Issue 1607 - Fortnightly, 2011

• "Red and Blood White as Snow" - story by Lennart Moberg and art by Felmang.

Re-presenting one of the most requested old stories from Frew’s Phantom archives!

Red As Blood….White As Snow…. originally appeared as Frew No. 1043 in 1993, which means it has been out of print for some 18 years.

Why is it still so popular (and so often requested) ?

Possibly because the front cover for the time, was so unusual (note The Phantom is not fully depicted and that there is actually only a vague hint of his presence!).

Also possibly, because it is one of those quite rare Phantom adventures in which The Ghost Who Walks is mostly seen (in action at least) in his famous street clothes or in a circus clown’s outfit!

The covers, while unsigned, are almost certainly the work of the late Terry Welsby and the lettering in those days was done by hand. Frew was heavily into computers, but I remained a traditionalist for a long time, preferring to retain the hand-done, pen and ink approach until the gods of progress (and the entire Frew office staff!) cried enough!

It is no secret that comic strips and entire comic books these days are reliant on magic obtainable from electronic equipment.

It’s hard to find fault with such progress, but always spare a thought for publishing people who honed their skills in the pre-offset printing and pre-computer era when artistic creativity was the domain of real artists with pens and ink and brushes and paints!

With so much tradition linked to this old story, all at Frew found it fascinating to check out the production before we made some necessary minor changes for a modern reprint.

We had to modify the front cover, which originally had a star flash ‘New Story’ pointer. But essentially, the covers are the same as appeared in 1993.

(To save everybody the trouble of comparing the original with the reprint, the basic changes on the front cover are naturally, the issue number and retail prices, the new positioning of the Lee Falk credit and the Frew logo, a change to the ‘New Story’ flash and minor changes to the size of some of the typography font sizes.

The BIG CHANGE is the title of the story!

It seems author Lennart Moberg always wanted it called Red As Blood...White As Snow...and for long-forgotten reasons, Frew reversed the two lines!

Now we have returned to Moberg’s original title!

Say it to yourself….Moberg’s original title does sound better the way he wanted!