Phantom Lady

Phantom Lady is inseparable from the artist most associated with her: Matt Baker, one of the first African-American artists to find success in comics. In the Fox Feature Syndicate version of the late 1940s, Baker drew the heroine in a style that became the very definition of "good girl art" — glamorous, confident figures rendered with genuine draftsmanship and flair. Phantom Lady, a socialite moonlighting as a crimefighter armed with a "black light" ray, became a showcase for that sensibility. Her provocative Baker covers were among the most striking of the era — and that visibility made her a target. In the anti-comics panic of the early 1950s, a Phantom Lady cover was singled out in the crusade against the medium as an example of the sexualized imagery critics blamed for corrupting young readers, and it helped fuel the pressure that led to industry self-censorship. Now in the public domain, the Fox Phantom Lady endures on two counts: as a high point of Matt Baker's pioneering career, and as an artifact at the center of one of the great moral panics in American pop-culture history.