Number 1528: Phantom Lady “just doodly do it...”

I googled the lyrics the chorus girls are singing on page 6 of this Phantom Lady story, and came up with a 1924 song called “Doodle-Doo-Doo” sung by Eddie Cantor. Isn’t the Internet amazing?*

The story is also amazing, if not for the plot but for the Matt Baker pretty girl artwork. For you connoisseurs of such things there is a lingerie panel and also a panel of Phantom Lady tied up. I, being a comic book historian, am more interested in the story in its historic context and avert my eyes at such pandering to the pin-up crowd of the 1940s. (Ha. You are right not to believe that. The great thing about this sort of artwork is that it looks just as sexy as it did when it was drawn 66 years ago.)

From Phantom Lady #16 (1948):

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*I also found a YouTube video of Eddie Cantor singing the other song on the page, “I Faw Down and Go Boom”.

Here's another Phantom Lady story, with a bonus Blue Beetle story, I showed in 2011:

Number 1460: The Phantom Ladies

A week ago I showed a story drawn by Frank Borth, and I included the splash panel for his first Phantom Lady story in Police Comics #17 (1943). I have that story today, and you can see what a superb artist Borth was, one of the top-notch talents at Quality Comics. The story, though, is filler; a bit of fluff.

The Phantom Lady, who is Sandra Knight, has a beau named Don, who doesn’t have a lot to do in that first story. He appears again in our second story from Phantom Lady #22 (1949). I don’t know why Phantom Lady, still Sandra Knight, moved from Quality to Fox Features and got a new costume. I assume the reason no one notices Phantom Lady is Sandra is because in those sexy costumes no one is looking at her face.

Sandra’s boyfriend, Don, is back in “The Case of the Robbing Robot,” with more to do in this story. He gets to dress in drag. The story has some humor to it, and is drawn by Jack Kamen in his pre-EC days.

Number 1304: Headlights on full beam

With the 1948 cover of Phantom Lady #17, artist Matt Baker helped give us comic book fans a code word we've used now for decades: “headlights”. It happened when Dr. Fredric Wertham, M.D., published his book, Seduction of the Innocent, which pointed out how murder, crime and sexual perversion were all part of the comic books kids loved. Wertham used the cover to point out that children called big breasts on comic book women “headlights”. (This page has been razored out of some of copies of SOTI I've seen. By headlights fans, no doubt.)

I've pointed out before that Wertham’s book is a good example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. It was used at the time to condemn comic books, but is used now to identify comics that belong on a special list of desirable collectibles. Interior art on this story is also by Matt Baker, and the whole issue was prepared by the Jerry Iger comic book shop, where Baker was a star. The publisher was Victor Fox, and the blobby printing was by some fast and dirty web press printing company of the 1940s, which didn't care that they were printing one of the most iconic covers and collectible comic books of all time.

Number 1027


The Lady and the Beetle


Comic book publisher Victor Fox had a reputation for being a sharpy in business. Fox went with trends like crime, jungle and love and despite the woeful company management Fox Features made their comics interesting--and sleazy--to attract readers. They went out of business, anyway. Being a sharpy has a way of coming back on a businessman.

Phantom Lady was an established character with Quality Comics, created by the Eisner-Iger studio. To make a long story short--because the Phantom Lady's history with different publishers needs a genealogy chart to make sense--Phantom Lady was published by Fox when Jerry Iger's shop was producing comics for them, including eight issues of Phantom Lady, just before the demise of Fox Features publications. The numbering began with #13, so these two stories are from the first issue.

Matt Baker signed the artwork on the Phantom Lady story, but the Blue Beetle strip is signed Otis. I see occasional flashes of Baker in the Blue Beetle artwork--a couple of faces and some poses here and there--but it looks to me as if more than one, and maybe more than two artists worked over the strip. Since the inking looks consistent I'm guessing one artist inked the whole mess to give it some sort of cohesiveness.

The proportions were changed on the Phantom Lady strip. It was originally shorter, so artwork was added to the tops of the panels. Why was it drawn that way originally? I dunno.

From Phantom Lady #13, 1947: