Fantomas and Fantomex

Just came across Fantomas while reading Eco’s “The Myth of Superman”:

It is certain that mechanisms of this kind [the iterative scheme, with a closed causal chain, where events progress in a cycle rather than a line] proliferate more widely in the popular narrative of today than in the eighteenth-century romantic feuilleton, where, as we have seen, the event was founded upon a development and where the character was required to ‘consume’ himself through to death. Perhaps one of the first inexhaustible characters during the decline of the feuilleton and bridging the two centuries at the close of la belle epoque is Fantomas.

Fantomas is an inspiration for Grant Morrison’s Fantomex, who has been running around New X-Men recently, so it’s nice to see him thrown into Eco’s mix.