I tell you, Fantômas is alive!
Created in 1911 by authors Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, Fantômas's career as an archcriminal, anti-hero, and evil genius has spanned over more than 40 novels, 16 movies, and his own Spanish language comic book. A villian with unimaginable wealth, an army of henchmen, and spies everywhere, he lived to spread terror and horror throughout bourgeois society. Orchestrated by his shadowy hand, his crimes were random and unbelievable: sinking oceanliners, poisoning a wine cellar only to mingle later at the party which it was served dressed in his mask and top hat, murdering members of government to seduce their wives and to steal their riches, crashing trains at his whim, and yet he escaped capture every time.
The Books
Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain met when Souvestre, who had recently given up on his failing law career to enter into automotive journalism, interviewed Allain for a position as secretary. Allain impressed Souvestre by writing an article on the spot for a truck he'd never even seen. In only a short while, the pair was working as a team on various magazines and had fallen into writing a fairly popular detective serial. Their detective stories caught the eye of publisher Arthème Fayard, who was in the business of printing what basically amounted to pulp novels. (Fayard would print older, popular 19th century books to avoid paying royalties. He would print them as cheaply as possible, and with lurid covers, sell them at a price that was well in reach of most Parisians).
Fayman hired the pair to write a series of novels and agreed upon their new character Fantômus (which later became Fantômas due to a typo). Their contracted stipulated that Souvestre and Allain would produce a full novel a month, a process that they quickly got down to almost an assembly line. Their novels were almost immediatly popular, and sales steadily rose for the 32 months straight that they published. The novels made a splash for their violent and surreal plots, gadgetry, and intrigue, but were very interesting because the villian was the main character and escaped justice at the end of every novel. Over a total of 5 million of the original series were published, but printing stopped when France entered World War I. Sadly, Souvestre died during the war from Spanish influenza and Allain was forced to continue work on Fantômas without him. Eventually, Allain wrote two new series (8 novels) before giving up on The Genius of Crime.
The Movies
Following the amazing popularity of the novels, talk began about making a film about Fantômas. Soon afterwards, a bidding war took place between the two major French film studios: Pathé and Gaumont. Gaumont eventually won, and hired director Louis Feuillade to make a total of five Fantômas from April 1913 to May 1914. These original films were also amazing successes, but attempts to make new films were cut short when Feuillade left to fight in the trenches of WWI. He was wounded in the war, but returned to Paris to continue directing. Sadly, he never made another Fantômas film, instead taking the Fantômas elements to other films (including his work Les Vampires).
There was, however, a seemingly unauthorized American serial released in 1921 that brought Fantômas to American shores. Also, in 1931, the first Fantômas film with sound was directed by Paul Fejos. It tried to take elements from the earlier novels and add a more modern twist to it. Both of these movies were major disappointments. Fantômas had seemed to lost a lot of his character, and it wasn't until after WWII that another Fantômas film was made.
There were two French produced films in 1946 and 1949, but it wasn't until the 1960s that a new revival of Fantômas films started to make an impact across the seas. The next series of three films (1964, 1965, 1966) discovered a huge fan base in Central America, and especially in Cuba where Fantômas began to make regular appearances on children's shows and talk shows. The movies were a huge hit with children, many of them later to come appreciate Fantômas for the escape it provided. These were the last large studio Fantômas films ever made. It wasn't until 1979 that Fantômas re-appeared, but this time on television. A four part TV series was co-produced by Antenne 2 (France) and Hamster Films (Germany) and each episode was based directly on one of the first Fantômas novels. This was the last time Fantômas was seen on screen.
The Comic
Fantômas became a Mexican comic book hero when he appeared in Tesoro de Cuentos Clásicos (Treasury of Classic Tales) in 1962 and publish by Editorial Novaro and written and drawn by Alfredo Cardona Peña and Rubén Lara Romero. Public response was so good that eventually Fantômas got his own title. The Mexican Fantômas differed greatly from the original creation of Souvestre and Allain. The new Fantômas was more of a high-tech Robin Hood, who despised government corruption. He was suave and sophisticated, and never without his female bodyguards and deadly gadgets. His appearance even changed. Gone were his tuxedo, mask, and top hat. Instead he wore the tight mask and suit style copied from Italian villian Diabolik.
Fantômas (or The Elegant Menace, as he was also known) was published for 20 years by Editorial Novaro. Fantômas continued to change over time. He lost his black mask and replaced it with a white mask, white gloves, and a white cape. He gained the help of many beautiful helpers, all named after signs of the Zodiac. The series eventually ended in the early 80s, when Editorial Novaro folded. In the early 90s, another comapny named Editorial Vid decided to give Fantômas a shot. Instead of trying to write story arcs the could cover 15 issues, Editorial Vid relied heavily on self-contained single issue stories. After a failed attempt to bring Fantômas into the present (he investigates the 1993 World Trade Center bombing), the company decided to drop Fantômas.
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