Lost Crossovers: The Forgotten Phantom Lady/Spider Widow epic, Part 3

We’re just about through the extended crossover between the Phantom Lady strip in POLICE COMICS and the Spider Widow strip appearing simultaneously in FEATURE COMICS. But before we get into these final installments, a moment to point out an interesting aspect of the cover to POLICE COMICS #22 above. Plastic Man creator Jack Cole not only gets a rare cover credit, but his byline is larger than Plastic Man’s! In this era when much of the work that was being done was handled by anonymous craftsmen, this is a pretty powerful exception. They wouldn’t be consistent about it, but Quality’s head man “Busy” Arnold was relatively liberal with allowing creators to sign their strips (though just as often he’d run company-owned pen names.) This, though, was pretty extraordinary. ironically, though, Cole gets no byline on the interior of the issue.

Speaking of credits, this Phantom Lady story wasn’t produced by Frank M. Borth, the creator who had both written and drawn the crossover up to this point. Rather, Borth was replaced by artist Rudy Palais for this chapter, though he may have still written it. Borth had been drafted into the army, and was forced to put down his pen and take up arms against his nation’s enemies.

Either way, the crossover element is concluded in a matter of panels here, as the Raven and the Spider Widow say their goodbyes and then head for their home in FEATURE COMICS.

With Borth in the military, there was only one further Phantom Lady strip after this one (again, drawn by Pasais) and then the feature was retired.

On the other hand, Frank Borth was still around to illustrate the Spider Widow story in FEATURE COMICS #71. And this chapter appears to be set before the Phantom Lady installment, though it was released after it. (Rudy Pasais would substitute in for Borth on the Spider Widow feature in FEATURE COMICS #72, the final installment of the series.)

At the end of the story, it’s Phantom Lady who departs, presumably to head back over into POLICE COMICS though that isn’t made overt in this instance. This doesn’t really line up with the scene in the Phantom Lady strip, but cartoonists in the Golden Age didn’t really worry about that manner of continuity.