Forged in war, The Phantom Detective wages a one-man battle on crime! Solving impossible mysteries and delivering his own justice, he is the underworld’s masked nightmare!
Follow the Phantom Detective on the gory trail of a master criminal plotting the wholesale pillage and destruction of a great American metropolis. The Phantom Detective never gives up the grim game of life and death that he must play in the pursuit of his chosen career. No power on earth can stay his hand. Feared by the underworld — and himself fearless — the world’s greatest sleuth wades into the very thick of the fight against organized crime, a gallant leader in the mighty war waged by humanity on those who would undo progress and destroy civilization.
Many and formidable have been his opponents — but none so daring, none so diabolical or fiendishly ingenious as The Black Admiral, who sought to terrorize and plunder the principal cities of the United States — who conceived one of the most sinister plots ever to come out of the human brain!
According to legend, The Phantom Detective may be responsible for the direction a now famous comic strip character took in his own development. When first debuted by creator Lee Falk in 1936, the crimefighter known as The Phantom was actually Jimmy Wells, a millionaire playboy fighting crime in New York City. With these similarities, along with the character’s name being so close to that of The Phantom Detective, some believe that Falk may actually have taken inspiration from the pulp character. It may also have led Falk, according to sources, to make a decision that appeared to be sudden. Within the strip itself, the character took a hard turn from city bound masked man to being the now legendary jungle oriented ‘Ghost Who Walks’ that millions of fans recognize.
‘Cities for Ransom’ was originally published in the September 1933 issue of The Phantom Detective Magazine and is read with pulse pounding intensity by award winning voice actor Milton Bagby.
