#84 Casefiles Pilot #1 Revenge of the Desert Phantom (35th Anniversary Review)

[tomswift2002]

Published: 1985
Publisher: Wanderer Books (1985-1989), Minstrel Books (1989-199?) (no digital release as of September 2020)
Author: Unknown as of September 2020
Editor: Lilo Wuenn

Plot: After helping Iola learn some dance steps for an upcoming beauty pageant, Joe returns home to find Frank standing in the driveway waiting for him.  Frank tells Joe that a man named Mantu visited their home that afternoon asking the Hardy's to locate Niki Jarusa, the daughter of slain Zebwan President Jarusa.

After checking all the background information out with Fenton Hardy and Sam Radley, the boys board a flight for Paris where Mantu believes Niki is.  However, after a wild moped chase through the streets of Paris with a gang of waiters,the Hardy's receive a clue that Niki is still in the United States --- and still in Bayport.

Upon their return the Hardy's go directly to the Pageant show that Iola is in because the clue said that Niki was a contestant there --- and they discover that she is infact there---along with Mantu who had said was returning to Zebwa!

After explaining what is going on to Niki and discovering that Mantu was trusted Colonel in her father's army, Niki and the Hardy's head for Africa and Zebwa where they will face gun-toting rebel forces at all turns in the road.

Will Niki become the head of Zebwa and bring peace back to the country that her family once ruled?   (2008 Plot write-up: https://www.hardyboyscasefiles.com/forums/index.php?topic=1076.msg37290#msg37290)

Review: SO THIS IS A BIG BOOK IN THE HARDY BOYS SERIES!  Doesn't matter what you say about it, this is the FIRST CASEFILES PILOT book, and one that took the Hardy Boys Mystery Stories in a different direction from what they had been on.  Just like the original text of The Ghost At Skeleton Rock (1957) was the first 20 chapter book, nearly 30 years later we got the first Hardy Boys book under 20 chapters! 

Also, years later, while not directly tying into the story, the first Scott Lobdell Hardy Boys (then later Hardy Boys Undercover Brothers) comic told a similar story to Revenge of the Desert Phantom. 

Some continuity notes though.  While not seen, Sam Radley is mentioned as being contacted by the Hardy's.  I'll have to see if he's mentioned, or makes an appearance, but Revenge Of The Desert Phantom may be the last book to mention Sam Radley.  It's interesting, but Sam Radley was only introduced to the series with the revisions, he never appeared in any of the texts before the late-1950's. 

Also, I noticed on page 87, Frank thinks about how his firing the machine gun on the Rhino (that's the aromoured vehicle that's suppose to be represented on the front cover of the Wanderer edition, but the cover's got Joe on the gun, while Frank's driving what looks like a jeep that does not match any description in the book, as the Rhino was described as having bullet-proof armor on all sides and was built like a tank) is his first time firing a gun!  Well, Frank and Joe have both fired guns in the Hardy Boys Mystery Stories up to this point (Joe even won a gun in The Secret of the Lost Tunel (Revised) for entering a gun shooting competition, Frank and Joe both hunted some foxes in The Mystery of Cabin Island (Original), and during various other Original and Revised texts, both boys have handled guns) a number of times.  So I think the author wasn't quite up on his Hardy Boys history.

Also, Joe has a romantic rival in this book for Iola, Jim Gunther.  Aside from being a fellow classmate, nothing else is known about him.

Also, the boys keep talking about building their "SuperVan" in this book.  Unfortunately this van only shows up in this book and The Skyfire Puzzle and then the boys revert it back to just a standard van (although Joe would soup up the engine, and in the Casefiles their van seems to be a version of the "SuperVan" from these books). 

And this is the final appearance of their second yellow convertible.  Their first yellow convertible was blown up in #74 Tic-Tac-Terror, and their second convertible makes its final appearance here.  No mention is made of what happens to it after Desert Phantom (I sort of wonder if it became their mother's car they were driving in inThe Criss-Cross Crime and it got smushed there!).

[tomswift2002]

Another thing with Revenge of the Desert Phantom is that on the Wanderer cover the artwork is very cropped, however the Angus & Robertson Hardcover from the UK and Commonwealth has the full image that Richard Williams painted, including gunfire from the machine gun! 

https://www.hardyboyscasefiles.com/forums/index.php?topic=1076.msg37290#msg37290

[MacGyver]

I haven't read this book in a long time but one thing I do remember loving was the Super Van.  And it is an interesting look into things to come in the Hardy Boys Casefiles. Weirder still is the parallels between the Digests and Casefiles and the way the Digests actually intertwined with the Casefiles late in its run.

[tomswift2002]

One interesting thing with Revenge of the Desert Phantom is that the book takes place over about 3.5 months.  The main part of the book takes place within a week, but Chapter 15, almost should've been titled an Epilogue, since it takes place 3 months after Chapter 14.  And aside from getting the cheque from Nikki (Frank and Joe) and the gold ring (Chet), the entire chapter is about the Hardy's new van.  Of course, even in the chapter, there's a few days of time that pass, since the Hardy's donate their $20,000 reward (in 2020 dollars, that's $48, 807.98) to the Bayport Police Orphan's fund, and Chief Collig gives the Hardy's a used police van, that's described as having peeling paint, that was to go up for auction, along with giving them a deal on some used police equipment.  The Hardy's friends are even invited over to see the new van (Phil Cohen, Tony Prito, Iola Morton, Chet Morton---and I'm assuming Callie Shaw, although she's not specifically mentioned).

[tomswift2002]

Really, for my comments, I still stand-by my 2008 comments:


Comments:  The action in this book was non-stop.  Right from page one when Joe pulls into the drive way, right up to page 157 when the Hardy's unveil their Super Van to their friends.  Although, there is a mistake on the cover of the 1985 Wanderer edition (in the story Joe never fired the machine gun, nor was he sitting at it since he was the driver of the "Rhino", whereas Frank only drove the "Rhino" to bash Joe, Nikki and Chet out of the Zebwan jail, after which the boys switched places since Joe was considered to be the better driver) this is a story that is a must read for any Hardy Boys fan.

Funny thing is, a couple of very similar plots would be used almost 20 years later, with the first being Hidden Mountain (Digest #186, August 2004) where the Hardy's have to escort a classmate to his parent's who are living in an isolated Witness Protection Program community up in the mountains of the US somewhere, and then again in The Ocean of Osyria (November 2004-January 2005, Comic Books #1-3) when the Hardys, Iola and Callie make a trek to Africa to locate some criminals who are also trying to take over an African nation and are selling stolen national treasures on Ebay using different accounts that they have hacked into.

Rating for Revenge Of The Desert Phantom: A++

Other Notes: It is very possible that had Simon & Schuster continued the Digest series and even the Casefiles series on in this style, both those series would still be running today, although in a very different direction than from where they ultimately went.  Instead of the Digests being sort of a "countrified" version of the Originals stories, the Digests might've been a "disco/hardrock" type of series where the Hardys still had time for their friends, but at the same time they were still solving thefts and counterfeiting organizaitons, but also global terrorism and espionage.  The Casefiles might've gone in the direction where the boys were solving espionage, terrorism, battery and possible even going after computer software and hardware hijackers that were hijacking top-secret computer parts.  And I think that is why both "Revenge Of The Desert Phantom" and "The Skyfire Puzzle" both stand out as books in a series that could have been but was not (even though the Casefiles started going that way, but then got thrown back on the same rails as the Digest series in the mid-1990's) and are far superior to a lot of later Digests and Casefiles, and even all the Undercover Brother series books (including the Graphic Novels) that are out today.  When I was reading both books I gripped to the story, even though I've read both 3 or 4 times since I first read them back around 1999.  For those "new" Hardy Boys fans out there, I hope that you'll order from online at Ebay or Amazon or some other site, or even borrow them or ask your local library to get "Revenge Of The Desert Phantom" and "The Skyfire Puzzle" in on interlibrary loan since these two books contain the spirit of the Original series, but at the same time, even though it's been 23 years since the books were released, they have a fresh, modern twist on them that makes you feel like you are reading the old "rock 'n' roll" books that have been remixed into a "disco-dance" version of the classic Hardy Boys story.  (I'm comparing the books to how they have taken old Abba or Elvis Presley songs and recut and remixed them to a pulsing dance beat for today's audience, you know what I'm saying?)  Plus in these two books, even though the action has been sped up, the boys still manage to go to many different places and do a lot of talking without the stories seeming to drag or leave you even wondering why they went to that place.  Plus the book has been structered to where the writing is complex but simple at the same time.



While many collectors and fans don't view the Digests as being canon I would like to say that as collectors and fans we should view "Revenge of the Desert Phantom" and "The Skyfire Puzzle" as Hardy Boys classics, as a two-part pilot for a spin-off series that never got produced.  Sure we all say that the Casefiles were the spin-off's of these two books, but when you look at Desert Phantom and Skyfire, even though the writing style is similar to what would be used later, there is really nothing to connect them to the Casefiles universe other than that.  The Hardy's receive their van from Police Chief Collig after they donate the $20,000 dollars given to them by Nikki to the Police Fund for orphaned children, whereas in the Casefiles, the Bayport Mall gives them their van for figuring out who was trying to blow up the mall and kill the senator.  Sure some might say that we could ignore that fact, but we really can not ignore it, since the Hardys use the van in "The Skyfire Puzzle", in which case that would mean the Hardys would be doing what was done in the Collins edition of the Original/Revised Hardy Boys series...using a vehicle that they don't own even before they receive it.



"Revenge Of The Desert Phantom" and "The Skyfire Puzzle" stand as the only two published stories of a series that never was, and of a trilogy that was never completed since the third part of this test trilogy is known to exist in a Simon & Schuster storage warehouse, but it has not seen the light of day since an editor, back in 1985/86/87, confined it there because they felt that the series would do better if it went in another lackluster direction and the new series went in the general direction that those three stories were heading.



Recently I've been thinking back to these two volumes (Digests #84 & 85), since all the Undercover Brothers stories have been really lackluster and really pale in comparison for the past three years (Edit:[/i] In 2020, I would have to say that I'm finding the same thing with the Hardy Boys Adventures, and even the 2008-2012 Undercover Brothers).  What if Simon & Schuster had gone in this direction, might the Digests still be around and would the Casefiles have even existed?  Would we have ever seen volumes like "The Case of The Psychic's Vision" or "Haunted"?  Would we have seen the Hardy Boys series maybe graduate into an adult series with a style of writing that is similar to the different Star Trek series that Simon & Schuster publish?  Would the 1995 Hardy Boys TV series been different if the abandoned series of "Revenge Of The Desert Phantom" and "The Skyfire Puzzle" had been allowed to continue?  Or would we even have The Unofficial Hardy Boys Web Page, Mr. Pizza's Forum, The Hardy Boys Detective Agency and their various different forums because the last book had been published in the late 1980's and the series had gone out of print?



I don't have the answers for these philosophical questions, but I do know that "Revenge Of The Desert Phantom" and "The Skyfire Puzzle" did offer us a glimpse into a Hardy world that could've been and hopefully in the future will be again.

So, I say again, lets remember and reflect on these two Hardy Boys Classics that are the unproduced pilots of a series that could've been and hopefully will be in the future.

To "Revenge of The Desert Phantom" and "The Skyfire Puzzle", thank you for the journey.

[MacGyver]

I didn't realize some fans don't view the Digests as canon. ( I certainly do, by the way.) If anything, I would think the Casefiles would not be viewed as canon.

[tomswift2002]

No there are fans who view only the Grosset & Dunlap books as "canon".  And there's an even further split there as there's a subgroup who only view the Original 38 (Tower Treasure to Devil's Paw & Detective Handbook) as canon. 

[MacGyver]

Oh, wow! Yeah, I guess some just prefer the original books. The numbering on the Digests indicates it is a continuation though. One reason I like #100 so well is that it references the first book and makes that connection clear. To each his own though. I suppose it just depends on what you grew up with overall.

[Hardy Boys UB Fan]

Is it possible to find this casefile plot anywhere? I'd love to read it.

[tomswift2002]

Revenge of the Desert Phantom & The Skyfire Puzzle have only been published in hardcover and paperback.  There has been no digital release of either.

[MacGyver]

Check your local library, used bookstore or EBay or Amazon.