The Funky Phantom


The Funky Phantom is a 1971–1972 animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, produced for Hanna-Barbera Productions by Australian production company Air Programs International for the American Broadcasting Company. The show was a clone of Hanna-Barbera's popular Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, with a trio of teenage detectives driving around the country and solving crimes. In this case, the "Scooby-Doo" role was taken by a Revolutionary War-era ghost.
The show returned briefly in reruns in 1980, as part of Hanna-Barbera's Godzilla series.

Plot

Trying to find shelter from a storm while driving their "Looney Duney" dune buggy, three teenagers — the brainy redhead Skip Gilroy, the blonde beauty April Stewart, and the brawny dark-haired Augie Anderson — and their dog Elmo, entered an old house where a grandfather clock displayed the incorrect time. Upon setting the clock to midnight, it released two Revolutionary War-era ghosts: an American patriot named Jonathan Wellington "Mudsy" Muddlemore and his cat, whom he had trained to respond to the name of Boo. The two explained that, during the Revolutionary War, they had stumbled upon two Redcoats and ended up hiding inside the clock, but also that they then were unable to get out of the clock and eventually died inside. Ever since being freed by their new friends, Mudsy and Boo have accompanied them on many mysteries, always giving an invisible helping hand.
This set-up shows a certain similarity to the 1946 Abbott and Costello film The Time of Their Lives, in which two Revolutionary War-era ghosts are also held earth-bound due to a secret hidden in a clock. Mudsy bears a slight resemblance to Lou Costello's ghostly tinker, Horatio Prim.

Production

The character voice of Mudsy was provided by Daws Butler and was identical to his voice work for Snagglepuss, down to the use of Snagglepuss's catchphrase, Even.
Like many animated series created by Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s, the show contained a studio-created laugh track, and indeed, it was one of the first such productions to do so. Syndicated versions, on Cartoon Network and Boomerang have the track muted.

Cast

Main

The Funky Phantom premiered on ABC-TV on September 11, 1971, with 17 episodes running for two years on Saturday-morning television, and in syndication from 1976 to 1982.
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Home release

On October 26, 2010, Warner Archive released The Funky Phantom: The Complete Series on DVD in region 1 as part of their Hanna-Barbera Classics Collection. This is a Manufacture-on-Demand release, available exclusively through Warner's online store and Amazon.com. The series is also available in Digital media format at iTunes Store for Apple mobile device owners to download their favorite episodes or complete series after purchases.

Comics

In the 1970s, comic books of The Funky Phantom were released by Western Publishing and Gold Key Comics. The comics were both original stories as well as adaptations of some of the TV episodes. The stories in the comics, however, took a different turn from the TV episodes. While on the show, the "ghost" was always a villain in a mask, in some of the original comic stories, the villains would often turn out to be other ghosts from on or around the colonial era. The comics even did a twist on the series when the gang traveled back to colonial times via an erratic time machine, only to find out that the kids are now the ghosts and Mudsy is once more inside his original flesh-and-blood body. Also, the comics introduced a new regular character who never appeared in the show. Priscilla Atwater, a ghostly matron from Mudsy's time, who lusted after Mudsy and pursued him actively, although she tended to flirt with just about any other ghost who happened to come along.
In 2018, the Phantom appeared in a backup story in the DC comic Black Lightning/Hong Kong Phooey Special #1; in this story, Jason Blood conjures Muddlemore's ghost so that some reporters and citizens can ask "Muddy" what he thinks about the Second Amendment.

Other appearances