Sandra Knight , with fellow Quality superheroes the Human Bomb and
Uncle Sam. In 1956, DC Comics obtained the rights to the Quality Comics characters, which they believed included Phantom Lady, and reintroduced her 17 years later with a group of other former Quality heroes as the
Freedom Fighters in
Justice League of America #107 (October 1973). As was done with many characters DC acquired from other publishers, or that were holdovers from Golden Age titles, the Freedom Fighters were relocated to a
parallel world. Their particular earth was referred to as "
Earth-X". On Earth-X,
Nazi Germany had won
World War II. The team was later featured in its own series for 15 issues (1976–1978), in which they temporarily left Earth-X for "
Earth-1" (where most DC titles were set at the time) and Phantom Lady was given real phantom-like powers. During the final issue of the original
Freedom Fighters series, the writers gave the character an origin story. One night, Sandra happened across two would-be assassins targeting her father, and stealthily thwarted them with nothing more than a rolled-up newspaper. Knight consequently developed a taste for adventure and crime-fighting, and after finding a "black light ray projector" that a family friend named Professor Davis sent to her father, she adopted the device as a weapon. In 1981, Phantom Lady became a recurring guest star of
All-Star Squadron, a superhero-team title set on "
Earth-2", the locale for DC's World War II-era superheroes, and at a time prior to when she and the other Freedom Fighters were supposed to have left for Earth-X. Phantom Lady then appeared with the rest of DC's superheroes in
Crisis on Infinite Earths, a story that was intended to eliminate the confusing histories that DC had attached to its characters by retroactively merging the various parallel worlds into one. This left Phantom Lady's Earth-X days written out of her history, and the Freedom Fighters became a mere splinter group of the All-Star Squadron. DC also
retconned the origin of Phantom Lady established in Quality's
Police Comics, so that she now belonged to the prestigious Knight family of
Opal City, a locale central to DC's
Starman line of heroes. Her formative story was changed so that she overtook her father's would-be assassins with her fists instead of a newspaper. Lastly, she was given a more active role in the acquisition of her black light ray, which she no longer received from a mere family friend but instead from a scientist named Dr. Abraham Davis, who had escaped from
Nazi-controlled
Europe. In the retelling, Sandra Knight gave asylum to Davis, setting him up in a laboratory and helping him to complete his invention. Ted Knight, now established as her cousin, also aided Davis, as a result acquiring the technology that allowed him to become the first
Starman. The 1994 title
Damage established the post-World War II history for Phantom Lady. She was made an agent of a
Cold War-era government
intelligence agency called Argent, in which she met and married fellow former-All Star Squadron member
Iron Munro (a character introduced in the 1986 series
Young All-Stars). The two were paired on several missions and fought a Soviet-backed agent named The Baron, actually the German
Baron Blitzkrieg, a foe both had met during World War II. Shortly after becoming pregnant, Sandra was kidnapped by The Baron who stole the
fetus from her womb and left her for dead. After escaping from Communist Poland, Sandra wanted out of the spy game and turned to an old friend,
Roy Lincoln. He helped her, and soon thereafter she started the Universite Notre Dame Des Ombres (the University of Our Lady of the Shadows) in the hopes of making further intelligence contacts and finding her baby, but she was not successful. Phantom Lady's presence in the U.S. and her work with American Intelligence was kept a secret to most; she never reunited with her husband, and in her old age became headmistress of the school she began, now a training center for female spies in Washington, D.C. In
Manhunter (vol. 3) #23 (June 2006), Phantom Lady met the current Manhunter, Kate Spencer, and it was revealed that she was Spencer's grandmother. Phantom Lady and Iron Munro were revealed to have had a child before their marriage whom they gave up for adoption—Walter Pratt, Spencer's father. The
Golden Age Atom, Al Pratt, had allowed Phantom Lady to use his contact information so that she could get into a home for unwed mothers, causing the belief that the child was Pratt's son. Knight and Munro still keep in contact, as she brought him to meet Kate and her son, Ramsey.
Dee Tyler A second Phantom Lady, Delilah "Dee" Tyler, was introduced in
Action Comics Weekly #636 (January 1989) and was given a back-up feature in that title through #641 with art by
Chuck Austen. The daughter of the U.S. Attorney General, Tyler was trained by the original Phantom Lady, the now-elderly Sandra Knight, at the exclusive Université Notre Dame des Ombres (Our Lady of the Shadows) in France. She inherited Knight's equipment and costume. It was heavily implied in that series that she was not alone in being thus trained and equipped, as her "college roommate" Marie Saloppe also appeared in the guise of Phantom Lady in
Action Comics Weekly #639. Tyler's primary ability was an extensive knowledge of the martial art called
savate, also known as French kickboxing. She also possessed a wrist-mounted blaster, and a holographic projector developed by her childhood friend and roommate Sarah that could be used to cast powerful illusions. This successor Phantom Lady never received a series of her own, but was a periodic guest star in other titles, including the 1988
Starman,
Flash, and most frequently in the 1994
Starman title. She joined a new version of the Freedom Fighters in the 1999
JSA series. Phantom Lady was killed by
Cheetah and
Deathstroke during
Infinite Crisis. In
Blackest Night, she is temporarily resurrected as a
Black Lantern.
Stormy Knight A new Phantom Lady was introduced in
Crisis Aftermath: The Battle for Blüdhaven (2006), as one of the
metahumans guarding
Blüdhaven. She appears in the limited series
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. Her name is Stormy Knight and, like the original character, her father is a U.S. Senator, though no connection to the other Knight characters has been established. She seems to know
Father Time and has hinted that they have met before with him in a different guise, referring to his look as "this year's look is Colonel Sanders, Time?" She acts like a spoiled movie star and treats her other teammates like the popular girl in high school would treat the geeks (especially the
Human Bomb and
Major Force), but shows some hint of respect for the new
Doll Man, hinting that they worked together for some time. Her wristbands not only project light but can bend reality. She does not maintain a secret identity. In
Brave New World, a radio program names her as Stormy Knight. Like other members of the Blüdhaven team, this incarnation of Phantom Lady is a cold-blooded killer, although there are indications in issue #1 of
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters, as she finds herself defending her actions, that she may be disturbed by what she is ordered to do. Also in issue #1, her father is depicted in a more sympathetic light as a man who might disband the Blüdhaven team if elected. He is murdered on orders of Father Time and replaced by a
doppelganger. It was believed that Senator Knight wanted to run America as a dictatorship enforced by a
metahuman army shown through visions created by Uncle Sam, but it appears that the real person who wants America this way is the individual running
S.H.A.D.E. This figure, a cyborg named Gonzo the Mechanical Bastard, is impersonating Senator Knight. In the second issue of
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters, Stormy becomes a Freedom Fighter. She reveals that she has a degree in quantum physics and pretends to be a spoiled idiot so she will not end up like other socialites. Her wrists bands appear to be able to transport Stormy and others from the third dimension to the fourth dimension. In the second
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters series (September 2007), Stormy, still in shock over her father's death, begins to take drugs and drink heavily. After she drunkenly cuts a super-powered troublemaker in half on live television,
Black Condor takes her to the extra-dimensional Heartland, where Uncle Sam tells her she will not leave until her habit has been kicked. Stormy later slits her wrists, but is found in time by Doll Man.
Miss America removes all the toxins from her systems, allowing her to recuperate better. By the end of the miniseries, Stormy decides to forgo her superhero career to pursue an acting vocation. She was invited by
Oracle to join the
Birds of Prey, but ended up casually setting fire to her invitation immediately after reading it, stating that she was already on someone else's payroll.
Jennifer Knight In 2012, DC Comics published a new ongoing comic book,
Phantom Lady and Doll Man, featuring completely new versions of the characters, with no relation to their Freedom Fighter predecessors other than the character names. These were part of the "Second Wave" of its continuity reboot and entire-line relaunch,
The New 52 which begun in September 2011 following on from the
Flashpoint limited series. Several years ago, Jennifer Knight witnessed the murder of her parents on Christmas Eve. Her father had been one of the best reporters on the Daily Planet's crime beat, and was close to breaking the case against crime boss Robert Bender, until Bender found out. She swore to bring the Bender family down and in the present tries to enact this by infiltrating the inner circle of Cyrus and Eli Bender, the heirs to Robert Bender's crime legacy. Her cover is quickly discovered forcing Jennifer to seek help from her friend, Dane Maxwell, hoping to use his genius to hack Cyrus Bender's cellphone, but Cyrus' henchmen track them down and apparently kill Dane inside his own machine. Jennifer is later rescued by Dane, who had become
miniaturized. He gives her a special suit and gloves enabling invisibility and shadow manipulation. She then chooses to become a vigilante, known as Phantom Lady. In "The New Golden Age", Phantom Lady was mentioned by Mister Terrific to have been enlisted to take Human Bomb's sidekick Cherry Bomb and Red Bee's sidekick Ladybug under her wing so that she can hook them up with the Freedom Fighters as this is seen on one of the screens. ==Other versions and homages==