YEAR 1961: THE INVISIBLE GIRL

I suppose I might be fairly accused of unoriginality in using here the same illustration I used in an earlier post, but the scene captures a different set of associations here.

Of all Silver Age heroines, the Invisible Girl-- who in the 1980s would "become a woman," as in changing her name to "Invisible Woman"-- gets the least respect.  The Lee-Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR did include scenarios that got a lot of mileage out of feminine stereotypes, whether it was making fun of her for feminine activities like shopping or expecting her to be the "den mother" of the supergroup.  (Side-note: given how many fans think Kirby plotted everything in FF, it's surprising that he's rarely blamed for these politically incorrect lapses, though it's clear to me that Kirby's art sets up a number of comic bits, like Sue getting pissy with Reed because he doesn't notice her new hairdo).

Nevertheless, most of Sue's detractors pay no attention to scenes like the one above, where the gutsy heroine-- at a time before she acquired her force-field powers-- takes on Doctor Doom by herself, just to prove that she can do it.  She does end up needing rescue from her male partners,  but that's no stain on her escutcheon: it is Doctor Doom, after all. 

Though she wasn't the first heroine created for the Silver Age of Comics, arguably she's better known that 1959's Supergirl, who seems to wax and wane with the times-- while the Invisible Girl/Woman remains, well-- highly visible.

TOP 50 FEMALE/MALE FIGHTS IN COMICS: 41

The tough, confident woman daring to take on Doctor Doom single-handed is, as the heroine's dotted outline should suggest, the Invisible Girl-- or at least, the first version of the Invisible Girl. By the mid-1960s this version would go unseen in a different manner, as her creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby chose to emphasize her disaffection from the superhero life. This in turn caused many fans to dismiss the Invisible Girl (later Woman) as a wimp. But clearly the early version is not.

Now, in the early years of the FANTASTIC FOUR feature, Doctor Doom wasn't quite the powerhouse that he'd become later; no one suggested that his armor gave him super-strength or contained a near-infinite number of weapons, though it did contain a few. (Indeed, Doom ends his fight with the heroine by drawing an "ultra-heat gun" from somewhere or other). But in FANTASTIC FOUR #17 Sue Storm has no power beyond turning invisible, aside from knowing a little judo, but alone she seeks single combat with Doctor Doom in order to prove that she's got what it takes to be a superhero. Their battle only lasts a little over a page, but it does demonstrate, for any fans who had doubted, that the Invisible Girl was in those days more than just a helpless damsel-- that she was, in truth, a visible presence.