Issue 1577 - Fortnightly, 2010

• "The Plutonium Wreck" - story by Tony DePaul and art by Joan Boix.

Captain Salambo…Captain Salambo… 

Ring any bells?

Not yet? Captain Salambo….think about it a moment….think about the first four letters of the surname….SALA….

Surely you have it now. SALA….That’s it!

Sala—the mysterious female villain who starred in the very first Phantom adventure, The Singh Brotherhood, way back in 1926.

In that classic story, Sala (we never discovered whether that was her first or second name) was somehow tangled up with the Singh Pirates.

However, by the end of the story, when Sala is seriously injured while saving The Phantom’s life, we learn she has fallen in love with The Ghost Who Walks!

Even more revealing is something she indicated to The Phantom—that she is an undercover agent who has infiltrated the ranks of the Singh Brotherhood.

We never discover for whom she is actually working or, for that matter, whether she was speaking the truth!

Sala returned in the 1941-42 story, Return of the Sky Band, as a member of an all-female gang of flying pirates—and still in love with The Phantom, who by this time, has become one of her arch-enemies.

Is she still an undercover agent? For whom does she work?

Lee Falk never revealed the answer to either question and at the end of Return of the Sky Band, The Phantom makes a strange decision—rather than turn Sala over to the authorities, he helps her escape justice!

In The Plutonium Wreck, Tony De Paul brings back Sala and depicts her as no less mysterious! Once again, she gives The Phantom the impression she is still an undercover agent, hot on the trail of a fiendish plot being concocted between Rhodia and Sandal Singh of Bengali.

Diana has her doubts about Sala’s real motives (or is there already a little jealousy creeping into the situation?).