Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Don't You Just Want To Punch This Guy?

The Phantom Stranger is one of my least favorite characters--smug, preachy, whiny, and either completely worthless in a conflict or deus-ex-machina-pull-a-rabbit-out-of-his-cape insanely powerful when the story called for it.

Depending on how you look at things, he was probably sorta kinda based (maybe) on The Mysterious Traveler, a character who originated as the omniscient narrator star of his self-titled 1943-1953 radio series. He had a one-shot comic published in 1948, and a digest-sized pulp magazine in 1951-52. Then Charlton published a comic from 1956-1959.

Phantom Stranger, meanwhile, had six issues in 1952, and then was revived by DC in 1969.

Obviously, they bear a lot of similarities, including dress, and occasional omniscient narrator over horror anthologies positions. Given the overlapping dates, it could be a Man-Thing/Swamp Thing situation.

Still, Mysterious Traveler was much less annoying, much more tolerable, and...

Never mind. I want to kick his smug ass, too.

From Tales Of The Mysterious Traveler #5 (1957)