Whiteness and the Colonial Origins of America’s First Superhero: Lee Falk’s The Phantom

Abstract

HE AMERICAN SUPERHERO GENRE DEMONSTRATES A SERIES OF racial tropes intimately connected with whiteness. Although this may seem self-evident given the prevalence of superhero narratives that center on the protagonists' superior white bodies, Sean Guynes and Martin Lund (3) state that the relationship between whiteness and the American superhero is painfully unexplored. Notable exceptions include a small but ever-growing body of scholarship that spans from centering on a specific character-ranging from Superman (Regalado) and Captain America (Dittmer), to Spider-Man (Fu) and Batman (Brown)-to the genre at large (e.g., Guynes and Lund). What these studies have in common is that they predominately focus on contemporary runs or series and inevitably overlook the origins of the characters. This article aims to contribute to this important corpus of scholarship by focusing on the history of a character that is said to have given birth to the American superhero genre at large: Lee Falk's (1911-99) the Phantom. The argument advanced here is that not only have whiteness and racism been an integral part of the genre but also that the whole universe of America's first superhero has always been rooted in colonialism.Although Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster are often credited with laying the groundwork for what would become the genre and field of the superhero through their creation of Superman (Lund 1), Falk rejected such historiography. Instead, he considered himself the midwife to the genre, viewing mere imitations and cheap replicas in