Miss Fury Sensational Sundays: 1941-1944
Although she did beat Wonder Woman into print by several months, Miss Fury isn’t the first female superhero; several obscure distaff costumed crime fighters preceded her, and she’s not technically a superhero, since she lacks extrahuman powers. What’s more important is that her creator, Mills, was a pioneering female cartoonist and one of the few women who drew an adventure strip. Her creation was wealthy socialite Marla Drake, who donned a form-fitting black leopard-skin suit to become the mysterious adventuress Miss Fury. These first three years of the strip’s 1941–52 run are mostly set in an exotic South American locale, where Marla—who spends more time in street clothes than her cat suit—is involved in wartime espionage with sinister Nazis. Mills’ art was merely serviceable and the stories contrived and dialogue-heavy, but the strip, and this attractive collection, are of historical interest not only for the gender of its artist but as a rare example of a long-running costumed hero from newspaper strips rather than comic books. --Gordon Flagg