The Phantom in Stockholm A lithograph 2022
As a young boy in the late 1940s, I was an avid reader of comic magazines. These had low status; commentators claimed they ruined youth. In the 1970s, I began buying old comics, as my own had disappeared. Mandrake and The Phantom were favourites. I created paintings with precisely rendered details from these comics.
The Phantom in Stockholm is based on an Italian comic book from 1942. The content of the comics is often reprised. In The Phantom's double issue 25-26 from 2010, the spanking story returned. There, The Phantom, alias Mr Walker, is on a deserted island with two female pirates whom he disciplines.
My image is perhaps satirical, perhaps melancholic. What did a boy in the 1940s understand? Were those who wanted to ban comic magazines right? What do today's men understand? Should art come with an instruction manual? Is the image a fantasy, never fulfilled and very inappropriate?
Diana, a UN employee and The Phantom's wife, points this out. Then rides out of the picture.
Carl Johan De Geer born 1938