Phantom Lady w/ Writer's Commentary

Hello Patrons,

Hope you all had a good week! I'm back with another one of my "writer's commentary" introductions to one of my classic stories, in this case, I'm talking about one of my favorite stories, my first ever Phantom Lady fan fic! If you've followed me on any kind of social media, you'll know how much I love seeing this character in bondage, and despite her appearing in multiple stories of mine, this is still the only solo Phantom Lady adventure that I've written thus far. But what was it that drew me to this character? Was it her rich history dating back to the golden age of comics? Well, I'll be honest and say that it wasn't, instead, it was her skimpy outfit. 

At some point I remember stumbling across an article online talking about Phantom Lady and the history of "Good girl art", where basically old comics would feature covers with female characters, the "good girls" of the story, typically in some sort of bondage while scantily clad. One Phantom Lady cover in particular is indicative of this era of publishing and was quite controversial at the time. I think you all know what cover I'm talking about...

Phantom Lady's costume, along with the cleavage and hint of erect nipples, was quite scandalous for the time. At the time, I had been aware of Phantom Lady as a C-List DC character an appreciated her for how much skimpier her costume had become in the modern era. When I found out that the classic Phantom Lady had commonly been depicted in bondage as a why of enticing male readers, well, I just had to look up some of her stuff for myself. As you all know, I'm a gag snob (kidnappers, always remember to gag your damsels), and while I found a plethora of evocative art of Phantom Lady in bondage, rarely was she ever gagged, or if she was, it was all too brief.

Of course though, the wheels in my head started turning and churning out scenario after scenario of this scantily clad heroine in distress. With such a skimpy outfit, she seemed like the perfect lady to end up bound and gagged. One thing that appealed to me about this character is that since she's practically slipped into obscurity, it meant that my imagination could run wild since she didn't have much by the way of established continuity or a fan base. More malleable characters like Phantom Lady have always appealed to me because they don't have much history behind them, meaning writers can be more creative.

As I said before, I found a few scenes with Phantom Lady bound and gagged, but one that really stuck out to me was when Phantom Lady gets kidnapped by some gangsters, bound and gagged, and stuffed in a bag before being transported back to their lair. We even get some gag talk from her briefly before they remove her gag. Of the Phantom Lady scenes that I've been able to find, this is probably the best, though there is a very short scene in another comic where Phantom Lady gets gagged by nazis before being rescued that I like purely because the villains seem to refer to being bound and gagged as "The treatment". In another comic, Phantom Lady is shown bound and gagged in one panel, and it seems to suggest that the villains used her own cape to gag her. Sadly, we don't get any more beyond that. 

All of these images went into my head and soon I started "improving" on them so to say, and very quickly decided that I wanted to write my own Phantom Lady in distress story. As I said in my previous intros, I ran into walls with my Lara Croft and Red Sonja stories, and so I started work on my Phantom Lady story until I felt that I could get back to those. Like my other stories, I started Phantom Lady with no real plan or idea where I was going, and I ran into some blocks towards the end, but I wrote through them easily enough.

With Black Scorpion, I wanted to portray her more as a two-fisted heroine that relied on guts, strength, and gadgets to fight crime, but with Phantom Lady I wanted to portray her more as a nosy girl detective who used theatricality and her wits more than physical strength. I made Phantom Lady's costume even skimpier, turning it into a thong slingshot bikini, and made that the center piece of the character. Having a superheroine in such a revealing costume would make her more vulnerable and susceptible to humiliations and wardrobe malfunctions, which appealed to me. Another thing that I wanted to do was paint Phantom Lady as a pretty incompetent hero, and she wears such a revealing outfit because she thinks it will distract her enemies, but most of the time it just lands her in trouble. 

The first situation she finds herself in this story, tied to a chair, gagged with a sock, and eventually transported to a bridge, is an amalgamation of several other scenes. In an episode of the classic Ninja Turtles cartoon called "Cowabunga Shredhead", Michaelangelo finds himself captured by Rocksteady and Behop, who begin to chant in celebration of catching one of the turtles, prompting Mikey to tell them to "Put a sock in it". 

Mikey ends up eating his words, literally, as they retort with "No you put a sock in it!" And stuff a sock in his mouth. The scene is a bit infamous for the continuity errors with Mikey's gag, as it changes from a stuff gag to an OTM and back again. In the story, I just have the goons pull another cloth over Phantom Lady's mouth to keep the gag in, as seen in this great art from Fifty Shades of GAg

Another part of this scene is inspired by a scene in "Talespin" in which Baloo the bear is tied to a chair, gagged, and struggles and gag talks furiously while his captors talk on a phone, which inspires the part in the story where the goons call the mysterious "boss" to ask what they should do with the bound and gagged heroine, this leads to them wrapping her in chains, tossing her in the back of an SUV, and driving her to a bridge to be tossed in a river, which was partially inspired by a scene with Robin in Batman: The Animated Series, except with more gag-talk and accidental nudity from Phantom Lady. 

This car scene is also the first time I tried telling the story from a perspective beyond the damsel's, where I give us insight into the minds of the henchmen holding them captive, which I think makes the story a little sexier. Moments like the henchman talking while listening to Phantom Lady struggling in the back of the car or the part where the one henchman feels up Phantom Lady's ass through the bag they have her in felt like hot little touches to throw in.

As I said, I loved the scene in the original comic where she gets bound, gagged, and shoved in a bag, and I pretty much recreate that scene exactly in this story. For some reason, I'm a sucker for when a gagged damsel is wrapped up in a nice sack, and the added irony of the goons kidnapping Phantom Lady when they meant to kidnap her alter ego gives the scene more dimension. From here we jump to Phantom Lady at the goon's hideout, where they place her in a death trap with a knife suspended between two melting blocks of ice. This I took from an old Dick Tracy comic (which sadly I can't find) where Tracy is kidnapped by an old enemy and placed, bound and gagged, in this exact death trap, I even acknowledge it in the dialogue. The goons turning up the heat in the apartment adds a layer of sexiness because now Phantom Lady is coated in sweat as she struggles, and I liked the idea that after she got free her gag was sticking to her face because of the moisture.

Then we get to my favorite part of the story, and everyone else's favorite: the part where The Boss, a mysterious woman, uses Phantom Lady's skimpy costume to tie her hands and gags her with her own cape. I don't know where I got this idea, it just came to me one day, and once it did I knew I had to write it. Obviously Phantom Lady being gagged with her own cape came from the comics, and I love wedgie bondage, so I think it was natural for me to come up with an idea where Phantom Lady gets a wedgie while also bound. I've had a few artists take a crack at this scene and while I love their art, none of them have really captured what I pictured in my head. This isn't a knock against these wonderful, talented artists, but more so probably against myself for not being able to accurately describe how I want it. Either way, this scene is still the crown jewel of this story for me, and I revisit this part more than anything else I've ever written. 

After this we get basically an extended humiliation scene for Phantom Lady, where she is hung extended by her own father's statue, escapes at the expense of her costume, and has her cape stolen by a little dog before getting captured again. The image of a nude woman tugging at a cape against a small dog is one that comes up in pin-up art a lot, and being into ENF and humiliation, I love it.

The ending of this story feels a bit dark to me though, with the implication that the one goon is going to rape the bound and gagged Phantom Lady and that in the end, Phantom Lady switches places with The Boss and orders the goons to kill the villainess, whom they believe is Phantom Lady. I'm a big fan of "body switching" bondage, where a damsel is bound and gagged and replaced by a lookalike, and I liked that it was sort of reversed in this case where the good girl switched with the bad girl. Cement peril is another thing that I'm a big fan of, and though it isn't shown in this story, I liked implying that The Boss met her fate via cement before being dumped. 

Alas, fate came back for Phantom Lady, who would find herself in cement peril sometime later, but that is a story for another time...