Type | African country |
---|---|
Notable characters |
The Phantom Guran Lamanda Luaga Mr Devil (The Phantom's wolf, a legal citizen) |
Publisher | King Features Syndicate |
Bangalla, also known as Bengali or Bangolia or Bengalla (in the 1996 movie adaptation), is a fictional African country that features in the Lee Falk created comic strip The Phantom. Bangalla is the home of the Phantom, who resides in the Deep Woods of the jungle in the fabled Skull Cave. In the 1996 film, Bengalla is located in Asia instead of Africa. In the 2009 The Phantom (miniseries) Bangalla is a fictional small island nation located in the Malay Archipelago.
Bangalla is located in East Africa, around the approximate region of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. The capital of Bangalla is Mawitaan (formerly Morristown); other cities include Bengalitown, Sanloi, Spyglass and Mucar. Until the 1960s, the country was portrayed as being in Asia, near India.
The Bangallan flag is blue with a yellow crescent to the left, and a star and a circle to the right.
Bangalla is a former British colony that since became a democracy. The country's first president was Lamanda Luaga, a doctor elected to office after having fought an epidemic in the jungle. However, General Bababu seized control of the country and, after announcing that Luaga was dead, searched for Luaga to kill him and exhibit his head as proof. The Phantom, however, abducted Bababu and brought him to the Deep Woods where Luaga defeated him in a fair one-on-one fight. The Council of Chiefs sentenced Bababu to two years' hard labor at each tribal nation. (There were 12 chiefs present at the time, and hard labor meant exactly that.) General Bababu has, however, never given up the hopes of becoming dictator of Bangalla and has been a recurring villain in Phantom lore, usually in cooperation with other dictators who seek a marionette-president.
After the above events, Team Fantomen added its own twists to the politics of Bangalla. Luaga lost a re-election bid to the pathologically evil Kigali Lubanga, who ruled the country as a dictator during the non-comics-world years of 1994–1996, before he was apparently killed and Luaga came back to take control of a country that was in uproar.