Neither Phantom, Nor Stranger: The Phantom Stranger #0 Review
EDITOR’S NOTE: I am but a spoiler…
So after sixty years of history, today I learned that The Phantom Stranger’s superpower is to be a treacherous douchebag. Plus, he’s wearing Jesus’s pants.
Look, while I don’t agree with the recent DC editorial decision to make The Phantom Stranger’s identity as Judas Iscariot unambiguous – particularly since after the last big DC reboot, they went out of their way to make sure that the Stranger’s origin was as mysterious as possible – I have to admit that, as origin stories go, it certainly is one.
The Phantom Stranger #0, written by Dan DiDio with art by Brent Anderson, doubles down on the Judas-as-Stranger story, showing us the Stranger’s origin right from the moment after Judas took a long walk off a short length of rope. And while it accomplishes a great deal in 20 pages, from showing us exactly who the Stranger is to where he got that funky cloak to how he ties into early DC continuity, it does it by mashing up disparate pieces of Judeo-Christian and Shazam-Marvellian mythologies, adds to both of them in ways never before intimated that we just have to take on faith, and with some ham-fisted writing (not story, actual writing) to boot.
Plus, it includes the exciting origin of Jesus’s pants.
The story opens with Judas awakening in chains following his suicide after betraying Jesus. Now, before the Jesus Freaks get their underpants in a bunch, DiDio is smart enough to never call the Stranger Judas, and he never namechecks Jesus. So there’s just enough ambiguity here to (hopefully) keep the Westboro Baptist Church away from the front door of 1700 Broadway… but let’s face reality: if you have a guy forced to wear thirty pieces of silver after screaming, “Forgive me as He would!” we’re not talking about the world’s best-kept secret identity here.
Anyway, the Stranger is brought before “The Council of Wizards” – a bunch of people of different races, all rocking Shazam’s lightning bolt logo. The implication being that this is the same council that gave Shazam (nee Captain Marvel) his superpowers… and considering that the word “Shazam” was originally means to be an acronym for a bunch of mostly Greek gods, what we got here is the implication that Judas was judged for the betrayal of Jesus by a bunch of polytheistic deities, which is an even bigger risk to run than actually naming the Stranger as Judas. Tell Fred Phelps I said hi, Dan!
The Council sentences the Stranger (who appeared as being judged with New 52 mystery woman Pandora, and the other as-yet-unnamed member of the Trinity of Sin, which will be the name of my next Ska band) to walk the Earth wearing his blood money as a sweet pimp necklace, all while wearing Jesus’s cloak, which gives the Stranger his glowing eyes and the power to cloud men’s minds for some reason. Maybe I’m wrong on this whole Judas / Jesus thing, and the Stranger is actually Harry Vincent, making amends for betraying Lamont Cranston. But probably not. Then 2,000 years pass, and The Stranger meets and betrays James Corrigan, turning Corrigan into The Spectre while a coin drops off the Stranger’s necklace, leaving him 1/30th on his way toward paying for his sins (via another sin apparently) and short on bus fare home. Fin.
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