It was not until the Phantom Sunday strip debuted in 1939 that the costume was shown to be purple, something that apparently was a printing mistake and Lee Falk himself did not approve beforehand.

Creator Lee Falk had originally envisioned a grey costume and even considered naming his creation 'The Grey Ghost' before settling on 'The Phantom'. The Phantom wears a black mask and a purple skintight costume. Previous fictional crime fighters, such as Zorro and Doc Savage, were not designed especially for newspaper comics. the first crimefighter to wear the skintight costume attributed to comic book superheroes, and being the first hero to have white eyes behind his mask, a phenomenon very common with superheroes. The Phantom is credited as being the first 'costumed superhero', i.e. The Phantom is also successfully published in comic books throughout the world, by several different publishers. Previous artists on the newspaper strip include Ray Moore, Wilson McCoy, Bill Lignante, Sy Barry, George Olesen, Keith Williams and Fred Fredericks. Lee Falk died in 1999, and the newspaper comics are now written by Tony DePaul and drawn by Paul Ryan (daily strip) and Graham Nolan (Sunday strip). The series began with a daily newspaper strip on February 17, 1936, which was joined by a color Sunday strip in May of 1939 both are still running as of 2022 and are read by millions of people every day.

The Phantom is a comic strip created by Lee Falk (also creator of Mandrake the Magician), recounting the adventures of a costumed crime-fighter called the Phantom.

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