It’s the first Monday of the month, which means it’s time for Multiversity’s history column. This installment will look at the first costumed superheroine, a racial misunderstanding put to good use, and an effort to make comics appeal to young girls.
I’ve been writing this column for almost two years now, and I’ve discovered that trying to pin down the “first” anything frequently depends on how you define the thing you’re looking for. More often than not, the result is either overly qualified or given with a few caveats. That’s what’s happening today when I tell you about Marvel’s first Black Widow, who debuted in “Mystic Comics” #4, cover dated August 1940 when Marvel was still calling itself Timely.
Black Widow was a psychic named Claire Voyant (get it?) who was murdered for putting a curse on her murderer’s family. Naturally, she goes straight to Hell, where Satan grants her supernatural powers and sends her back to Earth for revenge. After that, she continues killing criminals to send their evil souls to her boss. In theory, she’s making the world a better place. Just consider her the Golden Age Ghost Rider or Spawn. Her powers include flight, turning her pupils into skulls, and a killing with a touch.
The character was written by George Kapitan and first drawn by Harry Sahle. She returned in two more issues of “Mystic” and had one appearance each in two other titles, but she didn’t catch on and faded into obscurity. She made minor cameos in 1994’s “Marvels” miniseries and in a flashback scene of the 2004 “Marvel Knights: Spider-Man” before being a key player in J Michael Straczynski’s “The Twelve” miniseries in 2008.
Her most obvious and uncontested claim to fame is being Marvel’s first superheroine. Beyond that, she’s a very early superheroine in general. She’s not the first costumed female crime fighter – the Woman in Red beat her to that in “Thrilling Comics” #2, cover dated March 1940. Nor is Black Widow the first woman with super powers – Fantomah and Amazona both debuted earlier in 1940. However, Black Widow is the first to be superpowered and costumed. Like I said – qualified.
The mid 1980s was a time of upheaval in comics aimed at young kids. Harvey Comics, the longtime publisher of titles like “Casper” and “Richie Rich” suspended production on new books in 1984. This was not unexpected, as Harvey had been reducing staff for two years. Marvel EIC Jim Shooter saw the writing on the wall and new that entry-level books were essential for the industry. He hired the former Harvey creators with the intent to offer replacement material. When Harvey folded, Marvel debuted its Star Comics imprint aimed at the under-10 crowd. The debut title was an adaptation of “Muppets Take Manhattan” with a November 1984 cover date.
In 1985, noted creator Trina Robbins saw a paucity of comics that would appeal to girls and thought Star Comics might be a way to improve the situation. She spoke with Shooter and convinced him to let her do a six-part miniseries called “Misty”. The first issue of the bi-monthly comic, written and illustrated by Robbins, was released in August 1985 with a December cover date.
The content was modeled after Stan Lee’s “Millie the Model” series from the 1940s. In fact, Millie appeared in “Misty” as Misty’s aunt. The fun stories inside did their job and inspired many girls to write fan letters to Robbins, but unfortunately many of them complained about their trouble finding copies. Distribution troubles led Robbins to label the series a miserable failure. Star Comics as a whole did better, lasting until the early 1990s.
In 1987, Captain America was having one of his periodic identity crises where he take another name and someone else temporarily takes up his mantle. This time, writer Mark Gruenwald wanted to give the replacement a sidekick. Naturally, that sidekick would call himself Bucky. Gruenwald picked a Black man who already had a recurring minor role to play the part, Lemar Hoskins, and felt confident this would be a positive, pro-diversity move.
Alas, the writer had grown up in a mostly-white Wisconsin town and was unaware that “Buck” was a racially-charged term for Black male slaves. Neither did his editor, Gregory Wright. They found out fast after publication of “Captain America” #334 in August 1987, cover dated October.
Several readers wrote in to complain, and a few of them were printed in the letter column of issue #340. Prior to those, Marvel staffer and Black man Dwayne McDuffie was so shocked by the content that he had a hard time believing it was unintentional. He complained to Wright, who pushed McDuffie to speak to Gruenwald directly. Even though McDuffie was a little afraid it was career suicide, he did. Gruenwald’s reaction to the news was unquestionable horror. He asked McDuffie for help making it right, and the two came up with a solution that corrected the error in-story in #341. In it, an older black man explains the trouble to Hoskins, who then gets a new costume and switches his codename to Battlestar.
