First Superheroes: rugged individuals who took law into own hands dispensing “frontier justice”

Refuge from Great Depression

Passport to other worlds

Scores of caped heroes:

Scions of lost races

Monarchs of mythical lands

Scientists with transformative

formulas

Adventurers with magical artifact

Tough guys defending ordinary

people

First female superheroesNot sexy nymphs in revealing costumes

The Woman in Red: scarlet coat, mask, skull cap

Fantomah: terrifying, skull-faced protectress of jungle

Madam Fatal: actually a man; adopts guise of old lady; first transvestite crime fighter

Red Tornado: burly, working class mother in long johns, cape, cooking pot on head

Common plot device:secret identity

Being true self

• Forced into roles of well-mannered daughters or girlfriends

• Secret life gave these women chance to be themselves

• Cape & mask liberated women

• Life type of life they dreamed of

• Make the world a better place

Early Female Superheroes

The Debutantes

The Partners

The Victory Girls

The Glamour Girls

The Debutantes

• Sorority of rich girls

• Daughters of affluent families looking for excitement

• Freed from life of entitled boredom

• Thrill seekers with time & money, enjoying double life of danger & excitement while doing good

• Strong, determined women living life they want

The Partners

• Women better assistants to male heroes rather than working on own

• Inducted into world of crime fighting by men who played fatherly role by sanctioning secret life for girlfriends

• Heroines did not need to deceive loved ones

• No inherent desire to do good: fighting crime proved love for boyfriend!

• Not highly regarded by male readers: weal appendages to male heroes

• Often portrayed as liabilities: routinely rescued by male partners

• Always referred to as “girls” never “women”

• Names never featured in comic’s title

• Reflection of men & never top billing

• Assured that female superheroes maintain presence in comics

The Victory Girls

• Defenders of American democracy & values

• Patriotic, red-blooded American ladies, wearing costumes, to fight the good fight

• Part patriot, part pin-up

• Proved everyone had role to play in war

• Carry on activities in secret

• Created to fight Hun, no role in post-war comic book world

The Glamour Girls

• Gorgeous pinups whose job to fight crime & keep male readers visually entertained

• Working class females whose world harder & grittier

• Depicted as wallflowers that kept charisma bottled up

• When let hair down, became ravishing creatures that made men drool

• Thirst for justice

• Donned mask or wig to help a man but did it in secret

• Emphasis on love in stories dovetailed with rise of romance comics

New face & shape of female comic heroes• Beautiful face could save world

• Focus on looks over abilities

• Age of fearless women living secret lives to live with same freedoms as men drawing to close

• Comic heroines go back to being women

• Daring women of late 30s & 40s vanishing from comic books

• Age of gods & heroes passed

• Replaced by jungle queens in animal print bikinis: no secret lives, lived like wild nymphs, no special powers, didn’t need to be brilliant

Lone Survivor• By mid-1950s, Wonder Woman on own

• Rest of super heroines faded into memory

• Comics Code Authority (1954) instituted to clean up excesses of industry

• Children read stories with only wholesome depictions of women

• Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure. Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable. Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical feature

• New day in America: wracked with suspicion, censorship & conservative values

• If women had aspirations to be more than they were, they would have to keep them a secret

Super Vixens• Female superheroes. Superheroines.

Supervixens. Femme Fatales. Uber-vamps. Supertramps.

• Sexy, strong, in control, smart, and successful

• Won a die-hard fan following among women in the last decade

• Simplistic to dismiss contemporary comic books and their depictions of women as unrealistic or sexist

• Beauty is more than physical appearance, it always involves inner strength and moral fortitude

• Extremes of the superheroine as sex object aside, over the course of the last 50 years supervixens have—like real-life women—clawed their way from one-dimensionality to prominence