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 won

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

These 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 heroesBeautiful 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 SurvivorBy 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

Black Cat, Firestar, Photon & Hellcat

the story reads a lot like an episode of Sex in the City with a dash of a Lifetime movie

talk about their love problems & sex life to one another

As you can guess none of them are too lucky.

At the end of the issue, the comic touches on the realm of a Lifetime tearjerker when one of the super heroines reveals she has cancer

Super VixensFemale 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