Review by C.J. Bunce
You might not have heard of these ten ahead-of-their-time women who had their own comics titles beginning in the 1920s. But they were in newspapers and later comic books and they were read across the country by men, women, and kids. Somehow their popularity faded away, but a giant, over-sized book from Fantagraphics’ Sunday Press Books is a must-read for any fan of strong women characters and vintage comics. Dauntless Dames: High-Heeled Heroes of the Comic Strips, available here from the publisher and here at Amazon, was a 2024 winner of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for Best Archival Collection. For whatever reason, publishers have been slow to reprint these comic strips and comic book stories compared to so many others starring men that have become household names across the decades–like Flash Gordon and Captain Marvel.
Yet each of the titles and their heroines were as gripping, fascinating, and exciting as their male counterparts, and the proof can be found in these full sized color reprints, many taken from the original comic artwork. As a bonus, many of these comic strips came with their own free swag.
That swag took the form of cut-out paper dolls, complete with costumes for the women, and sometimes the men, too. This massive 160 page 13″ x 16″ hardcover book includes its own separate tipped-in page of paper dolls, but many of the selected reprints of the funny pages of the past include their own at the bottom of the comic strip as a matter of course.
But nobody then or now was drawn to these comics just for the paper dolls. Cartoonist Trina Robbins (editor of Tarpé Mills & Miss Fury: Sensational Sundays 1944 – 1949 (reviewed here) who passed away in 2024) partnered with Peter Maresca to deliver an introduction to the first women of comics. They take on the subjects of both the titular heroine characters and their behind-the-scenes creators. They selected ten:
Frank Godwin’s Connie, who at first glance sounds a bit bland, but whose adventures mirrored those of Flash Gordon, although her series predated Alex Raymond’s character by more than six years. Connie is the biggest surprise of the book–and this book includes two story arcs so readers get a full view of the scope of the storytelling. And the futuristic sci-fi costume designs are equal to those we know from the Flash Gordon pantheon of alien outfits.
Ray Thompson and Charles Coll’s Myra North, Special Nurse, the first mystery/adventure comic strip starring a woman. At first limited as a nurse encountering adventures along the way, the mystery of the stories would take over and the title eventually became simply Myra North.
Dalia aka Dale Messick’s Brenda Starr was a reporter heroine who showed that these stories could be written and illustrated by women, too. Probably the most familiar name that has carried forward to modern audiences, her stories were also emblematic of her times. Were they popular because they showed a woman in a career closer to what was expected, or because she blurred the lines?
What would you do if you were invisible? Russell Stamm’s Invisible Scarlet O’Neil tried on all the tropes readers would find on the big screen in “invisible man” movies. Scarlet was the first super-powered woman of comic strips, and her stories read like modern superhero comic books. Stamm’s drawings of her as invisible are expertly ahead of their time.
Russell Keaton’s Flyin’ Jenny put his heroine in the top exciting male career of the day as airplane pilot. The name was a twofold play on the early park merry-go-round but mostly on a famous World War I fighter plane. Many of the elements that would come much later in The Rocketeer could be found in this comic strip.
But the biggest and best of these must be Tarpe Mills’ Miss Fury. The first costumed superheroine, Miss Fury was an early Bruce Wayne, whose stories planning and plotting behind the scenes without the costume were equal to the intrigue of any costumed superhero. Which makes it that much more fun when Mills’ heroine Marla Drake dons the catsuit. Miss Fury also benefitted from a super-villain nemesis who was equally layered, Baroness Erica Von Kampf. And this early catwoman also had her own cat. Romance, intrigue, crime, alter egos, war… it’s all there.
Neysa McMein and Alicia Patterson’s Deathless Dear was published for less than a year, but it took on a mummy-inspired archaeological mythos story, featuring a resurrected princess of Egypt and her bird sidekick Horus. The earliest of the women characters in this book took on an appropriate art nouveau style that turned into the look of women of the Roaring ’20s. Dear looked more wartime pin-up but without the blatant sexualization.
You’d think Steven Spielberg took his most famous hero from Bob Oksner and Jerry Albert’s Cairo Jones. Their world traveler was very much cinematic in writing and visuals, with a dose of James Bond twenty years before Ian Fleming first penned the character.
Jack Sparling’s clever named Claire Voyant could be seen in ten cent comic books. While other heroines were more peripheral to the war effort in the comics pages, Claire was an active participant.
Jackie Ormes’ Torchy Brown rounds out the book. Ormes was a woman creator who was also Black, so her work only made it back in 1950s to Black-owned newspapers. Ormes wrote her heroine every bit the successful, smart, strong character of her peers, filled with action, conflict, and romance.
Most of these women characters tended toward the fashion-forward types. These were well-to-do women who used their influence to take positive action in numerous situations. They also didn’t hide their femininity, especially in the strips drawn by women. Women artists didn’t shy away from drawing the same kinds of scenes men drew, frequently women changing in and out of clothes, in outfits that emphasized the female form. And romance was front and center. But for the most part the women weren’t merely window dressing. It was the men left in the supporting roles.
This essential collection of comic strips is a superb retrospective of groundbreaking modern heroines of a century ago. Dauntless Dames: High-Heeled Heroes of the Comic Strips is available here from publisher Fantagraphics and here at Amazon.
