In Bendis’ Superman #3, the criminals imprisoned in the Phantom Zone are able to physically interact with each other to the point of being able to fight. In other iterations we’ve seen the Phantom Zone prisoners as actual phantoms and basically ghosts while in thie phantom dimension. Morrison brought back a Silver Age wrinkle of the beings imprisoned occasionally being able to break the physical plain and appear in “ghost form” to regular people.

I think the criminals losing their corporeal form in the dimension as an even greater punishment and something that should be kept when the Phantom Zone appears in Superman comics. It’s like solitary on a comics level. The helplessness of not being able to interact with the strange world they’ve been imprisoned in make the incarceration that much worse. A major reason why Superman doesn’t like using it. As the most empathetic being on the planet, he wouldn’t be in favor of this punishment.

How do you think the Phantom Zone should be portrayed?