A Wedding Worth Waiting For?

When the Phantom married Diana Palmer—Sala to Norwegian readers—it was easy to see the wedding as the natural fulfilment of a promise that had been there almost from the beginning. But was it a necessary development? Could the series have continued perfectly well without it?

For me, those are different questions. A marriage can make sense within a character's life without being essential to the adventures we enjoy reading. Looking again at the early Falk and Moore stories, I am struck by how frequently marriage enters the conversation. The relationship often feels more openly romantic than it would in later periods. The wedding was hardly an idea suddenly introduced in the late 1970s. What needs explaining is why an early possibility remained a possibility for so long—and what the series gained or lost when Falk finally acted on it.

A small matter of dates

For many Norwegian readers, 1978 is the year associated with the wedding. In the original newspaper publication, however, the wedding adventures began in October 1977 and continued into February 1978. The daily story, D136, Phantom Wedding, ran from 31 October 1977 to 4 February 1978; the Sunday version, S104, The Wedding of the Phantom, from 30 October 1977 to 5 February 1978.

The two versions presented the same major event. They should not be mistaken for two different weddings, nor should the story's opening date automatically be treated as the day the ceremony appeared. Frew gives 24 November 1977 as the marriage date. The larger point here is that the wedding belongs to the original 1977–78 publication period, rather than simply to one universal date shared by every country's readers.

Marriage was there long before the wedding

The early adventures were not merely crime stories with Diana occasionally added. Attraction, jealousy, separation and the possibility of marriage helped drive the action. Other men wanted Diana, other women wanted the Phantom, and the reader could usually be more confident about the central relationship than either of the lovers seemed to be.

By the 1937 adventure commonly known as The Diamond Hunters or War in the Jungle, marriage was already being discussed. The difficulty of Diana accepting a life in the jungle was part of the problem. That is a more substantial obstacle than simply failing to find a convenient day for the ceremony: they belonged to different worlds, and neither world could be dismissed quite so easily.

To me, this romantic emphasis has something of the flavour of the period. Marriage supplies a recognisable goal, while adventures and misunderstandings continually interrupt the journey towards it. That is my reading of the stories, rather than proof that every pre-war reader expected the same outcome.

What matters is that Falk did not need an actual wedding to make the relationship important. The promise of one could already do a great deal of work.

An engagement before the war was over

The clearest early landmark is D018, The Phantom's Engagement, published from 24 May to 24 July 1943, with drawings by Wilson McCoy. Here the Phantom does propose, and Diana accepts. Jim Shepherd's account identifies the successful proposal in the strip of 26 June 1943.

The engagement then breaks down. Diana fears that she will not recover her ability to walk and does not want to bind the Phantom to that future. She pretends that she loves Byron instead. By the time she regrets the deception, the misunderstanding has taken hold.

This is more than a woman casually deciding to wait. Her refusal is presented as an act of sacrifice, however mistaken. The Phantom does not know what the reader knows, and love becomes the reason for a separation that neither really wants. The treatment of her condition belongs to an older kind of melodrama and should not be read as medical advice, but the emotional mechanism is clear.

The sequence of the adventures can make the date easy to misremember. This proposal comes after the Phantom's wartime adventure in the series, but it was published in 1943, while the Second World War was still being fought. It is the same early engagement, not a separate proposal from the post-war years.

A promise that could always be postponed

By 1959, in D073, The Betrothal, Falk and McCoy returned to the earlier situation. The story recalls the period when Diana was in a wheelchair, while a threatened conflict over a tribal marriage calls the Phantom away. An interruption of the private relationship becomes the opening for another adventure.

That seems characteristic of the arrangement Falk maintained. There might always be something urgent to do first. Diana had her family, her own life and, later, work that could take her elsewhere. The Phantom had obligations that could not be put aside because his personal affairs needed attention.

These are explanations within the fiction. The explanation outside it is that the arrangement remained useful. Falk could write a romantic reunion, a misunderstanding, a rival or a separation, then return the pair to much the same position. The relationship had movement without demanding a permanent change to the series.

Nor should forty years of publication be treated as forty years of ordinary courtship inside the story. These characters lived through decades of changing cars, clothes and political circumstances without ageing at the same rate as their readers. It can look absurd when entered into a calendar, but it is familiar territory in a continuing newspaper strip.

Falk was not always in favour

There is a particularly revealing complication: Falk himself had expressed doubts about turning his hero into a husband and father. In a mid-1960s interview with Alain Resnais, he described his disappointment with Tarzan's domestic development and said that he did not intend to marry the Phantom and Diana. He had even considered another way of providing an heir.

That makes it difficult to describe the eventual wedding as the completion of an unchanging plan. At one point, keeping them unmarried was a conscious creative position.

Later recollections give a different picture. Falk spoke of being ready for a change and of the awkwardness of an engagement that had continued for decades. His own marriage to Elizabeth Moxley in 1977 was also connected with the decision in comments by Falk and Sy Barry. It may have contributed, but it should not be turned into a complete explanation for everything that happened in the strip.

What I find useful here is the evidence that Falk reconsidered. A choice that had once seemed dangerous to the series eventually seemed worth making. That is a writer changing his mind, rather than a legend mechanically following a timetable.

The wedding changed more than their names

D133, The Proposal, ran from 21 February to 2 April 1977. Diana's work for the United Nations made the question of their future more practical: marriage involved deciding how two lives would fit together, not merely declaring their affection.

The wedding itself brought the Phantom's wider world together. Jungle friends, political leaders and even Mandrake and Lothar belonged to the celebration. It gave readers an event to remember and publishers an occasion to mark. I can appreciate that without believing that the previous storytelling arrangement had become unusable.

The greater change followed in The Heirs. The daily version ran from 18 December 1978 to 19 May 1979, while the Sunday version ran from 12 November 1978 to 20 May 1979. Kit and Heloise gave the present Phantom a family future that could be shown directly.

Marriage and parenthood are connected here, but they are not identical storytelling decisions. Falk could have married the couple and delayed the children. He could also have continued exploring the Phantom's paternal side through Rex. Instead, the wedding was followed relatively quickly by another major development.

What was gained—and what became harder to keep

The unmarried Phantom had room for a particular kind of romantic adventure. A new woman could unsettle the situation, a reunion with Diana could become a reward, and the distance between their lives could generate a story. That freedom did not mean the relationship was shallow. Its uncertainty was part of its dramatic usefulness.

After the marriage, that material required more care. Repeatedly treating the Phantom as an available romantic prospect would have different implications. Misunderstandings could still happen, but the marriage gave the reader another standard against which to judge them.

In return, the series acquired other possibilities: shared decisions, family affection, parenthood and the consequences of danger reaching into the home. Romance did not have to disappear; it could become the romance of two people maintaining a life together. Whether that is more appealing than the earlier arrangement depends on the reader and, above all, on the quality of the particular story.

For me, the wedding is therefore neither an automatic improvement nor a mistake that invalidates everything afterwards. It exchanged some possibilities for others. The question is how well the writers used the exchange.

Rex, the comic books and a family that did not move at one speed

Rex makes the idea that marriage was urgently necessary less convincing to me. Falk had already introduced a boy through whom the Phantom could show affection, responsibility and concern. Questions from a younger character could open the Chronicles, introduce a mystery or lead into an adventure. Family feeling did not begin with a wedding ring.

My impression is that the marriage could have waited longer, with Rex continuing to occupy that place. This is not a claim that Falk intended him to become the next Phantom. It is a preference about what was already working in the stories.

The Scandinavian comic books make the comparison interesting. As I have noted elsewhere, Rex and Tom-Tom were still being used as two young boys in Egmont stories as late as 1987, and possibly later. They could introduce a tale or participate in the action, even when fewer adventures gave them the leading roles. The wedding had not made that approach impossible.

The comic books also mix different periods. A reader might encounter a new Team Fantomen adventure, an older newspaper story and a tale about an ancestor within a short run of issues. This means that a publication date does not, by itself, tell us where a story belongs in the Phantom's married life.

Nor should everything published by Frew be treated as a separate Frew invention. Reprinted Falk stories, Scandinavian material and newly produced comic-book adventures have different origins. When considering what marriage did to the series, I want to know who actually made the story and which version of the world it uses.

A new source of drama, rather than an end to it

Later newspaper stories show how far the consequences could reach. Tony DePaul and Paul Ryan's long sequence beginning with The Death of Diana Palmer Walker in 2009 used the apparent loss of Diana to put pressure on the Phantom as husband and father. In subsequent work, the twins' movement towards lives of their own made succession and responsibility more immediate.

These stories do not prove that marriage was necessary in 1977. They show that later writers found substantial material in the family Falk created. A choice can produce worthwhile adventures without having been the only worthwhile choice available.

I would also hesitate to blame every later change in tone on the wedding. The artists changed, the writers changed, and newspaper and comic-book publishing changed. A married Phantom can still lead a direct, exciting adventure. An unmarried Phantom can still become caught in repetitive domestic misunderstandings. The ceremony alone cannot explain the quality of a whole period.

Does there have to be a 22nd Phantom?

One argument I sometimes encounter is that the marriage was necessary because the series had to continue into the next generation. There have been twenty Phantoms before the present one, so, the reasoning goes, a 22nd must eventually take his place. Someone must write that succession and move the series into its next stage.

I do not agree. For me, this confuses the history behind the character with an obligation governing the future of the comic strip. The earlier Phantoms give the present hero his background, his inherited task and the legend through which we understand him. Their existence does not require the strip to keep replacing its central character.

The series I have followed is about the 21st Phantom, Diana and the familiar people around them. The Chronicles can take us back through the generations, and the idea of a future successor can remain part of the legend. Neither requires the present Phantom to disappear from the continuing series.

If the 22nd took over and the 21st were removed, I would regard the result as a different series built on Falk's creation. It might be interesting, and others might welcome it, but that would not make it a necessary completion of the series Falk wrote. He established the present Phantom as its central hero; he did not himself carry out that replacement.

Nor does having a son impose a deadline. The Phantom can have children without the narrative being committed to showing their eventual succession. Just as he could have remained unmarried, he can remain the 21st Phantom with a wife and children. The marriage changed his household. It did not oblige the series to bring his own story to an end.

Did he have to marry?

My answer is no. The Phantom could have continued without marrying Diana, and I do not think the earlier stories were simply waiting to become complete. Their romance, separations and reunions already formed a workable part of the series. Rex also supplied a family relationship without requiring the whole household to move into a new stage.

But that does not mean the wedding had no value. It gave the saga another direction, fulfilled a long-standing possibility and eventually supplied stories that could not have been told in quite the same way before it.

For me, the most interesting question is not whether the Phantom was entitled to marry. Of course he was. It is whether that was the development the series most needed at that moment. I remain unconvinced. I can enjoy much of what followed while still feeling that Falk had more room to explore the world he already had. And now that the Phantom is married, I see no reason why that world cannot continue to centre on the same man, his wife and their children.