Book: Phantom Lady and Doll Man (issues #1-4) by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti with illustrations by Cat Staggs, ink by Tom Derenick and colors by Jason Wright
Edition: I'm reading the single issues
Rating: 3 stars
Review:
Phantom Lady has always been a bit of an obscure character. But I was a bit familiar with the character prior to reading the "War and Remembrance" story from Birds of Prey volume #2: Death of Oracle that featured the original Phantom Lady, Sandra Knight. In that story, it showed an amazing kick-butt heroine despite being older.
Now in this updated New 52 version of the Phantom Lady is Jennifer Knight who is a freelance writer/journalist from Metropolis who is trying to take down the crooked and murderous Bender family who had murdered her parents and for all their other crimes.
She tried to go undercover by dating Cyrus Bender to get information but that turned out bad and nearly cost Jennifer and her friend Dane their lives. They had been ambushed at Dane's junk yard (after Jen had stolen Cyrus' cell phone to gather more information) and to escape from them Dane jumped into one of his machines. However, one of Cyrus' goons turned the machine and it caused Dane to shrink (although the goons didn't know that, they thought he had been vaporized). Thinking Dane was dead, they abduct Jennifer and take her to Cyrus who plans to torture her until she breaks. He planned to leave her hanging upside down overnight but after they left, Dane showed up to rescue her and two go back to the junkyard so Dane can give Jennifer the costume and gadgets he designed for her.
Then then take off for a couple of weeks to train with their new costumes before they go after the Benders. After taking out some low level crooks who have connections to the Benders then taking out a drug shipment they end up running into metahuman Funerella (who was sent by Cyrus to take out PL and Doll Man), who released a zombie army and had them attack the heroes. After defeating death queen the two heroes wanted to take the fight to the Benders but decided to go another route to try to bring down the crooked organization.
I did not find this version of the Phantom Lady to be that interesting. She appears rather dumb and incompetent at times and she also didn't develop any of her gadgets or costume. Dane did everything, she wouldn't have made it without him.
In reading up on the original Phantom Lady, I found her to be really amazing. She trained really hard and created her own gadgets unlike this version who was really inept at pretty much everything. Plus Jennifer's story was a little too Batman like with the murder of her parents being her motivation.
Overall, the story was good but rather generic which has become a common occurrence within the New 52. It felt like you could have replaced her with any other random character and the story would not have changed. Nothing in this story felt original. I did think the artwork by Cat Staggs was pretty good.
Would I recommend it? Sure, if you can find it at the comic book store or in trade edition. Like I said it's a good story but nothing really special.
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