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Phantom Lady is a superheroine appearing in media published by Quality Comics and DC Comics. She was created by the Eisner & Iger studio, one of the first to produce comics on demand for publishers. The character's early adventures were drawn by Arthur Peddy. (2026). 9781605490373, TwoMorrows Publishing. ISBN 9781605490373
As published by Fox Feature Syndicate in the late 1940s, Phantom Lady is a notable and controversial example of "good girl art", a style of comic art depicting voluptuous female characters in provocative situations and Pin-up model poses that contributed to widespread criticism of the medium's effect on children. (2026). 9781605490892, TwoMorrows Publishing. ISBN 9781605490892 The character was ranked 49th in Comics Buyer's Guide's "100 Sexiest Women in Comics" list.
Sandra Knight assumed the identity of Phantom Lady in a costume consisting of a green cape and the equivalent of a one-piece yellow swimsuit. She used a "black light projector", a device which allowed her to blind her enemies and make herself invisible. She drove a car whose headlights also projected black light when necessary. She was sometimes assisted by her fiance, Donald Borden, an agent of the U.S. State Department.
According to Jess Nevins' Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes, "she fights the cowgirl Ace of Spades, the arsonist Fire Fiend, the Killer Clown, the Robbing Robot, the woman-killer the Subway Slayer, and the cloud-seeding saboteur the Vulture". (2026). 9781613180235, High Rock Press. ISBN 9781613180235
Phantom Lady ran as one of the features in Police Comics through #23. Arthur Peddy continued as the artist through #13, with Joe Kubert drawing her feature in Police Comics #14-16; Frank Borth in #17-21; Peddy again in #22; and Rudy Palais in #23. Phantom Lady also appeared in Feature Comics #69-71 as part of a crossover with Spider Widow and the Raven.
Baker's cover for Phantom Lady #17 (April 1948) was reproduced in Seduction of the Innocent, the 1954 book by Dr. Fredric Wertham denouncing what he saw as the morally corrupting effect of comics on children. The cover, which illustrated Phantom Lady attempting to escape from ropes, was presented by Wertham with a caption that read, "sexual stimulation by combining 'headlights' with the sadist's dream of tying up a woman".Wertham, Fredric. Seduction of the Innocent. Rinehart and Company, Inc., 1954. Picture insert In the meantime, Fox went under and its assets were acquired by other publishers, and a Phantom Lady story from All-Top was then reprinted as a backup feature in Jungle Thrills by Star Publications, which then itself went out of business.
By then, Wertham's efforts had led to a Congressional investigation into the comics industry, and publishers formed the self-censoring Comics Code Authority in the fall of 1954. Some changes were consequently made to the Phantom Lady's costume, so that her cleavage was covered and shorts replaced her skirt.
As was done with many characters DC acquired from other publishers, or that were holdovers from Golden Age titles, the Freedom Fighters were relocated to a parallel world. Their particular earth was referred to as "Earth-X". On Earth-X, Nazi Germany had won World War II. The team was later featured in its own series for 15 issues (1976–1978), in which they temporarily left Earth-X for "Earth-One" (where most DC titles were set at the time) and Phantom Lady was given real phantom-like powers.
During the final issue of the original Freedom Fighters series, the writers gave the character an origin story. One night, Sandra happened across two would-be assassins targeting her father, and stealthily thwarted them with nothing more than a rolled-up newspaper. Knight consequently developed a taste for adventure and crime-fighting, and after finding a "black light ray projector" that a family friend named Professor Davis sent to her father, she adopted the device as a weapon.
In 1981, Phantom Lady became a recurring guest star of All-Star Squadron, a superhero-team title set on "Earth-Two", the locale for DC's World War II-era superheroes, and at a time prior to when she and the other Freedom Fighters were supposed to have left for Earth-X. (2026). 9781893905375, TwoMorrows Publishing. ISBN 9781893905375 Phantom Lady then appeared with the rest of DC's superheroes in Crisis on Infinite Earths, a story that was intended to eliminate the confusing histories that DC had attached to its characters by retroactively merging the various parallel worlds into one. This left Phantom Lady's Earth-X days written out of her history, and the Freedom Fighters became a mere splinter group of the All-Star Squadron.
DC also retconned the origin of Phantom Lady established in Quality's Police Comics, so that she now belonged to the prestigious Knight family of Opal City, a locale central to DC's Starman line of heroes. Her formative story was changed so that she overtook her father's would-be assassins with her fists instead of a newspaper. Lastly, she was given a more active role in the acquisition of her black light ray, which she no longer received from a mere family friend but instead from a scientist named Dr. Abraham Davis, who had escaped from Nazi-controlled Europe. In the retelling, Sandra Knight gave asylum to Davis, setting him up in a laboratory and helping him to complete his invention. Ted Knight, now established as her cousin, also aided Davis, as a result acquiring the technology that allowed him to become the first Starman.
The 1994 title Damage established the post-World War II history for Phantom Lady. She was made an agent of a Cold War-era government intelligence agency called Argent, in which she met and married fellow former-All Star Squadron member Iron Munro (a character introduced in the 1986 series Young All-Stars). The two were paired on several missions and fought a Soviet-backed agent named The Baron, actually the German Baron Blitzkrieg, a foe both had met during World War II. Shortly after becoming pregnant, Sandra was kidnapped by The Baron who stole the fetus from her womb and left her for dead. After escaping from Communist Poland, Sandra wanted out of the spy game and turned to an old friend, Roy Lincoln. He helped her, and soon thereafter she started the Universite Notre Dame Des Ombres (the University of Our Lady of the Shadows) in the hopes of making further intelligence contacts and finding her baby, but she was not successful. Phantom Lady's presence in the U.S. and her work with American Intelligence was kept a secret to most; she never reunited with her husband, and in her old age became headmistress of the school she began, now a training center for female spies in Washington, D.C.
In Manhunter (vol. 3) #23 (June 2006), Phantom Lady met the current Manhunter, Kate Spencer, and it was revealed that she was Spencer's grandmother. Phantom Lady and Iron Munro were revealed to have had a child before their marriage whom they gave up for adoption—Walter Pratt, Spencer's father. The Golden Age Atom, Al Pratt, had allowed Phantom Lady to use his contact information so that she could get into a home for unwed mothers, causing the belief that the child was Pratt's son. Knight and Munro still keep in contact, as she brought him to meet Kate and her son, Ramsey.
It was heavily implied in that series that she was not alone in being thus trained and equipped, as her "college roommate" Marie Saloppe also appeared in the guise of Phantom Lady in Action Comics Weekly #639. Tyler's primary ability was an extensive knowledge of the martial art called savate, also known as French kickboxing. She also possessed a wrist-mounted blaster, and a holographic projector developed by her childhood friend and roommate Sarah that could be used to cast powerful illusions.
This successor Phantom Lady never received a series of her own, but was a periodic guest star in other titles, including the 1988 Starman, Wally West, and most frequently in the 1994 Starman title. She joined a new version of the Freedom Fighters in the 1999 JSA series.
Phantom Lady is later killed by Cheetah and Deathstroke during Infinite Crisis. In Blackest Night, she is temporarily resurrected as a Black Lantern.
She seems to know Father Time and has hinted that they have met before with him in a different guise, referring to his look as "this year's look is Colonel Sanders, Time?" She acts like a spoiled movie star and treats her other teammates like the popular girl in high school would treat the geeks (especially the Human Bomb and Major Force), but shows some hint of respect for the new Doll Man, hinting that they worked together for some time. Her wristbands not only project light but can bend reality.
She does not maintain a secret identity. In Brave New World, a radio program names her as Stormy Knight. Like other members of the Blüdhaven team, this incarnation of Phantom Lady is a cold-blooded killer, although there are indications in issue #1 of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters, as she finds herself defending her actions, that she may be disturbed by what she is ordered to do. Also in issue #1, her father is depicted in a more sympathetic light as a man who might disband the Blüdhaven team if elected. He is murdered on orders of Father Time and replaced by a doppelganger. It was believed that Senator Knight wanted to run America as a dictatorship enforced by a metahuman army shown through visions created by Uncle Sam, but it appears that the real person who wants America this way is the individual running S.H.A.D.E. This figure, a cyborg named Gonzo the Mechanical Bastard, is impersonating Senator Knight.
In the second issue of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters, Stormy becomes a Freedom Fighter. She reveals that she has a degree in quantum physics and pretends to be a spoiled idiot so she will not end up like other socialites. Her wrists bands appear to be able to transport Stormy and others from the third dimension to the fourth dimension.
In the second Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters series (September 2007), Stormy, still in shock over her father's death, begins to take drugs and drink heavily. After she drunkenly cuts a super-powered troublemaker in half on live television, Black Condor takes her to the extra-dimensional Heartland, where Uncle Sam tells her she will not leave until her habit has been kicked. Stormy later slits her wrists, but is found in time by Doll Man. Miss America removes all the toxins from her systems, allowing her to recuperate better.
By the end of the miniseries, Stormy decides to forgo her superhero career to pursue an acting vocation.
She was invited by Barbara Gordon to join the Birds of Prey, but ended up casually setting fire to her invitation immediately after reading it, stating that she was already on someone else's payroll. Birds of Prey #100. DC Comics.
Several years ago, Jennifer Knight witnessed the murder of her parents on Christmas Eve. Her father had been one of the best reporters on the Daily Planet's crime beat, and was close to breaking the case against crime boss Robert Bender, until Bender found out. She swore to bring the Bender family down and in the present tries to enact this by infiltrating the inner circle of Cyrus and Eli Bender, the heirs to Robert Bender's crime legacy. Her cover is quickly discovered forcing Jennifer to seek help from her friend, Dane Maxwell, hoping to use his genius to hack Cyrus Bender's cellphone, but Cyrus' henchmen track them down and apparently kill Dane inside his own machine. Phantom Lady (vol. 4) #1 (October 2012). DC Comics. Jennifer is later rescued by Dane, who had become Doll Man. He gives her a special suit and gloves enabling invisibility and shadow manipulation. She then chooses to become a vigilante, known as Phantom Lady. Phantom Lady (vol. 4) #2 (November 2012). DC Comics.
In "The New Golden Age", Phantom Lady was mentioned by Mister Terrific to have been enlisted to take Human Bomb's sidekick Cherry Bomb and Red Bee's sidekick Ladybug under her wing so that she can hook them up with the Freedom Fighters as this is seen on one of the screens. Justice Society of America (vol. 4) #9. DC Comics.
Based on comments by Grant Morrison, this alternate universe is not the pre-Crisis Earth-X.
AC Comics, as well as other minor publishers such as Verotik, have nonetheless published reprints of the original Quality and Fox stories without any legal action from DC Comics. When Verotik published its reprints, it was AC Comics that sued for trademark infringement, not DC Comics. Many believe these early stories to have lapsed into the public domain because the original owners failed to renew the copyright before it expired (as was required under pre-1976 U.S. copyright law).
The Golden Age Phantom Lady made her return in Savage Dragon #199 as part of the Special Operations Strikeforce (S.O.S.) alongside her other Golden Age contemporaries, and many of Erik Larsen's original characters, where they battled subterranean demons invading the surface.
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