superheroes game
4/14/2019 Hidden women of history: Tarpe Mills, 1940s comic writer, and her feisty superhero Miss Fury
https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-tarpe-mills-1940s-comic-writer-and-her-feisty-superhero-miss-fury-110179 1/5
Autor
Camilla Nelson Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
Rigor académico, oficio periodístico
Hidden women of history: Tarpe Mills, 1940s comic writer, and her feisty superhero Miss Fury 4 febrero 2019 20:12 CET
In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.
In April 1941, just a few short years after Superman came swooping out of the Manhattan skies, Miss
Fury – originally known as Black Fury – became the first major female superhero to go to print. She
beat Charles Moulton Marsden’s Wonder Woman to the page by more than six months. More
significantly, Miss Fury was the first female superhero to be written and drawn by a woman, Tarpé
Mills.
Miss Fury’s creator – whose real name was June – shared much of the gritty ingenuity of her
superheroine. Like other female artists of the Golden Age, Mills was obliged to make her name in
comics by disguising her gender. As she later told the New York Post, “It would have been a major let-
down to the kids if they found out that the author of such virile and awesome characters was a gal.”
Yet, this trailblazing illustrator, squeezed out of the comic world amid a post-WW2 backlash against
unconventional images of femininity and a 1950s climate of heightened censorship, has been largely
MIss Fury had cat claws, stiletto heels and a killer make-up compact. Author provided
4/14/2019 Hidden women of history: Tarpe Mills, 1940s comic writer, and her feisty superhero Miss Fury
https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-tarpe-mills-1940s-comic-writer-and-her-feisty-superhero-miss-fury-110179 2/5
excluded from the pantheon of comic greats – until now.
Comics then and now tend to feature weak-kneed female
characters who seem to exist for the sole purpose of being
saved by a male hero – or, worse still, are “fridged”, a
contemporary comic book colloquialism that refers to the
gruesome slaying of an undeveloped female character to
deepen the hero’s motivation and propel him on his journey.
But Mills believed there was room in comics for a different
kind of female character, one who was able, level-headed and
capable, mingling tough-minded complexity with Mills’ own
taste for risqué behaviour and haute couture gowns.
Where Wonder Woman’s powers are “marvellous” – that is, not real or attainable – Miss Fury and her
alter ego Marla Drake use their collective brains, resourcefulness and the odd stiletto heel in the face
to bring the villains to justice.
And for a time they were wildly successful.
Miss Fury ran a full decade from April 1941 to December 1951, was syndicated in 100 different
newspapers at the height of her wartime fame, and sold a million copies an issue in reprints released
by Timely (now Marvel) comics.
Pilots flew bomber planes with Miss Fury painted on the fuselage. Young girls played with paper doll
cut outs featuring her extensive high fashion wardrobe.
Tarpe Mills was obliged to make her name in comics during the 1940s by disguising her gender. Author provided
4/14/2019 Hidden women of history: Tarpe Mills, 1940s comic writer, and her feisty superhero Miss Fury
https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-tarpe-mills-1940s-comic-writer-and-her-feisty-superhero-miss-fury-110179 3/5
An anarchic, ‘gender flipped’ universe
Miss Fury’s “origin story” offers its own coolly ironic commentary on the
masculine conventions of the comic genre.
One night a girl called Marla
Drake finds out that her friend
Carol is wearing an identical
gown to a masquerade party.
So, at the behest of her maid
Francine, she dons a skin tight
black cat suit that – in an
imperial twist, typical of the period – was once worn as a
ceremonial robe by a witch doctor in Africa.
On the way to the ball, Marla takes on a gun-toting killer,
using her cat claws, stiletto heels, and – hilariously – a puff
of powder blown from her makeup compact to disarm the
villain. She leaves him trussed up with a hapless and
unconscious police detective by the side of the road.
Miss Fury could fly a fighter plane when she had to, jumping out in a
parachute dressed in a red satin ball gown and matching shoes. She was
also a crack shot.
This was an anarchic, gender flipped, comic book universe in which the
protagonist and principle antagonists were women, and in which the
supposed tools of patriarchy – high heels, makeup and mermaid bottom
ball gowns – were turned against the system. Arch nemesis Erica Von
Kampf – a sultry vamp who hides a swastika-branded forehead behind a
v-shaped blond fringe – also displayed amazing enterprise in her
criminal antics.
Invariably the male characters required saving from the crime gangs, the
Nazis or merely from themselves. Among the most ingenious panels in
the strip were the ones devoted to hapless lovelorn men, endowed with
the kind of “thought bubbles” commonly found hovering above the heads of angsty heroines in
romance comics.
By contrast, the female characters possessed a gritty ingenuity inspired by Noir as much as by the
changed reality of women’s wartime lives. Half way through the series, Marla got a job, and –
astonishingly, for a Sunday comic supplement – became a single mother, adopting the son of her arch
nemesis, wrestling with snarling dogs and chains to save the toddler from a deadly experiment.
Mills claims to have modelled Miss Fury on herself. She even named Marla’s cat Peri-Purr after her
own beloved Persian pet. Born in Brooklyn in 1918, Mills grew up in a house headed by a single
widowed mother, who supported the family by working in a beauty parlour. Mills worked her way
A WW2 plane featuring an image of Miss Fury. http://www.tarpemills.com
Tarpe Mills with her beloved Persian cat. Author provided
4/14/2019 Hidden women of history: Tarpe Mills, 1940s comic writer, and her feisty superhero Miss Fury
https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-tarpe-mills-1940s-comic-writer-and-her-feisty-superhero-miss-fury-110179 4/5
through New York’s Pratt Institute by working as a model
and fashion illustrator.
Censorship
In the end, ironically, it was Miss Fury’s high fashion
wardrobe that became a major source of controversy.
In 1947, no less than 37 newspapers declined to run a panel
that featured one of Mills’ tough-minded heroines, Era – a
South American Nazi-Fighter who became a post-war
nightclub entertainer – dressed as Eve, replete with snake
and apple, in a spangled, two-piece costume.
This was not the only time the comic strip was censored.
Earlier in the decade, Timely comics had refused to run a
picture of the villainess Erica resplendent in her bath –
surrounded by pink flamingo wallpaper.
But so many frilly negligées, cat fights, and shower scenes had escaped the censor’s eye. It’s not a leap
to speculate that behind the ban lay the post-war backlash against powerful and unconventional
women.
In wartime, nations had relied on women to fill the production jobs that men had left behind. Just as
“Rosie the Riveter” encouraged women to get to work with the slogan “We Can Do It!”, so too the
comparative absence of men opened up room for less conventional images of women in the comics.
Once the war was over, women lost their jobs to returning servicemen. Comic creators were no longer
encouraged to show women as independent or decisive. Politicians and psychologists attributed
juvenile delinquency to the rise of unconventional comic book heroines and by 1954 the Comics Code
Authority was policing the representation of women in comics, in line with increasingly conservative
ideologies. In the 1950s, female action comics gave way to romance ones, featuring heroines who once
again placed men at the centre of their existence.
Author provided
Erica in the bath, surrounded by pink flamingo wallpaper. Author provided.
4/14/2019 Hidden women of history: Tarpe Mills, 1940s comic writer, and her feisty superhero Miss Fury
https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-tarpe-mills-1940s-comic-writer-and-her-feisty-superhero-miss-fury-110179 5/5
Comics Comic books Superheroes Hidden women of history
Miss Fury was dropped from circulation in December 1951, and despite a
handful of attempted comebacks, Mills and her anarchic creation slipped
from public view.
Mills continued to work as a commercial illustrator on the fringes of a
booming advertising industry. In 1971, she turned a hand to romance
comics, penning a seven-page story that was published by Marvel, but it
wasn’t her forte. In 1979, she began work on a graphic novel Albino Jo,
which remains unfinished.
Despite her chronic asthma, Mills – like the reckless Noir heroine she so
resembled – chain-smoked to the bitter end. She died of emphysema on
December 12, 1988, and is buried in New Jersey under the simple
inscription, “Creator of Miss Fury”.
This year Mills’ work will be belatedly recognised. As a recipient of the
2019 Eisner Award, she will finally take her place in the Comics Hall of
Fame, alongside the male creators of the Golden Age who have too long
dominated the history of the genre. Hopefully this will bring her comic
creation the kind of notoriety, readership and big screen adventures she
thoroughly deserves. A Miss Fury paper doll cut out. Author provided