‘Nation’ comic strip ‘The Phantom’ subtly racist, bad news for children

I don’t normally read comic strip cartoons. But this week I read quite a number after receiving a complaint that “The Phantom”, published by the Sunday Nation, is racist. The cartoon “drives the racist narrative that Africans desperately need a white hero to save them from themselves,” says Dr Wambua Kituku. “It should be scrapped, just like the Rhodes statues were brought down.”

Dr Kituku is comparing the racism depicted by the comic to the racism exhibited by Cecil Rhodes, the British empire builder in South Africa and prime minister of Cape Colony (1890–96). His statue was removed from the University of Cape Town following student protests in April 2015, which inspired global campaigns to remove colonial and racist statues.

“The Phantom” is created by Lee Falk, an American writer best known as the creator of popular comic strip cartoons. The comic is published every week in the Lifestyle magazine of the Sunday Nation. Together with two other comic strip cartoons — “Popeye”, by Bud Sagendorf, and “Flash Gordon”, by Jim Keefe — they take up the entire page 12. All these comics are created by foreigners.

Newspapers use comic strip cartoons to tell stories and adventures or analyse topical events using both words and pictures. Comic strip cartoons often employ humour and drama and have a great impact on readers, especially the young. For many readers, they are the first thing they look at — or the only thing they read — in the newspaper.

The comic strip cartoons are a clever way of voicing opinion, as well as entertaining readers and keeping them up to date with news and information. “The Phantom” is an American adventure comic strip cartoon, first published in February 1936. Today, it is syndicated to hundreds of newspapers.

The main character, the Phantom, is a white super-hero, a god-like crime fighter and dispenser of justice who operates in a fictional African country of Bangalla. He is strong, overbearing, intelligent and wise. The Africans, who look up to him, are child-like and the only thing they have to defend themselves with are bows and arrows.

His power is god-like. In one of the comic strip cartoons, he captures all the witchdoctors in the land. He then summons all the chiefs. Sitting on his “fabulous skull throne”, his trained wolf named Devil on his side, he parades the witchdoctors and says:

“Chiefs, the witchmen tried to destroy the hospital and good work of Dr Axel. They must be punished! Each of you take your tribe’s witchman back. Judge him and decide his punishment. Make it good!”

I agree with Dr Kituku that “The Phantom” is racist; but it is subtly so and, therefore, particularly harmful to young readers, who may not be able to see the racism. The comic is, therefore, likely to be more harmful than others that are manifestly racist. 

One such comic is “Tintin” in the Congo (“Tintin au Congo”, in French), the second volume of “The Adventures of Tintin”, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé, commissioned by the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle.

It tells the story of a young Belgian reporter, Tintin, and his dog Snowy, who are sent to the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to report on events in the country. “Tintin” contains racist colonial attitudes toward Congolese people.

“The Phantom” is also more harmful for the same reason than Tarzan of the Apes, a novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs in which Tarzan, a British lord, is the king of the African jungle, where Africans are portrayed as savages.

Fortunately, there are many versions of “The Phantom”, and not all of them are racist in tone. The Swedish version, for example, is not as colonial as the American ones that the Sunday Nation publishes. It is not politically correct for the Sunday Nation to continue publishing a version that denigrates Africans. After all, we are Nation.Africa. Our purpose is to empower Africa, not belittle it.

The Public Editor is an independent news ombudsman who handles readers’ complaints on editorial matters including accuracy and journalistic standards. Email: [email protected]. Call or text 0721989264.