Something for the girls
Something for the girls |
|
Page 12 of 17  Cover, Sensation Comics (1942), featuring her first appearance as a lead strip. There were several Wonder Woman copyists over the years. In the 1940s, these included Miss Fury (Marvel, 1942), Mary Marvel (Fawcett, 1945) - a counterpart to Captain Marvel - and Black Cat (Harvey, 1946). Later, Supergirl, Superman's teenage cousin, made her debut in Action Comics (1959), and was eventually given her own title in 1972." The 1960s wave of Marvel super-heroes was complemented in the 1970s and 1980s with Ms Marvel (1977), Spider-Woman (1978) and the She-Hulk (1980). None, however, had the same mythical qualities, or panache, as their progenitor. The so-called 'jungle queens' were close relatives with the superheroes. Popular in the 1940s and 1950s they were ostensibly aimed at a female audience, but also attracted substantial adolescent male followings, largely due to the fact that the heroines tended to wear little other than leopard-skin bikinis. The most famous of all was Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, given her own title in 1942 (Fiction House). She was a sort of female Tarzan, who would befriend animals and swing through the jungle on vines to confront wrongdoers. Others included Nyoka the Jungle Girl (Fawcett, 1945), and Rulah and Zegra Jungle Empress (both Fox Comics and both 1948). The stories were all pretty similar, and usually incorporated racist sub-texts: the typical reaction of the superstitious 'wild' tribespeople to these white goddesses was to bow down in awe and fear.  Wonder Woman (1960) |