Current Frew Issue
Reference Guides
Phantom Phans
On This Day
Fan Art
Downloads
What's New
Links
Contact Me
Home

Oil painting of the 6th Phantom.

Sy Barry was born in New York on March 12th, 1928.  He began work on Lee Falk's Phantom daily strip, 'The Slave Market of Mucar' after Wilson McCoy's unfortunate death in 1961.  In 1962, Sy took over the Sunday strip from Bill Lignante.  Below is a scene from Sy's first daily story, 'The Slave Market of Mucar'.

� 1961 King Features Syndicate Inc.

Sy trained at the School of Industrial Art in New York, the Art Student's League and at the Brooklyn Museum of Art where he studied painting.  He had also learnt with his comic artist brother Dan (who drew the comic strip 'Flash Gordon').

Like many comic artists, Sy kept a file of photographs which he adapted into his strips.  Sy also referred to pictures in the National Geographic magazine for images of the jungle and its natives. Sy retired from the official Phantom story in 1994 after doing the first eleven weeks of the story, 'Phantom World' (for which he is officially credited).		Sy Barry and Phantom enthusiast Pete Klaus.
Throughout his official 33 year career, he illustrated more than 150 Phantom stories.  Although officially retired, Sy is still active in the Phantom field as he has recently created numerous oil paintings of the character and is apparently getting into sculpture.

While working on the daily and Sunday strips, Sy received a lot of help from assistants such as Andr� LeBlanc, Joe Giella, the current daily and Sunday penciller, George Olesen pencilling and the late Ben Oda doing the lettering.

The following appeared in Frew issue no. 1163: Sy Barry, arguably the best-ever Phantom artist and an inspiration to many illustrators.  Among them is Romano Felmang who was captivated by Sy's work on 'The Island of Dogs' and freely admits to basing his early work on Sy's style. One of Sy's classic daily stories,		Sy Barry and myself at OzCon 7 in September 1998.
'The Wharf Rats', is currently being adapted and used as the latest Sunday story.

Thanks to Ed Rhoades & Frew Publications

The Phantom � ™ 1999 King Features Syndicate Inc.
Last Updated:  September 9th, 1999.