"One of the few places in the world where my strips don't run is in New York City," says Falk, leaning gently forward in his chair. "They ran in the _New York Journal American_ for 25 years. That was the biggest afternoon paper in America until the newspaper strike, about 10 years ago. Then it folded, as did most of New York's papers; we were left with the _Times_, the _Post_, and the _Daily News_. But my strips do run in _El Diario_, the Spanish-language newspaper, and in the _New York News World_." He arrived in New York from Missouri during the Great Depression, while still in his teens, carrying a sample strip he had written and drawn. King Features bought Mandrake the Magician and two years later added The Phantom to their syndicate. In the beginning, Falk did both the drawing and the writing himself. "Then for a long time I used to make rough sketches and give them to my artists," he recalls. "Now I just give a description of each panel. I might say 'close-up' or 'long shot' like you do in a film. Then I put in the dialogue. ... Some of my early artists are dead. They've gone on to their reward -- to that big bar up in the sky, where all artists go. ... Now there's one group drawing my strips on Long Island, and another one on Cape Cod. Very often I don't see them from one year to the next. Collaboration works best that way." Since giving up his drawing pad, Falk has increased his literary output many times over. Besides doing all the writing for his strips for the past 40-odd years -- which now takes up but a small part of his time -- he has written five novels and a dozen plays. He owns five theatres; he has directed about 100 plays and produced 300. None of his own dramatic works has been a big commercial success, although one is currently doing well in Paris. Then there was the comedy that he co-authored with a young American he met in Rome just before World War II. "It almost made it to Broadway," says Falk. "It was redone about two years ago on the West Coast. My collaborator was there to see it too; we've remained friends to this day. You may have heard of the man. He's a senator from California, the senate majority whip. His name is Alan Cranston. ... You see, it's best to save the punch line for the end." Another of Falk's main pastimes is travel. He has visited enough islands, jungles, and out-of-the-way places to keep the story ideas flowing for years to come, but his appetite is still unwhetted. Early this year he toured Scandinavia, when "they were making a big fuss about the Phantom's marriage. There were so many press conferences to attend. One guy made me wear a mask, and the next day as I got on the plane, there was my picture on the front page. I said, 'But your paper doesn't even run The Phantom.' He said, 'The Phantom belongs to all of Norway.'"