New Phantom moves to city, gets great suit

LITTLE ROCK — The first thing to remember is that this isn’t your father’s Phantom.

Or even your grandfather’s.

We’re talking about The Phantom - the jungle-dwelling, Spandex-clad superhero who fought evil not with superpowers, but with his wits, strength and uncanny ability with a variety of weapons, especially a wicked brace of .45s.

Cable’s Syfy Channel updates the costumed hero for the 21st century with a four-hour movie event at 6 p.m. today. Set aside the time; it’s a swell ride.

The masked comic strip character was created in 1936 by Lee Falk, who also created Mandrake the Magician. A color Sunday comic followed three years later and readers were able to fully enjoy The Phantom’s purple outfit.

The first Phantom’s real name was Christopher “Kit” Walker,survivor of a 16th-century Singh Brotherhood pirate attack where his father was murdered and their ship sunk off the African coast.

Bedraggled and washed up on the beach, young Walker pledged to spend the rest of his life fighting piracy and injustice. He also pledged the future lives of all his male prodigy to the cause.

There were good tribes and evil tribes in the jungle. Walker made his costume to resemble some sort of African demon god - all the better to strike fear.

He took up residence in a commodious cave with an entrance that resembled a human skull. Adventures ensued.

Over the years, Kit Walker begat another Kit Walker, who begat another Kit Walker and so forth down through the generations.

Each succeeding Kit Walker assumed the costume and the skull ring of his father (see today’s TV Week cover photo) and that’s how the legend of the immortality of “the ghost whowalks” spread.

And that brings us to the latest Kit Walker, a young fellow who doesn’t know he’s Kit Walker.

Ryan Carnes, 27, stars as Walker. Fans might remember him as Justin, the boyfriend of Andrew Van de Kamp on Desperate Housewives.

Isabella Rossellini is wooden and wasted in the film as Lithia, the villainous head of an experimental mind control program.

Sandrine Holt plays the Phantom’s trusted adviser, Guran.

The blond and perky Cameron Goodman is Walker’s love interest, Renny, a paramedic.

Finally, Cas Anvar portrays the evil, evil Rhatib Singh, head of the Singh Brotherhood. He has a penchant for conducting board meetings while toying with a wicked scimitar. Don’t cross him on a point of order.

In this latest version of the saga, evil, evil Singh Brotherhood assassins attempt to kill young Kit Walker as he rides in his mother’s car. It plunges into theriver. He survives; she doesn’t.

The dazed boy is discovered living out of garbage cans, is renamed Chris Moore and adopted by loving parents. For the next 20 years he lives his life as a freespirited, athletic sort. He goes to law school and is completely oblivious of his legacy or the drastic life changes looming on the horizon.

The catalyst for the film’s action is when the evil, evil Singh crime syndicate decides on a pre-emptive strike before Kit can discover who he really is. They’ll kill Kit and start an international war at the same time, and life will be sweet for these modernday global pirates.

I won’t spoil Kit’s actionpacked and poignant epiphany moment for you but I will comment on the nifty new suit concocted for our hero once he has signed on to the program. After all, in this age of Ironman and Ironman 2, any self-respecting superhero can’t expect to get by on purple Spandex alone.

Walkers’s nifty new costume

would look at home on Luke

Skywalker. It’s a marvel of light

weight bullet-resistant material

and other goodies that somehow

magnify Kit’s natural strengths

and abilities to superhuman lev

els. So, the new Phantom still

doesn’t have superpowers, but

his costume does. That’s split

ting hairs.

And here’s a verisimilitude

quibble. Granted, the suit is

bullet-resistant. But there is no

costume covering Kit’s lower

face. Why, then, does Kit stand

there all cocky and taunting and

let the bad guys blaze away at

him with automatic weapons? A

single stray bullet in the wrong

place and Kit has no jaw.

Also, forget the jungle lair.

The Phantom can’t do much

good stuck inside Skull Cave.

Today’s Phantom has all the

electronic gizmos and techno

logical support of a Jack Bauer.

The action, therefore, moves to

New York.

All this adventure serves as a

“backdoor” pilot. If the viewers

love it, it might become a series.

I’m not sure if diminutive pret

ty boy Carnes has the he-man

chops to pull that off, but at least

his costume is cool.