Reading Room: PHANTOM LADY "Case of the Criminal Chessman!"

Some people compare the War on Crime to a chess game...

...but the pulchritudinous Phantom Lady is nobody's pawn!

Lipstick?

Don runs into Sandra's bedroom, finds the Phantom Lady trussed up to a bedpost, and the only thing he notices on the unmasked woman's face is her lipstick?

Believe me, Sandra, you don't have to change lipstick!

Hell, you could wear a nametag saying "Sandra Knight" while in your Phantom Lady garb, and Don wouldn't put 1+1 together!

BTW, if the villain's name is familiar, that's because "Algernon Blackwood" was one of the premier ghost story writers of the late 19th/early 20th Centuries!

He was not short, so I presume Ruth Roche's use of his name here was just a "tip of the hat" to the spooky story author.

The art for this never-reprinted story from Fox's Phantom Lady #21 (1948) is unusual.

Pages 1 and 2 are totally Matt Baker.

The remainder of the story appears to be Jack Kamen, retouched by Baker.

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Reading Room: NOT WHO YOU THINK: Captain Comet "Vicious Space Pirates”

A space-going hero named "Captain Comet" who saves the Earth?

Plus, he's drawn by Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta?

Sign me up!

But, he's not DC Comics' mutant mental marvel...

 ...but a character who only appeared once, in 1953, two years after DC's space hero debuted in Strange Adventures #9, and would continue as an ongoing strip through 1955 (usually getting the cover slot)!

The Captain Comet we've just shown you was more a Flash Gordon / Buck Rogers-type hero, set in the future, battling interplanetary threats with fists and ray guns.

Appearing in the first issue of Toby Press' anthology title Danger is Our Business, he obviously was meant to be an ongoing character, but there was never another appearance, except for a reprint in 1958.

Did DC issue a "cease and desist" due to trademark infringement?

We'll never know...

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Christmas Comics: GREEN LAMA "Turn of the Scrooge"

How does a Buddhist clergyman celebrate Christmas?

Why not sit back with a cup of hot cocoa and find out?

This story from Green Lama #7 (1946) was scripted by Green Lama creator Kendell Foster Crossen and illustrated by Mac Raboy, using Craftint paper stock to create the line effects.
If the effect looks familiar, it's because a number of artists including Wally Wood, Al Williamson and Reed Crandall used it extensively on their work for EC Comics' Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, and Weird Science-Fantasy.

We're taking a week off from posting to repair the damage done by our image host Picasa when they changed their default setting for images to 512 pixels, reducing most of our illustrations from 750 pixels to 512.

Look for us in the New Year!

Reading Room: JET DREAM "Ting-a-Ling--Enemy Agent!"

While we sit here freezing, our fave femme fatales are on the beach...

...unfortunately, not in bikinis!
(Aren't those jumpsuits warm?)

It's too bad these stories were limited to 4 pages at a time, posing a real challenge for writer Dick Wood.
This story from Man from U.N.C.L.E. #10 would've benefited from another 2-4 pages of kick-assery in the inimitable penciling style of Mike Sekowsky, who, sadly, did only one more Jet Dream tale (Which we presented on our "sister" blog, True Love Comics Tales™).
Joe Certa illustrated most of the remaining stories, including the one-shot full-length comic, with Jack Sparling contributing our next Jet Dream tale, which we'll be presenting after the New Year.

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Reading Room: 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.

We hope you enjoyed this look at the first version of Phantom Lady, and we'll be returning to the Fox Phantom Lady series in January, 2012...

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