Phantomias? (Fabio Blanco)

[Sven-Oliver Troschke]

Fabio Blanco:

> A friend of mine sent me a gift, a Donald' Anthology's Book named "Die
> Stunde des Phantomias". I know we talked sometimes about this character,
> but...
>
> Can some of you refresh me about his origin? I think is totally italian, and
> a bit of a bizarre concept.

Phantomias, or Paperinik which is his name in Italy, is Donald's alter ego as a super hero who
watches over Duckburg especially at night. The character was invented in Italy in the late
60's and is a kind of parody on super hero comics.

Only recently, I discovered a very good article on Italian Disney Comics in general on Frank
Stajano's homepage. On pages 14 to 16 of this article you will find comprehensive information
on Paperinik.

The article can be downloaded from

http://www.uk.research.att.com/~fms/disney/

and is entitled "Disney comics from Italy".

It contains information on the classical Paperinik as well as on the PKNA (Paperinik New
Adventures) series which started in Italy in the 90's. The latter is in the style of modern
American super hero comics (with aliens or time travellers as Paperinik's enemies), while the
book you have features the classical Paperinik. You could say that these are two completely
different Paperinik universes with almost no overlap. Both universes still exist next to each
other.

Only recently, an adaption of the PKNA motif was published in the American magazine "Disney
Adventures". Paperinik's name is "Duck Avenger" there. I have read on this list some months
ago, that the first ten pages of this story were published, but have not heard about it
lately.

There are also some (very few) stories with the classical Paperinik made outside Italy
(France, Egmont), but most of these stories come from Italy. So you could say that Paperinik
is mostly (but not totally) Italian. He is, however, quite popular in Germany as well. How
about other countries?

Sven