The Phoenix (comics)

The Phoenix
Issue 1 cover art featuring "Pirates of Pangaea" by Neill Cameron, 7 January 2012
Publication information
Publisher	David Fickling Comics Ltd
Schedule	Weekly
Format	Weekly Story Comic
Publication date	7 January 2012 -
Number of issues	266

The Phoenix is a British weekly story comic for children aged 6–12, published by David Fickling Comics Ltd. The comic was launched on 7 January 2012 with a preview issue which was released in late 2011. The comic is often considered a successor to The DFC: both are published by the same people and many of The Phoenix's creators had worked on The DFC.

Unlike other British children's comics, such as The Beano and The Dandy, the comic does not exclusively feature humour strips. It also features serialise adventure stories such as "The Lost Boy" and "Pirates of Pangaea", as well as humour strips such as "Star Cat", "Evil Emperor Penguin", "Looshkin" and "Bunny vs Monkey". The comic has also featured text stories (such as extracts from books like "Charlie Small" and "Julius Zebra") and puzzles (which are also present in both the modern Beano and Dandy). This makes the comic more similar to the older Beano and Dandy than the modern ones as they once had a mixture of adventure and humour strips as well as text stories. There is also a non-fiction strip called "Corpse Talk" where the creator Adam Murphy digs up a famous dead person and interviews them about their life.

Like a number of comics (2000AD has Tharg the Mighty and Sparky had the Sparky People), The Phoenix features a fictional editorial team, a group of cartoon animals led by feline editor-in-chief Tabatha Inkspot. The main members are Bruno Barker, reporter, Ellie Waggins, reporter, Scoop Yapski, in charge of the big news page, Iris, the photographer, Quincy, the scientist and Governor Carcass, in charge of addressing mistakes in printing or plot.

A humorous comic strip of two pages with usually unrelated themes. The main characters are-

Bunny: A cynical rabbit who just wants a calm forest.

Ai: A recently introduced ai-ai who replaced the deceased Le Fox, an excitable character who is the opposite of Bunny, but still his friend, if only for the fun of it.

Weenie: A confused squirrel. Pig's best friend.

Pig: A confused pig. Weenie's best friend.

Skunky: An evil genius and skunk.

Monkey: A very stupid and annoying monkey that arrived in the forest by accident.

Metal Steve: A robot made by Skunky.

Action Beaver: A superhero beaver. He makes unusual noises and doesn't appear to fit in. He is stronger than a hundred nuclear bombs, and it is revealed that he has a romantic interest in Ai, following her to give her flowers, but thus annoying her and making her leave before he could give her them.