Mike Eakins
Independent comics publishers G-Man Comics and Sankofa Comics will publish two remastered editions of the first African-American costumed superhero: Steve Perrin’s Black Phantom, illustrated by Ronn Foss. Perrin first published the Black Phantom as a text story with incidental art by Foss in the amateur fan magazine (or ‘fanzine’) Mask & Cape #4 in the summer of 1964. Two years later, in September 1966, about the time that Marvel Comics’ Black Panther first saw print, Perrin and Foss retold the Black Phantom’s origin as a thirteen-page story in another fanzine: Fantasy Illustrated #6.
Not long before his death in August last year, Perrin met University of California Riverside professor and Hugo-Award-winning artist John Jennings, and the two were planning to revive the character. In the months following Perrin’s death, G-Man Comics managing editor Jim Burrows, an admirer of both Perrin and Foss’s work, sought out Jennings to find out if he was planning on continuing with the project. Soon, the two had agreed to republish the original stories, and revive the character and his successors for further adventures. This was the birth of Sankofa Comics and plans to include the remastered origins in G-Man Comics’ next Kickstarter campaign.
G-Man Comics will be publishing the origin stories in two editions: a simple, remastered, black-and-white 20-page comic, and a full-color 24-page comic with added material. Prof. Jennings has provided a short essay on the Black Phantom’s role in black comics as well as creating art for both the cover and the Deluxe Color Edition. G-Man Comics’ artist David Ellis Leary has colored the graphic origin and the full-page splash for the text story. The team has been in touch with Perrin’s widow and Foss’s ex-wife and children, and the project has the approval and support of both families.
Both editions will be released as parts of G-Man Comic’s “Rise of the G-Men” Kickstarter campaign on March 1, 2022, which can be accessed at:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/g-man-comics/rise-of-the-g-men/
G-Man Comics is an independent publisher of comic books and fanzines. It takes its name from its premiere character, agent Simon N. Kirby, a costume-wearing FBI agent who puts together Mission-Impossible-like teams of superheroes in each issue of Simon N. Kirby, the Agent.
Sankofa Comics specializes in reprinting and reimagining characters and stories from comics’ history. It takes its name from a word in the Twi language of Ghana that is used to describe bringing what is good from the past into the present, using knowledge to improve the future.
