Begins — Pierre Souvestre

One of the most popular characters in the history of French crime fiction, Fantomas was created in 1911 and appeared in a total of 32 volumes written by the two collaborators, then a subsequent 11 volumes written by Allain alone after Souvestre's death. The character was also the basis of various film, television, and comic book adaptations. In the history of crime fiction, he represents a transition from Gothic novel villains of the 19th century to modern-day serial killers. The books and movies that came out in quick succession anticipate current production methods of Hollywood, in two respects: First, the authors distributed the writing among themselves; their "working method was to draw up the general plot between them and then go off and write alternate chapters independently of each other, meeting up to tie the two halves of the story together in the final chapter." This approach allowed the authors to produce almost one novel per month.