[Yoc]

Hi Gang,
This used to be a thread before the crash but I wanted to revive it.

I hope everyone here got to see and read The Phantom Lady Archives V1 that was posted here in the Quality Section some months ago.  It was a looooong time coming but Phabox and myself were thrilled to have all of the Quality years of this decades spanning character's stories in the book.

BUT...

Vol. 2 will be focused on Phantom Lady's FOX years which we STILL NEED STORIES FROM.
The last page of v1 had a list of the stories we need either completely or would love to have a colour or non-fiche source for the collection.

Here's that list again.  PLEASE click on the thumbnail and see if you perhaps own or know of a source for these missing stories.


[UPDATED! 12.08.2008]

------

Our first update!
OtherEric here on GAC has been a bright new light on the scanning scene this year and Phabox and I are thrilled to announce he has bought and scanned a copy of the last book on our above wanted list - Phantom Lady 23!  It's the IW reprint from Great Action #9 so it is still missing the first splash page from the original but the rest of the Fox PL23 is reprinted in colour!  (If you have access to paper, fiche or reprints of the first story please let me know here or in a PM)

So many many thanks to Eric for filling a big void in the missing Fox collection - three new stories that have never been reprinted since this one and only reprint from 1958!  That's FIFTY-NINE YEARS since the original Fox printing and FIFTY YEARS since this IW reprint.  Hard to believe it considering it's a complete Matt Baker book and a wonderful example of Good Girl Art featuring one of the most notorious female characters of the golden age!!

We thought it would be mean to hold back this amazing book from the public until we were done working on the Phantom Lady Archive v2 (whenever that finally happens) so here you go!

Check the Fox Section in the Phantom Lady folder for PL#23 and enjoy this long lost Matt Baker extravaganza!  Highlights for most will likely be our heroine forced into swimming in just her silk undies from the third story.

Enjoy the scans and again a huge thank-you to Eric for his help!

Now please, let's see if we can't find the other missing stories from the above list before Phabox and I finally release our second of three Phantom Lady Archives volumes.

Thanks,
-Yoc

[OtherEric]

You can also mark the first story from Phantom Lady #16 as found; we have it on the site. 

Also, as far as I know we need splash pages from the first stories in 14 and 15 as well.  The IW reprints are great as far as they go; but they stop just one step short. 

[phabox]

Great to see things moving forward on this project, needless to say a great BIG 'Thank You' to OtherEric for his invaluable help in getting us that much closer to completing this collection.

-Nigel

[phabox]

Looks like All-Top Comics_010 and 011 could well be on the way soon.

:)SWEET !!!

-Nigel

[Yoc]

Yep, how sweet it is Nigel!!

Thank-you very very much to archiver_USA for these two gems!

I've now updated the 'PL Missing Scans' thumbnail above.
What a fantastic week for Matt Baker fans!

[phabox]

Phantom Lady Comics are a bit like London Buses, you wait forever for them then THREE come along at once !!!

-Nigel

[OtherEric]

Right.  I don't want it officially removed from the list until I have the book in my hands and can verify it's suitability.

But unless you want it for yourself, nobody else should bother grabbing a Phantom Lady 19 at this point.

[Yoc]

Phantom Lady Comics are a bit like London Buses, you wait forever for them then THREE come along at once !!!

-Nigel

Gee, it's the same thing with our streetcars in Toronto Nigel!

Nobody touch that Phantom Lady 19!  It's Eric's see?!   

-Yoc

[OtherEric]

In addition to my earlier statement about the PL 19:

I don't want it officially removed from the list until I have the book in my hands and can verify it's suitability; but All-Top 17 is also on the "don't grab it unless you want it for yourself" list.

[Yoc]

Great days for the Fox collector!!

[Yoc]

Another Update!   
--------------------

First off Archiver_USA was amazingly generous enough to upload not just one but THREE issues of All-Top Comics to us last week!!   
So cross off All-Top 9, 12, 13, and 16 from our wanted lists.

And TODAY I've just learned that OtherEric has gotten a copy of PHANTOM LADY #19 to scan!!

What an amazing couple of weeks we've had filling these very rare and often expensive holes in our Fox collection!  Many thanks to Archiver and Eric for these scans!!   

-Yoc

[OtherEric]

You need to correct your updated list; you missed All-Top 16. 

And unless something is dramatically wrong with the book when it arrives, the All-Top 17 should show up Tuesday.

Yoc has the raw scans for the Phantom Lady 19 now; look for it to be posted once he edits it.  Despite being the 9th issue of Phantom Lady we have on the site (including the Ajax issues) it will be the first where we have c2c paper scans.

[Yoc]

 
Thanks Eric, I've added All-Top 16 and 17 to the FOUND listings.
A correction I loved having to make!


Exciting days!
-Yoc

[OtherEric]

Put it in the "tentative" pile until I have it in my hands and can verify it.  But 22 should be on the way to me.

[JVJ]

Check the Fox Section in the Phantom Lady folder for PL#23 and enjoy this long lost Matt Baker extravaganza!  Highlights for most will likely be our heroine forced into swimming in just her silk undies from the third story.

Enjoy the scans and again a huge thank-you to Eric for his help!

Now please, let's see if we can't find the other missing stories from the above list before Phabox and I finally release our second of three Phantom Lady Archives volumes.

Thanks,
-Yoc

I think it is really important to understand that NOT ONE STORY in PL #23 is by Matt Baker. No matter what the GCD data says, these are ALL Iger Shop clones at work trying (not very successfully, IMHO) to imitate Baker. By 1949, Matt Baker had left the Iger Shop and was diligently creating scads of romance and westerns for St. John Publishing Co. Just compare some of his The Texan art from 1949 to these stories in PL #23 to understand the vast gulf between the master and the imitators. Matt Baker was an excellent artist and the people drawing these PL #23 stories were not. There MIGHT be some Jack Kamen pencils in the third story, but he wasn't trying very hard, if it's so.

I'm not very conversant with the Fox Phantom Lady's because they were always priced more than I was willing to pay, but if I can help on your next PL project with art IDs, Yoc, please let me know. I know Matt Baker's work as well as anybody (well, as well as anybody I KNOW), and I'm adamant about disclaiming the frauds that ultimately lessen his reputation. PL is another example of dealers WANTING it to be by Baker so that they can charge more money for it, and the attributions have stuck over the years. It's about time to set the record straight, don't you think?

[OtherEric]

We absolutely want good identifications, Jim.  I think they're relatively successful, but it doesn't surprise me that they're not Baker either.

I would be very interested in your assessment of the stories in the other issues we have; the more we learn the happier I am.  And even if we thought the art in the later issues was good enough to be Baker I think we all knew it was lesser Baker work.

One question you might know:  Overstreet used to say most of the Ajax Phantom Lady stories were by Baker; they have since backed off and only describe the first issue as by him with the others being "Bakerish".  Is it even possible that he was working for Ajax in '54 or so?

[JVJ]

As far as I know, Eric, there is only ONE real Baker story at Ajax and it appears to be a shelf story that Iger must have "found" while cleaning up a closet or something. IMHO, it is IMPOSSIBLE for Baker, who was Art Director at St. John in 1954 and probably could (and DID) assign himself more work than he could handle, to have been working for peanuts at Iger at the same time. I mean, by 1954, even Fiction House (Iger's last remaining big account) was moving the artwork on most titles back to freelancers who were art-directed in-house. Iger was supplying Ajax and Superior and other lesser companies who were soon to disappear. To imagine Matt Baker coming back from one of his Mexican vacations where he was mailing penciled art work to St. John at decent page rates to suddenly drop by the now lowly Iger Shop and pencil a story "for old time's sake" is pretty ludicrous.

I must confess that I'm actually quite an iconoclast when it comes to Baker. And I'm pretty self-sufficient when it comes to comics history and comics prices. I haven't used a Price Guide to look up a "value" for decades. And I've long since given up giving them information because for years they refused to make "subtractions" of the ilk that Phantom Lady 23 WASN'T by Baker, although they were VERY happy to add that Gunsmoke Western #x DID have Baker in it. The Price Guide has been and continues to function primarily as an aid to dealers and I want no part of it. I'm a crotchety old collector who's earned every one of his mutterings.

Anyway, all that is leading up to my admission that I DIDN'T know that the PG had changed their tune on PL and Baker. Perhaps they're less of a "tool" than I've been thinking.

Do you have a pdf of the Fox PL issues. I'll be happy to look at it.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[OtherEric]

They still say that PL 23 is Baker, although they admit that the cover isn't by him.  They don't mention Baker at all on the All-Top issues, which is surprising since I think most people agree at least several of those are by him.  They only list the first issue of the Ajax PL as having Baker art, with the Wonder Boy issues being called 'Bakerish'.  So a 'found' story accounts for the one Ajax PL.

As far as I know, all the Phantom Lady scans we have are up on the site except for 19; Yoc is trying to fix horribly off-register coloration on that one.  We have all the All-Tops; about half the actual Fox Phantom Lady issues, one Ajax (the other one is fiche and better than nothing to read the story but don't bother otherwise), and a very incomplete issue of Wonder Boy which has the PL story.  And, like I said, I just won a copy of 22.

[JVJ]

Actually, I didn't mean to imply that the "found" Ajax Baker was a Phantom Lady story, Eric.
It's simply that BECAUSE there IS one Baker story at Ajax, the argument is constantly made that there must be more than one. I don't know the All-Top Phantom Lady's either. Again, it's a title that I could never afford (nor understand the value of).

IS there a pdf or single download that contains all of the Fox PLs? I really can't see myself downloading all the issues individually. Sorry, but it eats up CPU and the stuff I'm working on is kinda big. (The InDesign file for issue 11 of my magazine is 55 Megs, and the directory with the art scans is 14.5 Gigs!) Any simplification of downloading (i.e. I can select one file and download it overnight) is money (time) in my bank (day).

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[JVJ]

I just looked at All-Top #17, Eric,
and at the GCD entry for same. There's three credits for Baker pencils and inks and the ONLY one that is valid is the pencils on the PL strip. Everything else, including the inks on PL, are anonymous Iger Shop people. I simply don't understand how someone could look at the Rulah and JoJo strips and think that they are by the same artist as on PL. Boggles my mind.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[Yoc]

Hi Jim,
You're always a wealth of information and I'd love to include your opinions on this subject!
Phabox and myself have started the Phantom Lady Archives in which we hope to cover all the various publishers to use the character(s) running from Quality in v1 to Fox in v2 to DC/AC/others in v3.
If you'd like to see our 'extras only' from v1 and not the actual stories you can grab it from here:
http://goldenagecomics.co.uk/index.php?dlid=5811
It's only 10mb and shouldn't be hard on your system.  I'm sure you'll find some more mistakes so fell free to fire off any corrections you see needing to be done.  The entire collection can be found in the main Quality folder at the bottom of the page.

Phabox is the man driving the bus for the project and I'm doing all the graphic design and some editing when things need to fit, etc.  You know how that works.  We would LOVE to include your opinions on artists, etc. in the project.  How about we contact you via email or Private Messages behind the scenes so we can work on getting you single files of things when we've got them ready for you.

If you were Ok with the idea I'll ask Phabox (a wonderful guy in England) to contact you.

Thanks again for your interest in the site and your willingness to help set the record straight on Phantom Lady artists,
-Yoc

[JVJ]

No single download is going to overload my computer, Yoc,
but downloading 20 different issues is going to overload ME. What I was asking was if you have all of the Fox stories in one file that I can download at one time? If so, I can review them at my "leisure" and PM you with my findings.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[Yoc]

Hi Jim,
Right, I got that.  We haven't gotten to that point yet but I can see it happening in the near future.
I'll let you know when I've got it sorted and send you a link.

But I'm sure Phabox (Nigel) would love to pick your mind on Baker and the era, etc in general if you had some time.

-Yoc

[JVJ]

By all means, Yoc,
give Nigel my email address and/or phone number. If you don't have either (or both), send me a PM and I'll send them to you. I'm cranking away on my magazine (and would DEARLY love to get back to the big Fiction House project for the GCD that I've been working on with Hames and Henry. So there aren't a lot of spare hours, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to talk comics with Nigel. We just have to be realistic.

There, I got my five minutes in before bed that I promised myself. Ciao.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[OtherEric]

Still waiting for the 22 to show.  On a related note, I did get a copy of Ajax Phantom Lady 2 with the logo stripped.  So look for an upgrade from fiche to paper on that one very soon.