Phantom Stranger #41. Will the Real Black Orchid Please Stand Up?

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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Those with keen memories will know that, just three months ago, I took a look at the last issue of the Bronze Age run of the Phantom Stranger's legendary comic.

But the fedora-flaunting downfall of fools and fiends wasn't the only star of that book, as there was also a backup strip. One that starred none other than the Black Orchid.

Or perhaps I should say it starred a whole gang of Black Orchids.

For in the mag's previous issue, heiress and Black Orchid fan Ronne Kuhn had been invited to join a secret society composed entirely of Black Orchids!

Yes, it was true. In a shocking development, there was never one Orchid. There were a whole bunch of them who worked together to fight crime. And so impressed by Ronne were they that they invited her to become a member of their team.

But it turned out she'd been duped. They weren't Black Orchids at all. They were a gang of criminals and had hoodwinked her into helping them commit their latest heist, the robbery of a bank vault!

Holey Moley!

Now, at the start of this month's instalment, they've tied her to that vault's door, along with a bomb that's all set to blow it - and her - to kingdom come!

Is it curtains for the woman dressed as a woman whose costume seems to have been made from curtains?

No, it isn't because, just as all seems lost, the real Black Orchid appears, tears the vault door off its hinges, with her bare hands and flings it into the sky where it won't do any harm to anyone apart from anyone stood beneath it when it showers a rain of deadly chunks of metal down on them.

That menace dealt with, the Orchid and Ronne quickly set about rounding up the wrongdoers, with Ronne capturing their ringleader Karen, via the judicious use of a fire hose.

Of course, job done, the Orchid disappears, as she always does, leaving Ronne to deal with the police who are convinced she's the real Black Orchid.

It has to be said it's a very simple episode, reminiscent of the Golden Age days of heroes who'd simply burst in and give the villains a good leathering with no difficulty at all. But, then, it never was a strip that had you worried about the survival chances of its heroine.

However, it's interesting to see the Orchid make reference to Batman, Robin and even the Justice League, even though I've always been under the impression that, like the 1970s Spectre stories, the idea behind the strip is that it takes place in a world in which super-heroes - apart from the protagonist - don't exist. I can only put this down to writer Michael Fleisher and his legendary continuity adviser Russell Carley possibly forgetting this.

Then again, I could just have always been wrong and maybe it is set on a world in which super-heroes exist.

Regardless, I approve of it being set in a world in which super-heroes exist.

And we should be honest about it, writing is for wimps. The appeal of the strip was always its art and it has to be said that this issue's penciller Fred Carrillo is no Nestor Redondo but he does, at least, give us a style that's in the same ballpark.

And so it's all over for the heroine and, as the book hits cancellation, she, for now, departs our lives, as big a mystery as she was when first she appeared. Was she a scientist? Was she a supernatural being? Was she - given the nature of her various powers - Supergirl in disguise?

It looks like, unless some fool brings her back and gives her an origin story, we shall never find out.

Just as long as she doesn't turn out to be a human/plant hybrid.

I don't think I'd ever get over that.