Originally Posted by
Lorendiac
A blond sentry with a shotgun starts blazing away at Phantom Lady as she approaches the place (but he misses -- honestly, what else did you expect?). She circles around and finally enters the house by the back door while the sentry is still explaining himself to Wenner over by the front door. We now learn that, while the Phantom Lady may not have inherent superpowers, she does have one special gadget up her sleeve (not that she actually wears any sleeves): a "black lantern" which emits a "cone of darkness" making it impossible for people in its path to see what's going on around them, even though the remainder of the room is still very well-lit. (Please don't ask me how that works!)
The Phantom Lady demands to know where Raphael is, and adds an interesting bluff by saying: "Unless you answer you will remain blind!"
In other words, she's trying to foster the false impression that she has magically ruined their eyesight, and that only she can lift that curse at will! As opposed to the facts of the matter, which seem to be that she has just artificially (and very temporarily) suppressed the light in the air around her targets.
It is an interesting bluff, but it does her no good! Considering that Wenner is standing perhaps fifteen feet away from her (at most), and has a gun, and can hear her voice threatening him, Phantom Lady really has no one but herself to blame for the fact that he starts shooting in her direction! In fact, she's remarkably lucky that his first bullet fails to drill a hole in her tender flesh, and merely knocks the "black lantern" out of her hand instead. At which point everyone can see everyone else again, and Phantom Lady runs for it as more bullets start flying (but oh-so-conveniently missing, even though the shooter can now see what the heck he's doing).
Well, this first invasion of the evil villain's lair certainly accomplished a heck of a lot! She upset the bad guys for a few seconds by "blinding" them, and then she turned tail and ran when that didn't terrify them into instant submission!
Was this trip really necessary? Wouldn't it have been more to the point to share her suspicions about that "week-end camp" with her father, and have him pull strings to get J. Edgar Hoover to send out a squad of heavily-armed FBI agents who would surround the place so that no one could get away? Faced with numerous machine guns pointed in their direction, Wenner and his cohort probably would have given up quietly.
But to do her justice, Phantom Lady doesn't just hang her head in shame and slink home in defeat. She keeps plugging away at this case. Wenner and his unnamed buddy load Dr. Raphael (whom, we now learn for the first time, was in fact in that same house) into a car and drive off to the edge of a swamp, where they have stashed a boat for a quick getaway. Phantom Lady has somehow managed to follow them there (in her black car) without their noticing a thing. (I admit this is possible -- perhaps she was driving without headlights? An unlit black car might not show up well in a rear-view mirror as they drove through wilderness areas.)
The bad guys row to a "shanty boat" -- a floating cottage, you might say -- and Phantom Lady is right behind them, having somehow found quickly another boat or canoe or something which she was able to use to keep her quarry in sight. (Don't ask me where the extra boat came from -- nobody ever mentions this; we merely see that Phantom Lady getting out of it at the end of her trip!)
Phantom Lady overhears something which indicates that the crooks are now trying to torture Raphael into writing out the formula for his explosive. So she tries the same tactic she usedbefore -- burst in on them, start snapping out an order ("Stop that!", in this instance), and use her "black light" to make it impossible for Wenner and Pete to see her. As might have been foreseen by any sensible person, once again the bad guys start shooting in the dark. This time, instead of hitting her special lantern, they hit a perfectly ordinary oil-burning lamp. Lots of burning oil spills out across the wooden floorboards, and the houseboat is clearly not long for this world.
Phantom Lady and Raphael manage to get away by boat. Wenner and Pete try to follow in what they call "the canoe," but it immediately tips over (for no clear reason), and the two men splash into the water of the swamp. It is implied, but not guaranteed, that they soon die -- one caption describes it in these terms: "Wenner and Pete struggle vainly against quicksand and a nest of angry moccasins." We don't see anything further of them.
Meanwhile, Phantom Lady asserts that Wenner hoped to sell Raphael's explosive formula for at least a million dollars. Raphael, on the other hand, says he will give his formula to the War Department. (Hmmm . . . a super-duper new explosive based on uranium? Somehow, I doubt it will ever amount to much.)
Let's take inventory:
As far as I can tell, Phantom Lady's head looks exactly the same in her "Sandra Knight" role as it does when she's out crimefighting. No mask (such as Batman wears); no wig (such as the original Black Canary wore in her debut, several years later); no glasses (such as Clark Kent wears to distract people from how his features resemble those of Superman); no scarf to cover the lower part of her face and muffle her voice (a la The Shadow); no dramatic transformations from one form to another (such as when "Billy Batson" is replaced by "Captain Marvel"); no real effort at disguise whatsoever! I must question the likelihood that her "secret identity" will remain a secret for more than two seconds after the first time she, in her "Phantom Lady" persona, someday comes face-to-face with anyone who already knows what "Sandra Knight" looks like! (Or the other way around.)
Also, as far as I can tell, Our Heroine routinely drives the same roadster in both roles, and there's no mention of taking such precautions as switching license plates around so that nobody can trace Phantom Lady's vehicle to its registered owner: Senator Knight's daughter Sandra!
And I've already dealt with how her nifty "black lantern" doesn't give her nearly as much of an advantage over armed and dangerous criminals as she evidently expected it to. It wasn't any clever tactics on her part that prevented Wenner and Pete by successfully chasing her through the swamp in their boat, and quite possibly killing her (and/or Raphael) with a few shots; it was just sheer dumb luck!
All things considered, I am perfectly willing to give Phantom Lady full credit for being brave and sincere, but I am forced to conclude that where brainpower is concerned, she is in no danger of ever becoming the sharpest knife in the drawer.
With all these thoughts in mind, if I'd been reading this comic for the first time in August 1941 (the cover date), I'd be forced to conclude that Plastic Man, the Repentant Sinner, had a superb chance of going on to star in various movies, TV shows, a comic book series that would never be cancelled, etc., but that Phantom Lady would soon be forgotten as having nothing remarkable about her to make her stand out from the crowd.
Somehow, that isn't quite the way it worked out. Anyone care to share their thoughts on why Plas did not do as well as I would have foreseen, whereas Phantom Lady showed more staying power than I, for one, would have given her credit for?