PHANTOM LADY & SPIDER WIDOW Conclusion

When Last We Left Our Heroines...

Feature Comics #71

The Spider Widow and Phantom Lady, brought together to battle a menace threatening PL's father, US Senator Knight, have also developed a rivalry for the affections of The Raven.

Note: the order is changed this month as the Spider Widow tale comes first in story continuity.

Also, even though most sources list this as a Frank Borth job, it's not signed, as most of his work is, and the art style is a bit...off.

So while Borth probably wrote and penciled the story, he probably didn't ink it.

Now for the Phantom Lady installment...

Police Comics #22

The art here seems to be a combination of Frank Borth and Phantom Lady creator Arthur Peddy.

Both Spider Widow and Phantom Lady would make one more appearance in their respective series before being canceled.

While Phantom Lady was revived and revised at Fox Publishing, the Spider Widow hasn't appeared in a new story since.
interestingly, when DC revived the Phantom Lady as part of the Freedom Fighters in the 1970s, they brought back this version in yellow and green, not the later, notorious Fox/Ajax blue and red version!

We hope you enjoyed this look at the first version of Phantom Lady!

PHANTOM LADY & SPIDER WIDOW Part 2

When Last We Left Our Heroines...

Police Comics #21

To that, we would add that the two heroines (and a hero) saved the life of Phantom Lady's father, Senator Knight!

Amazing, these crooks are yards away from the dueling damsels, yet they recognize Phantom Lady as Sandra Knight!

Her boyfriend in the Fox issues, Don, is even dumber than I thought!

Then the story continued in Spider Widow's home, Feature Comics...

Feature Comics #70

Scripter/artist Frank Borth was one of the under-appreciated craftsmen of the era.

He produced almost 100 stories, but never hit the "big time" with a major character or title.

Even his work on Phantom Lady is overshadowed by Matt Baker's more cheesecakey art on the later Fox version!

Be here next week for the final two chapters and a couple of surprises!

PHANTOM LADY & SPIDER-WIDOW Part 1

SuperHERO team-ups were rare in the Golden Age.

SuperHEROINE team-ups were rarer!

And multi-issue cross-over team-ups by anybody were practically non-existent!

Police Comics #20

You'll note a couple of differences from the Phantom Lady you're used to seeing on this blog including a differently-colored costume, a mask, no black-light ray, and no Matt Baker art!

That's because this is the earlier Quality Comics version of the character, before she began her run at Fox in All Top Comics and her own title!

Just go with the flow, and all will be made clear...

Feature Comics #69

Beginning in Phantom Lady's strip Police Comics #20 and carrying over to Spider Widow's series in  Feature Comics #69 (both cover-dated July, 1943), Frank Borth (who wrote and drew both strips at the time) tried something a little different, tying the two series together for three months with an ongoing plotline!
Personally, I enjoy the "breaking the 4th wall bits" including mentioning that they're actually in comic books and referencing other Quality Comics characters like Blackhawk!

Be here next week for Part 2 (of 3)

Golden Age SuperHeroine PHANTOM LADY Battles Saboteurs at the Olympics!

Our Female Olympics Athletes are Truly Amazing...

...we offer up this Golden Age tale of the one and only...

Phantom Lady

...participating in the 1948 Olympics while stopping a criminal plot and proving herself the equal of any male athlete!

Click

HERE

to read it!

Halloween Heroine PHANTOM LADY "Monster in the Pool!"

Sexy women and werewolves...

...long before Twilight or True Blood, the Phantom Lady put her scantly-clad body between lycanthropes and an innocent human race!

The art for this tale from Fox's Phantom Lady #16 is by the inimitable Matt Baker, and the story is probably by Ruth Roche.

Supernatural elements would crop up in several more Phantom Lady stories.

Halloween Heroine PHANTOM LADY "Army of the Walking Dead!"

For the Halloween season we offer...Matt Baker "good girl" art!  Zombies! Doctor Crime!

The splash page of the story is the inside cover of the comic, with only two colors, black and cyan.

Oh, did we mention ZOMBIES???

Enjoy...

"America comes first, even before Dad!"--Phantom Lady's Words to Live By!

Doctor Crime (not to be confused with The Crime Doctor), despite being the first supervillain the Fox incarnation of Phantom Lady fought, never returned.

When this Ruth Roche-scripted and Matt Baker-illustrated tale from Fox's Phantom Lady #15 (1947) was reprinted as the cover feature in IW/Super Comic's Great Action Comics #8 (1958), the splash page was left out, because the reprint publisher didn't have the cover and inside cover printing plates, only the interiors for this issue!

As a result, the editor retitled the story "The Zombie".

The new cover was a combination of two redrawn story panels and a badly-rendered (and mis-colored) Phantom Lady.

The cover art is by Carl (Golden Age Human Torch) Burgos.