For pretty much her entire career,
Phantom Lady went without a mask:
Yet, for 2 issues in
1943, suddenly she was covering her face:
No explanation was given--hey,
Golden Age!
Not that having a mask in and of itself would be a bad idea. Even for 1940s readers, it must have strained credulity to believe that no one would recognize maskless Phantom Lady was well-known society gal
Sandra Knight.
(Unless you want to come up with something like
she was unconsciously using her black light device to distort her features as Phantom Lady. See, that's why I'm not allowed to write comics.)
But the choice of masks--hey, maybe that is a
little bit questionable.
To all appearances it was just a yellow hankie with eye-holes cut into it!!
And as you can see, the bottom half wasn't even secured!
And a mask that doesn't protect your secret identity when the wind blows isn't much of a mask!
After two issues, Sandra was back to wearing no mask--again, no explanation given. Maybe
Roy Thomas covered it in
All-Star Squadron or
Secret Origins...
Anyway, the moral is--get a
real mask if you're going to wear one.
Maskless Phantom Lady from Police Comics #17 (1943). The rest of the panels are from Police Comics #15-16 (1943)
Sexist as it sounds, I think the likely explanation is: in that costume, who would be looking at her face?
ReplyDeleteLet's not forget Lady Luck, one of Sandra's contemporaries, who wore the same type of "mask", ... only hers was transparent.
ReplyDelete