all these be with colors? I don’t know, but I hope so. There is no info about colors from the publisher yet. These are facts as you can get them by reading the Fantomet site on Facebook.
