Comic Book Heroines

The Lois Lane adventure, The Catwoman’s Black Magic, published in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #70 (November 1966) fascinated me when I first read this slightly crazy Lois Lane adventure as a seven year old and it has stayed with me ever since. I think it is the wonderful artwork by Kurt Schaffenberger that probably caused this tale to linger in the memory, but equally the story, by Leo Dorfman, is a little weird, even by the Silver Age’s camp standards, which also makes this issue memorable.

The crammed plot has at least three almost discrete storylines: a scene-setting crime by The Penguin; Lois being captured by Catwoman then being hypnotised by her into thinking she is the villainess (I must say, Lois and Selina Kyle look great in their matching cat costumes), and finally a confrontation in Catwoman’s base the Catacombs, in which Superman is turned into a cat by Selina using Circe's wand, Lois comes out of her hypnotic state, Super Pussy Cat rescues her from some gigantic mutant felines (probably the most surreal image in the story) and ends on a cliffhanger with Lois and Catwoman going at it hammer and tongs in, you guessed it, a catfight. The conclusion has to wait until the next issue.

Dorfman and Schaffenberger clearly had a lot of fun putting this hokum together, but it is so beautifully paced and lovingly drawn, that you just get swept along in the sheer bonkersness of it all. Is Catwoman's Black Magic a serious contribution to the Lois/Superman/Batman/Catwoman canon? Not a bit of it. Is it an example of unselfconcious fun, and not a little self-mockery (the cat puns just go on and on)? You bet. To be honest, the modern comics industry with its multiple universes, alarming plot shifts, brooding heroes and conflicted heriones, could do with a few stories like this. So, if you want to simply kick back and wallow in a little camp Sixties nostalgia, this Lois Lane adventure really won't disappoint.

The comic page and superb cover are freely available online, but there is an amusing summary of the story to enjoy at comicarcheology.com.

I have featured Starlight, the warrior-woman of the Huron, previously in this blog, but I thought it worth featuring her again, simply to reflect what made her almost unique amongst Golden Age comic book heroines. Foremost, she was a strong female character whose stories were written by a female author, Ann Adams. I think this must have contributed to Starlight’s feminism, demonstrated by her refusal to accept her status as a second class member of Huron society and proving through her dexterity with arrow, knife and combat skills, to be as proficient as any man, and in her stories it is frequently Staright leading her people’s fight against their encroaching enemies. In this, Starlight could be compared to her fellow Native American heroine Firehair, and any number of contemporary comic book jungle women, but unlike those characters, Starlight was not white, making her one of the very few minority characters in a mainstream title (Indians Comics) in the early 1950s.

Finally, Starlight is illustrated by the fine artist Ralph Mayo, who drew and coloured the later adventures of Camilla the Jungle Queen so well. Even less than Camilla, Starlight is not particularly sexualised. In Mayo’s depiction she is beautiful certainly, and attractive, but her appearance is always one of a strong and independent woman and she has no male companion to order her about or rescue her from peril. The story featured above explores this dynamic more explicitly when Starlight finds herself banned, as a woman, from the ceremonies of Manhood Day, where “stripling hunters” are inducted to adulthood, something Starlight is not permitted even to witness, owing to her gender, which of course she finds infuriating.

The pre-colonial America depicted by Adams and Mayo is of course romanticised and exoticised, but as a respectful imagining of an independent “warrior-maiden”, Starlight’s stories are, in context, truly admirable.

The page featured above is from the Starlight story which appeared in Indians Comics #4 (November 1950).

Canteen Kate did not exactly push forward the frontiers of comic book feminism. Kate perhaps symbolises best the decline of the kick-ass empowered heroine of the 1940s and the evolution (if that’s the right word) of female characters into doe-eyed simpletons obsessed with men. With Kate, we are a long way from the Girl Commandos or even GI Jane.

As her monicker implies, Kate, with her slightly bizarre uniform of long shirt and rolled up shorts, worked in an army canteen on a base in Japan during the Korean War, but spends most of her time dodging work and coming up with madcap schemes to enable her to spend more time with her soldier boyfriend Al. In truth, despite the military setting, Canteen Kate bore more resemblance to a teen romance comic, similar to Torchy in the title’s depiction of Kate as a cunning bimbo, but without Torchy’s occasional flashes of independence and brushes with peril. Perhaps the best description of the comic is “slapstick”, given Kate and Al’s constant disasters (they frequently end up in the brig), the presence a Major always intruding on the couple’s plans, and the general atmosphere of chaos that surrounds the military base and its canteen.

If Canteen Kate is a pale shadow of her powerful female predecessors in the Golden Age, the title is perhaps saved by its excellent artwork, produced by the superb Matt Baker. His depiction of Kate, although certainly comfortably in the “good time gal” category, is a little more subtle than some of his more voluptuous and cartoony sex bombs such as Fly Girl, and there is an attention to detail in the art that always makes these lightweight stories eye catching.

I can’t in conscience recommend Canteen Kate for its significance in the story of female depiction in comics, but if you an aficionado of Baker’s work, the stories are certainly worth a look. Canteen Kate appeared in eight issues of the Fightin’ Marines title and the character proved sufficiently popular to be given her own title in 1952, although it was to last only three issues.

The illustration is the cover to Canteen Kate #1 (June 1952)

This Nyoka the Jungle Girl story shows Nyoka in an extraordinary array of roles - as peacemaker, matchmaker, diplomat, bringer of justice, and damsel in distress at one point, although true to her overall toughness in this tale she doesn’t in the event need rescuing. Appalled at the extent to which two lesser African tribes, the Sitkoes and the Kukus, are being terrorised by the more powerful Teras (geddit?) tribe led by the evil chief Bopka, and forced to pay tribute to them, Nyoka suggests the two smaller tribes join forces against the Teras. She is helped in this by a Romeo and Juliet style romance between Princess Edo, daughter of the Sitkoe chief Duro, and Prince Bero, son of the Kuku chief, Ango. To complicate matters Bopka has laid claim to Edo in marriage and her father feels obliged to consent to the match to prevent Bopka from ordering his Teras warriors to wipe out his people.

Locating the two secret lovers in a jungle tryst, Nyoka persuades them of the wisdom of her plan and they agree to marry and to persuade their respective fathers to form an anti-Teras tribal alliance. Nyoka agrees to deliver a gift of “gold leaf” to Chief Duro on behalf of Bero as a sign of his intent while telling him the pair wish the alliance to proceed on the back of their nuptials. A Teras warrior learns of the scheme and intercepts Nyoka, knocking her out and replacing the gold leaf with dirt. When Nyoka comes to, she completes her mission, only for Duro to take terrible offence at this perceived insult and then to order an attack the Kukus to avenge the slight. Nyoka begs time to prove Prince Bero is in earnest and Duro gives her six hours to do so.

Nyoka penetrates the Teras village, spotting the warrior proudly sporting the leaf round his neck, gifted to him by a grateful Bopka. Nyoka succeeds in surprising the warrior in his hut and captures him, but her bound prisoner is able to raise the alarm when he frees himself from his gag and Nyoka is captured in turn by the angry Teras. Bopka devises a suitably garish fate for Nyoka, having her lashed to the underside of a canoe and paddled by one of his men until she drowns. Nyoka’s former captive, eager to avenge himself on the jungle girl for humiliating him, volunteers for the murderous task. Nyoka, having “tensed her legs” while being bound is able to free herself, kayo the sucker-for-punishment Teras warrior for a second time, as she needs the stolen gold leaf he is wearing as evidence to exonerate Bero. Tying up the unfortunate Teras man again, Nyoka takes him to the Sitkoe village only to find her deadline has expired and Chief Duro had led his warriors in an attack on the Kukus. Leaving her prisoner to be guarded by Princess Edo, Nyoka heads to the site of forthcoming battle and tells both chiefs she has the evidence of their children’s love and good faith. The two chiefs agree to hear the confession of Nyoka’s terrified captive back at the Sitkoe village, after which they agree to form the alliance.

Bopka, who has realised Nyoka has escaped death once more, decides to make good his threat and leads his men to exterminate the Sitkoes. To his horror he finds Sitkoes and Kukus united against him and in the subsequent battle, the outnumbered Teras are put to flight. Nyoka seizes Bopka before he can get away and decides to take him to the nearest town to face justice and imprisonment. She returns to attend the wedding of Edo and Bero, a scene of friendship between the two tribes now the oppressive Teras have at last been defeated. All in a day’s work for Nyoka!

This is a shout-out for Jumbo Comics, the flagship title of Fiction House publishing, whose stable of titles unashamedly featured some of the best and most empowered comic book heroines of the Golden Age. Jumbo Comics’ first issue came out in September 1938 and its run lasted over fourteen years until March 1953. Its lead character, who appeared on virtually all its covers was, appropriately enough, Sheena Queen of the Jungle, the defining “jungle woman” and an absolute pioneer for strong female characters, elbowing her way to notice and acceptance by a 1930s and 1940s comic book audience used to seeing women characters as winsome damsels continually in need of male rescue, or sexualised airheads whom male characters never considered seriously beyond their physical attributes.

Throughout its long career, Jumbo hosted some of the best contemporary comic artists, including Bob Kane, Bob Powell, Matt Baker and Lily Renée. In truth, Sheena was almost unique as a proto-feminist character in Jumbo, although the title did feature the more obviously sexy Sky Girl, although she was no less a tough independent female, and written and illustrated by the extraordinary Matt Baker. When Jumbo Comics finally stopped publishing, the pro-heroine heart rather went out of Fiction House, and it folded in 1955. With Fiction House’s demise, so departed strong female comic book characters’ greatest champion of the Golden Age.

Amazons of the Asteroids by NK Hemmings, which featured in the Australian pulp comic Thrills Incorporated #17 (November 1951), is a bit of an oddity, that manages to mine the genre of space adventure, together with the trope of woman warriors, while also succeeding in being sexist and condescending towards its female protagonists.

The story revolves around a macho hero, space explorer Captain Floyd Estrom who in 2273, leads his intrepid three-man band to investigate the mysterious planet Jupiter. While surveying the asteroids around the planet, Estrom and his crew encounter the extraordinary sight of a woman, clearly a warrior, seated on a winged horse. Estrom immediately surmises that this is a genuine Amazon, probably the origin of all the earth legends of unbridled and empowered fighting females. The expedition become determined to capture the Amazon, but soon run into the whole tribe and the situation becomes reversed and the male intruders are taken prisoner by the women. Despite mocking the Amazons and refusing to take them seriously, the men are overpowered again by the Amazons and threatened with destruction until one of their number, an elemental being named Dirga, uses his electronic powers to defeat the female warriors although he kills himself in the process.

Basically at the end of the story normal service is resumed with the assertive women put in their place and the captive men freed. So, sadly, Amazons of the Asteroids, despite its depiction of empowered female characters ends up conforming to the gender stereotypes of 1950s comicdom. I do like the rather clunky cover though.

It is also worth noting that despite the story’s sexism, author NK Hemmings was actually a woman (Norma Hemmings) who was something of a pioneer in Australian female science fiction writing.

In Detective Comics #369 (November 1967), the cover featured an interesting Batman Family dispute - apparently indicating that Batgirl was intent on breaking up Batman’s partnership with Robin and lure him away to partner with her. As was often the case with the DC Comics of this era, the cover and title were a considerable exaggeration of the actual story content. In fact Batman contracts Swamp Fever when he falls into infected water when he and Robin come to the assistance of Batgirl when she is attempting to apprehend some crooks. Barbara the scholarly librarian soon ascertains that Batman will need seven days rest in order for the disease to pass through his system, but she and Robin equally know Batman will not be persuaded to take it easy when there is crime to be fought.

Therefore the two manufacture a cover story in which they tell him they have decided to effectively fire Batman, creating a new dynamic duo, thus depriving him of a role and in effect forcing him to step away. This works at first, and Batgirl and Robin are able to keep the recovering Batman under observation, but eventually he goes it alone, only to collapse trying to capture some bad guys and after being rescued by his protégées, finishes off his recovery at home in bed after which the “real” Dynamic Duo are reunited. The plot, although tortuous and none-too-serious, introduced the themes of a potential romance between Batgirl and Robin, and the recurrent trope of Batgirl, with her fierce intelligence and feminine wiles, being a threat to the boys’ club of Bruce Wayne and his ward. Both would be revisited over the following decades.

Drop Your Guns!

A brilliant depiction by artist Lee Elias of Firehair capturing two bad guys single-handedly. Firehair manages to look both sexy and intimidating as she wields a six gun and orders the outlaws to drop their weapons. In early depictions of Firehair, the heroine generally wore a blue buckskin dress or skirt, sometimes wore cowboy boots and often had a gun belt, giving her a more conventional “Western Gal” appearance. Her more typical look eventually settled on a Native American appearance, wearing a belted green buckskin dress, moccasins and more commonly armed with a knife or bow and arrows, although she retained sharpshooting skills.

Firehair’s flaming red tresses however were a constant…

Princess Koriand’r of the planet Tamaran, also known as Starfire, her super heroine persona as a member of the Teen Titans, is a character who normally appears in a supporting cast, but nonetheless has a dramatic backstory, involving her usurpation from the throne of her planet by her disinherited sister; the acquisition of the power to control solar energy through a mysterious people known as the Psions, which enables her to fire bolts of solar power known as “starbursts”, together with her own imprisonment and torture at her victorious sister’s hands. When the voluptuous and orange-skinned Koriand’r makes her way to earth as a fugitive, her fabulous powers and her open and honest character lead her to become a key member of the Teen Titans, helping them combat demons and super villains, and eventually she becomes romantically linked with with fellow TT Dick Grayson (Robin).

Created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, Starfire debuted in DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1982) and then featured principally in The New Teen Titans title until the Infinite Crisis after which she featured in Red Hood and the Outlaws.

DC seemed unsure what to do with Starfire in its new realities. Despite the year zero approach of the Universe’s relaunch, Starfire was retained as a Teen Titan with a similar back story to her original incarnation, eventually going on to feature in her own 12 issue title in 2015/16, albeit with a more anime style of art and light-hearted approach. Voluptuous, orange, green-eyed, red-haired, naive and yet a fierce warrior, the original Starfire is an intriguing and inspiring figure. It’s a shame more was not made of her in the long term, but she continues to be a staple if infrequent character in the DC Universe, featuring in her own deserved issue of Teen Titans as recently as November 2024.

I really need to read again the graphic novel Modesty Blaise, produced in colour in 1994, published by DC comics and illustrated by the great Dick Giordano, which was a direct adaptation of Peter O’Donnell’s original book, first published in 1963 that introduced the dynamic anti-heroine to the spy thriller genre in the midst of the Cold War. As is well-known, O’Donnell wrote the novel a little speculatively, creating an admittedly exotic, female version of James Bond. But Modesty Blaise was always a lot more than a feminised version of Ian Fleming’s super-spy. Modesty’s origin story, richly illustrated in this comic book, was a world away from Bond’s privately-educated hyper masculine Englishman. Forging a life on the streets of Tangiers, O'Donnell's orphaned character rose to become an underworld queen, ruling a criminal organisation known as The Network, with her platonic companion, the cockney knifeman, Willie Garvin, always at her side. After cashing in on her criminal enterprise, the always curiously moral Blaise was recruited into British intelligence where she battled Communist spies and infiltration, together with bad guys of all persuasions, frequently using her former criminal associates to help her fulfil her missions. Modesty however always remained her own woman and in the post-Cold War years, developed a much more subtle and questioning relationship with her secret service handlers, even if her loyalty to her father figure, Sir Gerald Tarrant, never wavered.

Skilled in multiple martial arts, armed with her lethal kongo and possessed of an intelligence and independence of spirit Bond coud only dream of, Blaise, beautiful and sensual, was never particularly sexualised, and was nobody’s bimbo, although artist Enric Badia Romero, the long standing illustrator of the comic strip, lovingly portrayed her physical assets to great effect. However, this one-off, published entirely in colour, as well as being a faithful re-telling of the Blaise story, was also a visual treat by Giordano, and is, in my opinion, perhaps the greatest depiction of O’Donnell’s extraordinary character. The fact that O’Donnell’s last Blaise comic strip adventure was published in 2001 tells its own story, not just of Modesty’s longevity, but also her enduring appeal to espionage fans and admirers of strong female fictional characters alike.

Modesty, despite the brutal world in which she plied her trade, retained a humanity that meant she never killed gratuitously and retained a compassion for life’s victims throughout. She was an atypical criminal in this respect and had no trace of the sociopathy so many male spies in fiction seem to exhibit. She appears to depart from this in the panel above, but the context to the torture and murder of the man she throws to his death is that her victim had just knifed a young woman in the stomach, leaving her to bleed to death in the street. Even when carrying out lethal violence, it seems, Modesty always retained a recognisable moral code.

Jungle Comics was one of the “big six” comic book titles within the Fiction House publishing company after its highly successful move into comics from pulp novels in the late 1930s. Jungle Comics ran for an extraordinary 163 continual issues, commencing in January 1940, and publishing its final edition in July 1954. Fiction House was known for promoting strong female characters such as Sheena and Firehair, as well as employing women artists and writers. Whereas this feminist ethos did not prevent exploitative “good time girl” cover art and much damsel in distress bondage within the stories themselves, it did mean the company’s range of tough heroines was vast, including private detectives, Western gals, female aviators, nurses, spies and, of course jungle women. Jungle Comics featured several: Ann Mason, the resourceful mate of Ka’anga; Camilla the jungle queen (featured frequently on this blog); the mystical and somewhat surreal Fantomah, and Tiger Girl (although she debuted in Fight Comics). All of these characters could handle themselves in a fight and demonstrated intelligence and judgement in their adventures in stark contrast to many other titles where women were portrayed as victims, liabilities or simple-minded ditzes.

The legacy of Jungle Comics continued after its 1950s demise, with the plethora of jungle adventure-themed TV and cinema releases over the next three decades and the persistence of the iconic nature of the “jungle woman” herself, despite coming under more recent criticism for her role as white saviour and/or over-sexualised fetish figure. The more recent critique however did not prevent the re-launch of the title in 2019 in a 29 issue (so far) run published by Antarctic Press, featuring, among others, new stories starring Rhula, Sheena and a number of non-American jungle heroines, such as the supernatural-battling Brazilian Valkiria, along with entirely new entrants such as Kyla The Living Goddess. There was however no noticeable toning down of the sexy image of the lithe jungle women appearing in the reboot, but, to be fair, how could there be? Titillating artwork was simply part and parcel of the jungle heroine package.

Rima the Jungle Girl was a relatively late arrival to the jungle woman comic book genre, featuring in a seven issue DC series that ran from May 1974 to May 1975. Although adhering to many of the Golden Age tropes - young blonde white woman; statuesque guardian of a jungle domain; skimpy dress; ability to communicate with the animals - Rima was less a kick-ass heroine in the Sheena mode, and more an ethereal mystical figure with an almost supernatural presence. This may reflect the post-hippy world in which she arose, with the result that she is therefore altogether softer than her postwar sisters. The comic book Rima was created by Robert Kanigher and delicately illustrated by Nestor Rendondo and Jo Kubert. Despite this seemingly original premise, writer and illustrators actually drew on a relatively long history of the character.

Rima first appeared in a 1904 novel by WH Hudson, deceptively titled Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest in which Rima is a naive representative of a lost tribe of white people living in the Amazon rain forest discovered by a male fugitive from oppression named Abel. The theme of the book is of lost innocence and the vulnerability of pastoral spiritual societies to the advance of civilisation. It is this spirituality that also features in Kanigher’s and Rendondo’s version of the heroine. A film of Hudson’s novel called Green Mansions and starring Audrey Hepburn, was made in 1959 and was faithful to the book’s depiction of Rima as a wraith-like figure who communicated in whistles and other vocalisations. A key difference between the comic book Rima and that of the Green Mansions versions is that DC’s character is an adult woman and a powerful presence whereas Hudson’s original was a young girl, somewhat damaged and viewed as a demonic spirit by the natives. In many other respects however, the comic series is faithful to both the novel and the movie, setting the action in Venezuela and also featuring Abel, a fugitive from a failed revolution as the man who encounters the mysterious Rima and whose life is saved by her. The local Indian population also have an ambivalent attitude to Rima, viewing her as a not altogether benign witch. As an adaptation, perhaps it is appropriate that the comic series did not go on to become an “inspired by” franchise, but, equally, perhaps Rima was just a little too otherworldly to make it as a true “jungle girl”.