[3] The character, introduced in The Funnies issue #45 (July 1940) as "the world's greatest magician," is an American adventurer named Phil Anson, who traveled to Tibet and learned the secrets of body and spirit from the High Lamas.

Anson can separate his mind from his body, and in spectral form he can accomplish almost anything — fly through the air, turn invisible, grow to enormous size, and push with tremendous force.

Phantasmo is seen on the cover as a giant figure, barely dressed in shorts and a transparent cape, grasping a crumbling city building as a crowd of tiny onlookers flees from the area.

The comic's origin story skips over the main character's earthbound, mortal existence, and takes the reader directly to "the top of the world's highest mountain", where Phantasmo bids farewell to the High Lama who's been teaching him magical secrets for twenty-five years.

"[8] Many of the era's superheroes, including Phantasmo, Captain Marvel and Green Lantern, were given explicitly magical origins like this, drawing on themes from pulp magazines.

[7] In fact, three other heroes introduced that year — the Flame, Amazing-Man and the Green Lama — also gained their powers from the apparently magical region of Tibet.

Then they're abruptly interrupted by noises coming from a nearby room, where a professor is being held by a group of spies who are trying to steal his invention that can turn salt water into engine fuel.

[8] From then on, Whizzer stays close to his friend, who can use his extra-sensory vision to spot trouble anywhere in the world, and may have to leave his earthly form at any moment.

[2] In the 2016 anthology Super Weird Heroes: Outrageous But Real!, editor Craig Yoe introduces a story featuring "the almost naked Phantasmo, with plenty of suggestive poses and phallic symbols galore!