BHOC: THE SUPERHERO WOMEN

Brevoort History of Comics

Back at Christmas 1978, I was working my way through the fourth and latest release in the ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS line of Trade Paperbacks from Simon & Schuster: THE SUPERHERO WOMEN. This book was a bit more of a mixed bag than the earlier ones and relied more on material that was more contemporary–the first issue of MS. MARVEL, which is reprinted here, was less than a year old. But that was a necessity, as finding enough stories devoted to lady heroes in 1977 was a bit of a task, and so material that only barely fit the remit was included in this tome. That wasn’t a problem for my young self, I was happy to get whatever the editors wanted to include (though I was a bit dismayed that the Femizons story was presented in black and white.)

The other real drawback in assembling a volume dedicated to all of the powerful women of Marvel Comics was that, in 1977, there really weren’t all that many. Historically, Stan Lee had often paid lip service to empowering the female characters while in practice often treating them like prizes to be won or saved or humored due to their silly ideas. It was a very chauvinistic approach to the feminine sex, and over time, Marvel moved away from it–Chris Claremont in particular did a lot to show that comic books could feature powerful and capable super-heroines who could also be fully-realized characters. Chris was only just beginning to find his way in this regard when this book was being put together, so his work isn’t represented in it. What we got instead was fun, but didn’t really do all that much to advance the cause of women’s equality.

So the volume opens with the safest of bets, an issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN that guest-stars Medusa of the Inhumans. This was perhaps a way for the editors to assure all of the potential boy readers that there’d be material of interest in this book for them, too. It’s a typically silly story in which Medusa comes to New York in an attempt to act as an ambassador for her people, the Inhumans. She ends up tricked into joining an advertising campaign for a new hair spray. But when she gets fed up with mistreatment and walks off, the company’s President claims that she was a menace to society, which causes Spider-Man to get in her face. It all works out in the end, but for all that she speaking in a haughty manner, Medusa doesn’t seem like she’s got two brain cells to rub together in this adventure, so casually is she misled and duped.

Next came the first story that didn’t entirely fit the remit, as while she was a regularly-appearing Marvel comic book character, Red Sonja wasn’t really a super hero proper. The story here is very recent, illustrated by Frank Thorne, who in a short time really made the character his own. I wasn’t all that interested in sword & sorcery adventures, though, so this tale really didn’t stick to my ribs. Of greater interest to me was the Fantastic Four story which followed, in which Sue Storm’s power of invisibility was augmented by her gaining the power to project mighty invisible force-fields. This latter ability became her mainstay attribute over the years, as it was a more useful and adaptable offensive ability. The team battles the Mole Man in this fun story, though it looks like inker George Roussos did his work with a stick. The inking is crude and unpolished, as it often was in the early Marvel days.

Next came that reprinting of the first issue of MS MARVEL, and in his introduction, Stan Lee muses that he regrets not having presented her origin story in this first issue. In fact, I’m not even entirely certain that her origin was seen print at all when this volume was being put together. The whole production is nice here, with slick, polished artwork from John Buscema and Joe Sinnott, and it’s clear that writer Gerry Conway has his heart in the right place. But right off the bat, Ms Marvel is just a female knock-off of Captain Mar-Vell (a strange choice in my opinion, as Marvel constantly struggled with making that hero stick) and she’s unaware of her dual identity when in her civilian Carol Danvers form. In other words, there isn’t a lot of agency given the character, for all that she hauls off and punches the bad guys like any male super hero would do. That was progress in 1976, sort of.

This is followed up by another pair of stories that stretches the boundaries of the seeming premise of the book. It’s a pair of THOR stories that prominently feature Sif in a central role. Fair enough. But Sif isn’t given the spotlight here. Rather, that goes to the antagonist of this two-parter, Hela, the Goddess of Death. And sure, Hela has an eternally cool Jack Kirby design, but she’s in no way a super hero. Still, this was a pretty excellent adventure, wherein Hela pursues Thor across Asgard and Earth, determined to end his life in retribution against his father, Odin. At a key moment, the All-Father steps in and slays Hela. But with Death now demised, the world falls into chaos and disrepair and horror, and Odin has no choice but to resurrect the fallen death-goddess and let her have the Thunder God. In the end, though, it’s the pleas of Sif that melt Hela’s heart and get her to relent in her vendetta. It’s a very good story from right at the end of when Lee was still scripting these sagas.

The next story I really liked a lot, for all that it was a part of an initiative that crashed and burned in no time flat. THE CAT had been Marvel’s first real attempt to create a headliner super heroine that carried her own magazine. It was launches as part of a girl-focused initiative, one which also included Shanna the She-Devil and Night Nurse. The Cat is a completely new character, introduced in this story for the first time, and heavily drenched in the women’s liberation sentiments of the day. But the whole thing was a bust, and THE CAT was cancelled in just four issues. Thereafter, Greer Grant Nelson was transformed into the Were-Woman, Tigra, and the Cat costume was appropriated by teen girl comics star Patsy Walker, who used it and the powers it bestowed to become Hellcat. To give you a sense of the seriousness with which this attempted outreach was approached, according to myth,. inker Wally Wood inked all of the Cat figures throughout the book completely naked, forcing Marie Severin to go through and correct them all before the issue could be released. A close look at the above splash page shows this to be so.

The next story presented the origin and first appearance of Janey Van Dyne, the Wasp, in the pages of the Ant-man feature. This is a bit ironic, as Ant-Man himself hadn’t been considered important enough to bother with in the earlier ORIGINS volumes, apart from his involvement in the first AVENGERS issue. The creation of the Wasp was a reaction to the underlying problem: the character simply wasn’t popular and did not sell well in the 1960s no matter what was done with him. He got new partners, new costumes and new powers, but eventually by the middle of the decade, he gave up the ghost, surrendering his solo strip and contenting himself to being a semi-regular presence in AVENGERS. Of course, today, Ant-Man has been the star of three massively-budgeted movies, which is a good example of how, if you wait long enough, all of Marvel’s failures turn out to be triumphs nonetheless. Anyway, the Wasp was a lot more colorful and interesting than her deadpan boyfriend, but not enough to save their combined strip from oblivion. Especially since she was typically depicted as the worst of Stan Lee’s super heroine airheads.

Then came the Femizons, a one-off story produced by Stan Lee and John Romita for the first issue of one of Marvel’s earliest forays into the world of black and white magazines, SAVAGE TALES. Getting SAVAGE TALES established was a huge stop-and-start process, and so a second Femizons story was never produced–though Roy Thomas did build on some of these concepts when he introduced the character Thundra during his time on FANTASTIC FOUR. It’s a typical sort of science fiction parable about a future world ruled by powerful Amazonian women in which men are second class citizens, kept as little better than pets. But this is wrong, wrong, wrong, of course, and so our lead character, Lyra, learns this lesson from Mogon, a slave who works to rebel, even as she’s forced to strike him down and slay him. Again, not exactly a calling card for women’s empowerment, but a nicely executed tale (even if the graytone work printed like mud all through this story.

The next feature is Shanna the She-Devil, another failure-fated product of that same 1972 drive to introduce women-appealing comics that had create the Cat. This one is really a throwback to the 1940s, when Sheena the Jungle Queen was a top-selling feature. But in the early 70s, such stories had fallen out of favor–and while Shanna did manage to hang on for one more issue than her sisters the Cat and Night Nurse, she was in the ground almost as rapidly. Though, like the others, she’d continue to turn up here and there across the Marvel line for years to come. One interesting thing about these launches is that in an attempt to make them have a bit more verisimilitude, they were each scripted by a woman; Carole Seuling in this instance, Linda Fite in the case of the Cat. This clearly made no difference to sales, but it was a nice idea regardless.

And finally, the book closes as it opened, with an adventure starring the Amazing Spider-Man. This time, rather than Medusa, he’s playing host to the Black Widow, who had spent the past decade being both a villainous Russian temptress and a sometimes Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in a bizarre fishnetted costume that gave her the powers of her namesake. In an attempt to make her a headliner, John Romita refashioned the character, taking a cue from Tarpe Mills’ popular comic strip of the 1940s MISS FURY as well as a little bit of Diana Rigg in the television Avengers. In this story, the Black Widow completely redesigns her gear, then goes on the hunt for Spider-Man just for the hell of it, to prove she can match her powers. Spoiler alert: she can’t, and he sends her packing–just in time to launch a strip of her own in AMAZING ADVENTURES. I don’t know how the Widow getting spanked was supposed to prime her to carry the baton by herself, but it clearly didn’t, as her solo series lasted only 8 issues. Thereafter, though, she was adopted by Daredevil and became the co-headliner of his series for a couple of years.

So of those initial four ORIGINS volumes that I received for Christmas, I think this one was really the weak link. It’s not that the material was bad, it’s just that it hadn’t really caught up to the times. Today, there’d be a much better variety of characters and series to choose from if you wanted to assemble a volume on this theme. But in 1977, we just weren’t quite there yet.

Published

46 thoughts on “BHOC: THE SUPERHERO WOMEN”

  1. I’d completely forgotten about this volume, thigh never read it. Maybe if they had taken the subtitle and just called it “Marvel’s Fabulous Females” , they could have more scope for different characters, including villains.

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  2. I loved the Cat, Ms Marvel, and Shanna back then, even if Shanna’s supporting cast was killed off one by one in her subsequent guest star roles. If I had to pick ten stories today?

    DeConnick’s first Captain Marvel #1

    The issue after she became Malice which was when Sue renamed herself Invisible Woman.

    The story of Storm’s young trek through Africa where she met T’Challa.

    There are a few good Avengers issues by Stern that would make great Wasp spotlights.

    Kamala Khan’s first #1

    The issue of X-Men where Rogue and Wolverine took on Silver Samurai and Viper

    Phoenix taking on Firelord

    Daughters of the Dragon taking on a vampire in a black and white magazine

    Monica Rambeau’s debut

    And a suitable Gamora story (if there are any) as a sop to the MCU

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    1. Stern really brought out the best in the Wasp. She was a great team leader, even if she ran out of patience for Herc’s sexism.

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  3. Yeah, I noticed Stan Lee’s version of women ( Sue Storm in the Fantastic Four’s first appearance and origin calling Ben Grimm a coward for not wanting to risk death by cosmic radiation, when it would have been her not wanting to be in a ship without enough shielding so her future kids if she lived didn’t get born with flippers ( as that scientist in Godzilla King of the Monsters ( 2019 ) said ) ).

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    1. To bad Namora wasn’t brought back in the 1970s or earlier, but in the letter page of the Sub-Mariner series ( May 1968 to September 1974 ) someone had a letter printed asking for her return and who ever answered said he wasn’t bringing her back because he didn’t like the name Namora. A reason to have brought Namora back then was DC Comics had Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, Supergirl, Big Barda and Power Girl ( 1976 ) and who did Marvel have that powerful? Those DC female heroes is a reason Miss America never should have been stripped of her Sub-Mariner class strength ( strength of 1,000 men ). It was 1982 when Binary was created and the Deluxe Handbook that said she had Class 100 strength — Marvel’s first female character with that Strength.

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      1. A friend of mine drew a recreation of the Champions#1 cover for me, but I asked him to use different characters who were around then (1975). Under the same direction editor Len Wein gave to writer Tony Isabella. Five members, at least one woman, and a strong guy. And there were hardly any “superheroines” that weren’t already on a team. (Valkyrie, Wanda, Wasp, etc.) There was Black Widow, Tigra, Thundra (not exactly a hero then). Namora would’ve been cool to have. So we went with Tigra. Jessica Drew & Carol Danvers were in costume in ’76 & I think ’78, respectively. She-Hulk after that.

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  5. Tom, I apologize if someone already brought this up, and you put a whole lot into preparing this posts, so some errors are fine to politely go unidentified. But since the inking criticism about the FF story is so pointed, it’d be best aimed at the artist responsible. Maybe it’s a different “George” (“G. Bell” in the credits).

    “The team battles the Mole Man in this fun story, though it looks like inker George Roussos did his work with a stick. The inking is crude and unpolished, as it often was in the early Marvel days.”

    I’ll defer to you as to whether Roussos may have inked other stories. I only associate his name with his coloring jobs, which I liked.

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    1. “G. Bell” was a pseudonym for George Roussos.

      He did lots of art for comic books — pencils, inks, colors and letters, going back to BATMAN 2 in 1940. He was probably best known for inks until the early 70s, when he became Marvel’s in-house colorist. But he was very influenced by Jerry Robinson and Mort Meskin, who he collaborated with often, so his inking approach was fairly rough and gestural. All the moreso during his run as FF inker, where some like the approach and some don’t. Me, I think it’s great.

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      1. Thanks, Kurt. (Apologies, Tom.) I never knew Roussos went by “G.Bell”. Good to know.

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      2. DC reprinted a Starman story he did with Mort Meskin which he signed as “George ‘Inky’ Roussos.”

        Around the time he was doing this work for Marvel as “George Bell” he was inking Mark Merlin over Mort Meskin for Kirby’s old boss, Jack Schiff.

        He inked at least one Dr. Strange story over Ditko while he was inking Meskin on Mark Merlin.

        He had a long and interesting career.

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      3. “DC reprinted a Starman story he did with Mort Meskin which he signed as ‘George “Inky” Roussos.'”

        “Inky” was an actual nickname of his, in reference to his habit of using lots of shadows and heavy lines, so there was a lot more ink on his pages than most.

        Fans really seem to have disliked the Ditko/Roussos combination, but I’ll bet Ditko enjoyed working with him. Ditko was hugely influenced by Robinson and Meskin, so Roussos was coming from the same tradition. An inkier version of that tradition, but still.

        And Roussos inked Ditko about 5 times on Dr. Strange (not always created), another 5 on the Hulk and a couple of other times, too, so he was at least Stan’s choice of inker when Ditko needed one, and if Ditko disliked it, I expect he’d have made his displeasure known.

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  6. Crazy tidbit about Wally’s inking Greer as if she wasn’t wearing a costume besides her mask (“it’s a birthday suit”). So were her “were” claws on her hands & feet her own?

    Vine Colletta’s grainy finishing style didn’t show Ross’s work at its best. Though I did like that giant head on the splash.

    Never been a huge Hank Pym fan, though he’d had an outsized impact on Avengers history. Ant-Man seemed hokey and underwhelming when I was a kid. Giant-Man was almost as goofy a name. “Goliath” was better suited for a villain (if we go by the namesake’s biblical characterization), so I’m glad that happened decades later. “Yellowjacket” sounded a little cooler, and his cowl resembled Batman’s a little. The black of his suit actually looked black, unlike other suits that were blue or highlighted with white. But those things on his shoulders would’ve likely blocked his sight on either side of his head. And Hank went a little nuts around that time.

    I really liked John Buscema’s drawing choice for Carol’s figure on her story’s opening page. Not an easy angle, and Buscema makes it look naturalistic; balanced and proportioned. I really miss seeing new art from him, all these years later. Which is why I find Roberta de la Torre’s Buscema-homage art in Titan’s “Conan” so satisfying.

    Back to the FF story, Bell’s inks on Reed’s face remind me of Mike DeCarlo’s inking.

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    1. I suspect Wood knew full well that someone else would be obliged to go in and draw the Cat’s costume. We know that he already didn’t like Stan Lee from their history on DAREDEVIL, so he probably didn’t care much if he honked off Marvel employees– none of whom were responsible for his interactions with Stan.

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  7. Tigra the were-woman? I know Tony Isabella made that mistake way back when, but no need to repeat it. (Wer being Old English for man)

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    1. You beat me to it: Tigra the Man-Woman. Tigra the Were-Cat would have been a better choice since there isn’t a female word for werewolf ( man-wolf ).

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    2. So “Mer-Man” could be “Mer-Wer”? 😉 Switch out “mer” w/ whatever the Old English word would be. “Sea-Wer”. So Marvel’s “Manwolf” is a good translation for “werewolf”.

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    3. Pity we never had “Tigra The WifTyger!”. But “Were-Woman” is doubly weird. If you don’t know, or don’t want to follow, that “wer” is gendered, she’d be called a Were-Cat or a Were-Tiger. And there’s no reason to hew strictly to the gendering anyway, female lycanthropes have been called “werewolves” for a long time now. But if the thought is “Were” means something like “shapeshifts-into” (thus were-wolf => shapeshifts-into-wolf), then “Were-Woman” would be shapeshifts-into-woman. But that would only make sense if she was originally a tiger who took on a human form. Otherwise “Were-Woman” sounds like the manga “Ranma 1/2”. It seems the idea is “Were” means roughly “shapeshifter (to one other form)”, so that “Were-Woman” is like “She-Hulk”.

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      1. What about, “were-a-cat”, for people who’d previously been a cat, maybe in a past life? One of my neighbors is suspect… 😉

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  8. I remember Marvel’s girl focused initiative, though because of distribution issues I didn’t get the first issues of Claws of the Cat or Night Nurse till later on

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  9. It’s a pity that the repro on the Femizons story is so bad. My dad dug Conan and so we had that issue of Savage Tales around the house. The printing was much better and I remember being completely knocked out by Romita’s beautiful grey wash technique. Still am!

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  10. “Getting SAVAGE TALES established was a huge stop-and-start process, and so a second Femizons story was never produced–though Roy Thomas did build on some of these concepts when he introduced the character Thundra during his time on FANTASTIC FOUR.”

    And when Roy did that, he didn’t realize that the Femizons hadn’t been done work for hire, and were the property of Stan and John, not Marvel. So Marvel had to arrange a buyout of that Femizons story, making it Marvel property.

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  11. What jumps at me looking at this material is how much it was general-audience cheesecake. Frank Thorne stands out, but it’s like Frazetta’s comics work in the first half of the 1950s–a racy sensibility pushing general-audience cheesecake to its limits. Story-wise, there’s nothing memorable here.

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  12. Instead of the Medusa story they should have used Fantastic Four#81 ( December 1968 ) where Crystal is easily kicking the Wizard’s butt. Never got why they got rid of her as Johnny’s love interest. Her powers ( Fire, Earth, Air & water ) make her the Super-Skrull version of the The Elementals ( Hellfire. Magnum, Zephyr and Hydron ).

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    1. These 3 Valkyrie stories could have taken the place of the Femizons, Hela & Red Sonja stories: Samantha Parrington’s Valkyrie [ The Incredible Hulk#142 ( August 1971 ) ] or the Enchantress’ Valkyrie & Lady Liberators [ The Avengers#83 ( December 1970 ) ] or the Barbara Norris possessed Valkyrie [ The Defenders#4 ( February 1973 ) ].

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    2. I get the impression that Stan never warmed much to Crystal. As an editor he was focused upon making sure the trains ran on time, and, to mix metaphors, Crystal upset the applecart. The Johnny-Crystal relationship could only lead to the Torch giving up his casual lifestyle and getting married– an idea spoofed in NOT BRAND ECCHH– or to a split. Once Kirby was gone, Stan just wrote Crystal out of the FF, while Roy Thomas decided to go the route of permanent breakup.

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    3. Weren’t the FF’s powers very loosely based on the four elements, Fire , Earth (Thing), Air (Sue Storm), water (Reed)? That would make Crystal the Super Skrull version of the FF.

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      1. Don’t forget the the Silver Surfer ( water ), Air-Walker ( air ), Firelord ( fire ) and Terrax the Tamer ( earth ). As for the FF it would if the Thing had control over the earth like Crystal does. So loosely based on the 4 elements in the FF & 4 original Heralds of Galactus ( granted the Surfer did make a wave move a whaling ship in Incredible Hulk#250 ( August 1980 ) & 2 more times defeated the Hulk by curing him 2 different ways ).

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      2. Well as said, a very loose connection with the FF, only to the extent that The Thing looks like a rock, and the Earth is a rock planet or that Reed moves like water can flow.

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  14. 1)Medusa had a solo spot in Marvel Super-Heroes taking on the rest of the Frightful Four the same month she battled Spider-Man. Someone obviously hoped she had breakout potential.

    2)While that Black Widow vs. Spidey story is a mess, that redesign of her costume was inspired. The story also retconned her as a deadly hand to hand combatant who can karate-chop through a foot of wooden planks, which also became part of her going forward.

    3)I didn’t read Claws of the Cat #1 until the Essentials Tigra volume, though I had all three of the remaining issues. I found it better than I expected in showing all the little sexist slights and annoyances piled on Greer’s head. A shame the later issues weren’t as good.

    4)As far as Silver Age women go, I assumed that making Sif, an Asgardian warrior woman, Thor’s new love interest would lead to her fighting alongside him. It’s really amazing how much she winds up sitting and watching tearfully as her man puts his life on the line.

    5)Conversely Archie Goodwin’s one issue of Hulk stuck out for making Betty Ross something other than weepy: when she realizes Bruce is in danger of death at the hands of the Missing Link she crashes a police barricade, then rams the Link with her car, heedless of her own safety.

    6)Tales to Astonish #47 gave Jan a trait that wasn’t stereotypically feminine: she’s a serious jazz buff. A friend of mine pointed out later that her ability to make up fantasy stories (which she narrated in multiple backup tales) indicates she could have been a writer, too. But neither of those won out over She’s a Girl.

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  16. The Medusa story in Amazing Spider-man when it was reprinted in Marvel Tales is the first Marvel comic I ever bought. I was 8 and still remember being equal parts weirded out and enthralled by the Norman Osborn flashback scene. So distinctly different from the DC comics I was reading at the time. It’s still one of my favorite John Romita covers.

    Never became more than a casual reader of Spider-man past the Ditko period though.

    I never had a copy of Super-Hero Women due to the relative recentness of most of the reprints.

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  17. Jack Kirby was much better at writing strong, independent women than Stan Lee. I’ve heard it stated thus: When Kirby was the uncredited plotter on Thor, the character of Sif was a highly competent warrior. As soon as Kirby Left for DC, Sif as written by Lee became a damsel in distress. Meanwhile, Kirby introduced Big Barda and the Female Furies, who were anything but helpless.

    For all that Lee revolutionized American comic books, I agree that his approach to female characters was very retrograde, and it really took the younger Bronze Age creators such as Chris Claremont and Steve Englehart to begin making the women at Marvel into fully formed characters.

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    1. I recently reread some of Shooter’s issues from #111 on. Wasp devolved severely. Wanda’s more robotic than her synthezoid spouse. The attempts at humor weren’t funny. In comparison, Mantlo’s dialog in his few fill-in issues (# 206, 210) before Jim’s return as writer, ere pretty crisp, and every member was in character.

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    2. I don’t have any firm corroboration of this, but what I was told long ago was that Stan wasn’t plotting the books he was scripting post-Kirby, that FF and THOR were being ghost-plotted by other Marvel writers. That the Spider-Man newspaper strip was also being ghost-plotted and that later Marvel projects (and DC’s “Just Imagine”) were plotted by others, but with credit now that people cared more about it, seems to suggest it was likely true.

      That doesn’t alter that Sif had a sudden change in personality, it’s just probably worth noting that Stan didn’t start plotting the books at that point.

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      1. Yes, of course, you’re correct, it’s unlikely that Lee began plotting the books once Kirby left, as he was by this point fully invested in the “Marvel Method” of creating comic books. I imagine that John Buscema as the penciler must have done a fair amount of plotting on those issues.

        Well, the combination of *whoever* was plotting the Thor series and Lee’s scripting on it did result in Sif becoming much more of a passive, helpless figure than she had been when Kirby was doing the heavy lifting on the title.

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  18. Fantastic Four#22 ( January 1964 — Sue gaining her Invisible Force Field powers ) was just the first step in her journey to becoming more powerful: Powers increased by Zemu/Xemu technology ( Thunder Horn – amplifies and directs sound … or, with a few delicate adjustments, extra-normal mental energy ) in Fantastic Four#159 ( June 1975 — enabled her to cloak Attilan from approaching Chinese warplane. FF#164 ( November 1975 ) Reeds test confirmed her increase in Invisibility & Force Field ) and then again when Sue, Reed & Ben were all rejuvenated [ Fantastic Four#214 ( January 1980 ) ]. The Wasp got a power up grade in Marvel Team-Up#60 ( August 1977 ) and did Scarlet Witch do anything with her powers to match what she did in Avengers#164 ( October 1977 ) – 166 ( December 1977 ) and Avengers Annual#10 ( November 1981 ) before? Years ago I remember thinking that a number of 1960s Female Heroes with wimpy powers got up grades around that time.

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  19. First, I agree with Tom that the selection from SPIDER-MAN #62 doesn’t really make the character of Medusa look all that great. Of course, there was no inherent sexism in this guest-starring story, because Stan Lee had written other Spidey stories in which male guest-stars like Quicksilver or The Iceman acted stupidly in order to make the story work. A better selection would have been Medusa’s solo story from MARVEL SUPER HEROES that same year, which I think Lee may have been seeking to cross-promote.

    The RED SONJA story is an okay selection, and the FANTASTIC FOUR entry is well chosen. This story depicted Sue Storm gaining her force field powers, thus responding, after roughly three years, to fans’ complaints about her lack of overall power. 

    I have the impression that the MS MARVEL selection arose from the company’s ongoing agenda to protect the “Marvel” name in any character. Certainly that agenda underlay the creation of the “Marvel Captain Marvel” in the first place, and since a CBR article mentions that the company was taking pitches for various “Ms. Marvel” concepts as early as 1972– two years after UNCANNY X-MEN and Marvel Girl were off the stands– that agenda applied to the final, approved version as well. (I couldn’t locate an online recapitulation of the story that Jean Grey herself was considered as a possible “Ms. Marvel.”)

    The selection of the two-part THOR story featuring Hela was a strange one. Since she wasn’t purely villainous, she wasn’t all that consequential to THOR in particular or to Marvel as a whole. Why not the first Enchantress story, since she was at least important to the universe, and since the tale was a good stand-alone? Maybe Stan just wanted to spotlight some of his post-Kirby work with the God of Thunder, which work was actually pretty good. I’m not surprised there was no Sif-centric story, because I can’t think of any at all up to 1977.

    A better choice IMO would have been issues X-MEN #62-63. Granted, Marvel Girl was usually a pretty weak sister for most of the feature’s run, but this was one of the few times, if not the only time, she was allowed to shine and save the day. And until re-reading the story, I’d forgot that it included Magneto hitting on Jean Grey big-time, in the old “reign at my side” context. So, Mags, checking out the Young Talent? Sort of like that story where Magneto has the mentally enslaved Scarlet Witch do a hootchie-koo dance for him, years before she was retconned into his pride and joy.

    The “Femizons” story was meh, and I suppose the CAT and SHANNA stories were attempts by Stan to repeat his “Well, we tried” defense. The Black Widow story from SPIDER-MAN is another story where the guest star acts stupidly to make the story work, but it holds some historical interest for debuting the bitchin’ catsuit-costume. 

    That leaves only the Wasp’s debut story in the ANT-MAN feature from 1963, which is IMO the best story in the collection. Though Stan’s only credited with the plot for “The Creature from Kosmos,” I’d theorize that he gave scripter Ernie Hart a pretty thorough breakdown of the whole story, since Stan would have been doing his utmost to grow his then-small superhero universe. For an early Silver Age adventure, it’s pretty layered. Ant-Man starts having existential doubts about who will carry on for him while simultaneously grieving for his lost wife Maria. When he considers the possibility of a partner, 1963 readers might have expected (if not for the cover and splash page) the introduction of a kid sidekick– “Pismire, the Ant Wonder!” Instead Henry Pym gets a meet-cute with Jan Van Dyne, a young woman who slightly resembles Maria, and thought balloons establish that both are instantly attracted to one another. Despite Pym’s defensive reaction, thinking to himself that Jan is just “a child,” I think it’s obvious that she’s close to 20, and probably a bit older, given that there’s no question of her inheriting the Van Dyne fortune when her pop gets killed. None of that Magneto-type trolling for Old Henry!

    I also don’t think there’s a good argument for Jan, before or after she becomes The Wasp, being an “airhead.” Her determination to avenge her dad is what leads Pym to play “Batman” to her “Robin,” and to give her the chance not just for vengeance, but to take up the life of a superhero. But she accepts the duty partly because she knows that he’s attracted to her, and not as a kid. So all of her subsequent expressions of stereotypical femininity– drooling over other men, or her frequent references to shopping– are part of her plan to stay close to Henry and keep reminding him that she’s a woman, not a sidekick. And of course, she may actually LIKE shopping. I have it on good authority that some women really do!

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  20. I have often felt that the Tigra and Hellcat characters should have been combined as “Tigra the Hellcat.” I mean, it’s not like the world was crying out for more Patsy Walker, and Greer Grant is kind of a floating signifier.

    Thundra should have replaced Power Princess on the Squadron Supreme. Much better name. (Her colors duplicate Hyperion’s, though.

    The Phoenix could have become Marvel’s premiere superheroine had she not been killed off (and let stay dead for so long, and been resurrected without her Phoenix powers). “Marvel Girl” is too Golden Age, and “Jean Gray” uninspiring.

    I am one of those statistically improbable souls who liked Magdalene and Deathcry.

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      1. I think they may all still be floating around space somewhere. Somebody could use them.

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