This is a "twice-told tale"...
...demonstrating how similarly WWII Germans and Cold War Russkies could be portrayed in pop culture!
First, a tale starring a long-forgotten heroine from Elliot's Spitfire Comics #132 (1944)...
Secret agent Spitfire Sanders made only two appearances, in successive issues of Elliot Comics' Spitfire Comics, which despite the high numbering of this issue (#132), only had two issues!
(And this was the first of the two!)
The art on this story about an extremely competent female spy is by journeyman artist Paul Cooper, working for the Iger Studios, who also supplied art to Ajax/Farrell (where the re-worked version appeared several years later) and Fox Comics.
It was scripted by "Rick Shawn", which was likely a pen-name since he's only credited with the two Spitfire Saunders tales!
(And this was the first of the two!)
The art on this story about an extremely competent female spy is by journeyman artist Paul Cooper, working for the Iger Studios, who also supplied art to Ajax/Farrell (where the re-worked version appeared several years later) and Fox Comics.
It was scripted by "Rick Shawn", which was likely a pen-name since he's only credited with the two Spitfire Saunders tales!
Now we jump a decade to 1954.
The Nazis have been defeated.
Communism is on the rise.
A comic book publisher needs a story about a superheroine to meet a deadline, so Nazi-Crusher Spitfire Sanders becomes...already-existing Russkie-Smasher Phantom Lady!
Oh, and due to space limitations, the original story has to be cut by a couple of pages...
For this presentation in Ajax/Farrell's Phantom Lady #5 (actually #1) from 1954, the brand new (and extremely-restrictive Comics Code also required a reduction in gunplay and use of torture instruments like whips, so a number of panels were reworked...or deleted entirely!
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