Clash Of "The Two 'Fightingest' Gals In The History Of Comic Books!"

We're back watching Frank Borth have fun with The Spider Widow, Phantom Lady, and The Raven in the pages of Feature Comics and Police Comics back in 1943. It may be some of Borth's earlier comics work, but he's already bending boundaries as he goes.

For example, the characters know they're in comic books...

...and they know other comic books...

...and, as you can see from Raven's first word balloon, they even know in which titles they appear...

And so our heroes came together and found peace...

...but only a month or so later, Frank would be drafted to war (for the second time) and that would be the end of The Spider Widow and the strange relations between our heroic trio.

page art by Frank Borth from Feature Comics #s 69 & 70 and Police Comics #21 (1943)

Frank's Other Girl

Just about the same time that Frank Borth was writing & drawing The Spider Widow (at whom we peeked last weekend), he was also drawing his most reprinted work featuring Phantom Lady. He drew only 5 episodes, but all have been reprinted multiple times.

That's not going to stop us from re-running them here. We've got four of the five for today. You'll see why we're waiting for #5 at the end of this post. While reading through these, remember that this was 1943 and how sophisticated the artwork was compared to the standards of the time.

Hey!
That big bird is the same guy we saw showing up in The Spider Widow when we left off with Dianne. What's he doing over here with Sandra? Well, obviously, we're going to have to see where this all leads, no?

By yon by - my previous idle speculations about Frank Borth meeting Capt. Frank Moss during his time in the service proved to be as wrong as most idle speculations. They did not meet until after the war and after Borth's time living with Reed Crandall. So strike that out, eh? 

Yeah, we'll come back to more on Frank Borth's life, too.

page art by Frank Borth from Police Comics #s 17-20 (1943)