Phantom Lady

About Phantom Lady

Phantom Lady is a superhero comic published by Fox Feature Syndicate in the late 1940s, running 11 issues, numbered #13 to #23, from August 1947 to April 1949. Its heroine is Sandra Knight, the daughter of U.S. Senator Henry Knight. The character was created by the Eisner & Iger studio and first appeared in Quality Comics' Police Comics #1 in August 1941, where she used a "black light projector" that could blind her enemies.

Matt Baker redesigned the heroine for Fox, and his "good girl art" made this version better known to contemporary comic fans than the Quality original. The scripts are generally, though unconfirmably, credited to Ruth Roche, Jerry Iger's business partner. Issue #17 (April 1948) holds two Phantom Lady stories, "The Soda Mint Killer!" and "The Stinging Whip!", both with a Roche byline and art credited to Baker, plus "Evelyn Ellis, Queen of Gangsters," a non-fiction crime story pencilled by Rudy Palais.

Baker's cover for #17, showing Phantom Lady attempting to escape from ropes, was reproduced in Fredric Wertham's 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent, which denounced what he saw as the morally corrupting effect of comics on children. The heroine returned in a second title from Ajax-Farrell in 1954 and 1955, and DC Comics revived her in 1973.

On LiveComics, every issue here plays panel by panel, with each line voiced by a full cast, plus sound effects and a score.

Sources, checked October 2026: Grand Comics Database: Phantom Lady (Fox, 1947 series) · Grand Comics Database: Phantom Lady (Fox, 1947 series) #17 · Wikipedia: Phantom Lady · Wikipedia: Matt Baker (artist) · Wikipedia: Ruth Roche (comics)