HEROINE HEADCOUNT: FOXTROT

The 2010 Canadian cartoon METAJETS proved an enjoyable cross between superheres and aviation aces. In the distant future, numerous terrorist threats (with code-names like "Black Cloud" and "Fly Girl") imperil civilization, so four expert pilots take on the costumed identities of the Metajets to battle evil. The group's sole female, tough girl Foxtrot, was also Maggie Strong, "army brat" daughter of the squadron's military commander.

Oddly, Google only has screencaps of the Metajets in their civilian, rather than costumed, IDs.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: ELECTRA WOMAN

Aside from noting that Deidre Hall played Electra Woman...

See previous essay.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: DYNA GIRL

There's no origin for the campy duo "Electra Woman and Dyna Girl," who are no more than distaff versions of the campy "Dynamic Duo" of the 1960s BATMAN teleseries. Unlike that series, this "Sid and Marty Krofft" production, appearing on the 1976 KROFFT SUPERSHOW, was strictly a one-joke comedy. The girls only defeated enemies with their "electra-coms," but they looked very good in the costumes. Judy Strangis played Dyna Girl.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: CAVE GIRL

One of the last artistically strong gasps of the jungle-girl subgenre in comics appeared as a backup in Magazine Enterprise's THUN'DA #2 (1952). Like most jungle girls, Cave Girl starts out as a little Caucasian kid. But whereas most such proto-heroines simply get dumped in some jungle by a fallen airplane or wrecked boat, the jungle-- in the form of an eagle-- actually comes and gets the foundling and inexplicably takes her to "the Dawn Lands," yet another "Lost World" with dinos and Amazons and anything else artist Bob Powell cared to put in it.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: BATWOMAN (1968)

And now, moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, here's the 1968 "La Mujer Murcielago," a.k.a. Batwoman, reviewed here as the winsomely silly Bat-knockoff that it was.

Oddly, given that DC's 1956 Batwoman never starred or co-starred in her own series, this is the first Batwoman who qualifies for my "headcount" of central female combatives.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: AGNIESZKA

Given the current cinematic success of the film ALITA, I almost made that one my second "A," but decided instead to go with the somewhat less heralded character of Agnieszka, the starring sorceress of Naomi Novik's celebrated novel UPROOTED, reviewed here.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: ZATANNA

Zatanna first appeared as a guest-star in HAWKMAN #4 (1964), created by Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson as a feminine take on the Golden Age magician-hero Zatara, whose daughter she was. Like him, she perfected a technique of casting magical spells by speaking her commands backwards. I believe her first solo outing appeared in the 1970s, but she's had more luck in teams like Justice League than as a solo character.

That said, her four-issue miniseries by Grant Morrison and Sook is probably the best evocation of the lady magician's unique charm.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: YELLOW HAIR

After co-starring in the 1981 wrestling-comedy ALL THE MARBLES, Laurene Landon enjoyed "solo starring" status in two 1980s adventure-flicks, the previously mentioned HUNDRA and YELLOW HAIR AND THE FORTRESS OF GOLD, which, as my review states, is easily the best of the Indiana Jones knockoffs, as well as featuring a pretty formidable take on the "white Indian girl" trope.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: XS

XS first appeared in a 1994 LEGIONNAIRES issue, where she, a descendant of the 20th century Flash, joined the far-future group the Legion of Super-Heroes.

In the ongoing season of THE FLASH TV show, XS is the Flash's daughter, who time-travels back to the current era to meet her dad and mom and to fight crime. Nicely played by Jessica Parker Kennedy.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: THE WHITE DRAGON

While WHITE DRAGON was far from one of the best Chinese martial arts films of the 2000s, Cecilia Cheung gave a lively performance in both the comedic and action-oriented departments.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: VERONICA LAYTON

The original Arthur Conan Doyle LOST WORLD novel, in addition to being the first (or best-remembered) SF-stories to show prehistoric life enduring into modern times, is one of the most relentlessly macho novels published in the early 20th century. The novel stars one of Doyle's serial characters, Professor Challenger, as he and his all-male entourage penetrate the mysterious plateau, complete with cavemen and dinosaurs.

In contrast, the 1999-2002 LOST WORLD teleseries didn't have an original idea in its metaphorical head. However, the series does strike a blow for gender equity by having two strong women fighting dinos alongside the guys in the Lost World. Veronica's presence in the narrative is possibly influenced by a minor jungle-girl character in the 1960 movie-adaptation of the novel, but Veronica is in the tradition of tough leopardskin-ladies like Sheena, and actress Jennifer O'Dell sells that toughness with a lot of well-staged action scenes.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: ULTIMA

No, not the minor villain from SHE-HULK. This Ultima, who's never given a last name, is an aged Mexican curandera, whose mystical world is described by the narrator of the 1972 BLESS ME ULTIMA by Rudolfo Anaya. Though much of the novel is devoted to the narrator's ordinary world, Ultiima qualifies as a combative heroine due to her contentions with a practitioner of dark magic.

Since it's an art-novel, one shouldn't necessarily expect a happy ending. There's also an unremarkable film adaptation, in which the character is played by Miriam Colon.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: THE TIGER WOMAN

Linda Stirling, "queen of the serials," had one outing as the athletic "Tiger Woman," reviewed here. She doesn't get much of an origin, but it's probably no loss, as it probably would've been another "white princess" schtick.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: THE SHE-HULK

She-Hulk was introduced in the first issue of her 1980 comic, initially written by Stan Lee, though long-term writer David Kraft established the wonky charm of the character. I've seen only a handful of decent She-Hulk stories, which disposes me to believe that she works best in teams like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: THE RIDER OF THE PAINTED STALLION

Of all the live-action heroines I'll touch on here, this character from the 1937 serial THE PAINTED STALLION may be the most obscure.

She's a woman of mystery for most of the serial: garbed in war-chief regalia as she rides around the range on her piebald mount, fighting bad guys with her sole weapons, arrows that make a weird whistling sound, though they're otherwise just normal arrows. In the serial's final chapter, it's revealed that "the Rider" (Julia Thayer)-- who is never given any other name-- is probably a white woman taken in by a Native American tribe, and thus is no more a genuine "Indian" than Elizabeth Warren.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: QUEEN KALISTA

In the original 1980s series THE OMEGA MEN, the sole regular female member was Queen Kalista, a native of the planet Euphorix. (The series was less than clever in its coining of names for alien people and places.) With her vaguely defined mystical powers, she fought alongside the other Omega Men in the goal of cosmic peacekeeping.

The characters tended to be either extremely noble or extremely nasty. Kalista was one of the noble ones, though that didn't make her popular enough to avoid being killed off in a later reboot of the concept.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: THE P-GIRLS OF CHARMED

The four sisters of the original CHARMED program can be easily subsumed under one entry, thanks to the fact that their given names all start with "P." The adventures of the demon-fighting witches started with Prue, Piper and Phoebe Halliwell.

When Shannen Doherty (lending the best thesping talents of the three to the character of :Prue) decided to leave, her character was replaced by a half-sister, Paige Matthews (Rose McGowan).

Though never more than a decent show, at its worst it easily outclasses the current tedious take on the concept.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: OWL GIRLS #1 AND #2

In the early 1940s Dell Comics published a moderately successful Batman-knockoff, the Owl. Whereas a lot of Golden Age Bat-imitators tried to follow the basic setup of the DC comic, the creators of THE OWL didn't go for a lot of that crazy pulp stuff, and tended to do rather simplistic mystery-stories with a superhero in them.

After a little while, the Owl got a "female Robin," Owl Girl. However, unlike most female crimefighters, the first Owl Girl was only a moderately skilled fighter.

The second Owl Girl appeared roughly twenty years later, when SUPERMAN creator Jerry Siegel convinced Dell to let him bring the Owl out of mothballs, for two issues of THE OWL, with a campy approach following the example of the BATMAN teleseries. This Owl had the same name as the one from the forties, but the second Owl Girl had a different monicker, plus showing herself to be skilled in judo and karate.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: NIGHTSHADE

Nightshade, created by Dave Kaler and Jim Aparo in CAPTAIN ATOM #82 (1966), first appeared as the partner to the Captain, though for a time she also had her own backup strip. She was one of the few new costumed heroines of her decade who was a martial artist, but arguably became better known in fandom through her appearances in SUICIDE SQUAD.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: MARIA SARRAZIN

Since I've already touched on Frenchie King, I may as well cite her partner-in-crime Maria Sarrazin (Claudia Cardinale), who isn't an outlaw when she starts in the film, but turns crooked by its end.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: LACEY BOND

"The name is Bond. Lacy Bond"--

--is a line no one speaks in 1974's POLICEWOMEN, though Lacy (Sondra Currie) is at least as much as a kickass hero as the British secret agent. The film may have been given its best known name to play off the 1974 "Police Woman" series, but POLICEWOMEN is replete with a lot more sex and violence, and a nice sampling of softcore sex. There is another policewoman in the story, but the film is all Lacy's show.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: KATANA

I wasn't that fond of Katana during her debut in DC's OUTSIDERS titles--

-- though in BEWARE THE BATMAN she made a pretty good susbtitute for the difficult-to-use "boy sidekick" Robin.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: JESSI'S GIRLS

The 1975 rape-revenge western JESSI'S GIRLS set innocent Mormon wife Jessica Hardwick (Sondra Currie) on the vengeance trail when outlaws raped her and killed her husband. After being tutored in gun-skills by an old prospector, she rescued three outlaw-girls from a corrupt sheriff to help her get even with the outlaws. Outlaw Rachel (who renamed Jessica "Jessi"), saloon girl Claire and Native American Kana don't survive being on Jessi's team, but she makes it to the end of the picture after killing all of her enemies and the sheriff too.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: THE IRON LADY

The Iron Lady only had four adventures in assorted comics, circa 1947, from the publisher Hillman. Her origin was at least novel: a frail old inventor invented special metal gloves to enhance his hand-strength, but he expired before he could use them. The gloves fell into-- and onto-- the hands of American Doris Packer, who used her new crushing handshake to fight crime.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: HUNDRA

And here's a live-action barbarienne, HUNDRA, portrayed in her one adventure by Laurene Landon.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: GHITA OF ALIZARR

No sooner did I set down my prospective categories than I realized that if I was going to alternate between "characters performed by live actors" and everything else, there really aren't that many of the former in the first half of the 20th century. So I'll forget the business about that time-division and just pick characters from any time-frame. I may choose from different decades in each pairing, though.

Next up: one of the best female barbarians in comics, whose adventures I surveyed here and also here.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: FRENCHIE KING

And, to round out the four categories, here's a villain, albeit a comical one. One of Brigitte Bardot's few action-roles is that of the tough lady outlaw Frenchie King. (She's the one being punched in the lobby card by tough ranch-woman Claudia Cardinale.) Frenchie and her equally criminal sisters make an attempt to go straight, but complications ensue and they go back to being outlaws after the film's climactic Bardot-Cardinale battle, often rated one of the best catfights in cinema.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: THE ENCHANTRESS

For my first E, here's a character who started out as a hero for a very short tenure. After her less than memorable run, the mystical Enchantress was reconfigured into a villain, first battling Supergirl and then joining the Suicide Squad. Sadly, she was demoted from team-member to general menace in the underwhelming SUICIDE SQUAD movie.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: DOCTOR MEDUSA

And here's a "monster," or "monster-hero" if you like-- Doctor Medusa, a medical doctor who becomes afflicted with living snake-hair, the better to serve in the Creature Commandos, discussed here and here.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: CAROLINE MEREDITH

I should add that I'm using "heroine" to denote "female protagonist." This means that any combative character depicted can fall into any of my four persona-rypes (see this heading on ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE): the hero, the villain, the monster, and (my own neologism) the demihero.

Here's a good demihero. Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress), one of the two main characters in THE TENTH VICTIM.  She contends with her enemy Marcello in legal deathsports, using firearms and kung fu for a time, until they figure out that the best way to make each other miserable is to get married.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: BILLIE JENKINS

BILLIE JENKINS was the last "new witch on the block" to appear on CHARMED, during the show's eighth and final season in its original incarnation. Her powers were those of telekinesis. Played by Kaley Cuoco.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: AMAZONA

Amazona, a hypothetical influence on Wonder Woman, appeared for just one adventure in PLANET COMICS #3 (1940).

PHASE V: ANOTHER CHANGE OF PACE

The last one was in March 2016, when I decided to go back to "the original, low-maintenance concept of the blog."

Now I'm thinking about focusing less on visual art than on a particular type of Femme Formidable: the type who is (a) involved primarily in what I term "the combative mode," and who is also (b) either the solo focus of the narrative or belongs to an ensemble of characters, usually other combative types.

Most of the examples I've cited under the yearly studies were combative types. However, because I also examined famous villains, monsters, and other character-types, those essays are a mixed bag.

For a few weeks at least, I'm going to attempt a sort of "abbreviated database" of Formidables related to the combative mode-- abbreviated in that I probably won't provide much data beyond a sentence or two. 

I'll proceed alphabetically, covering two characters at a time. As I plan things now:

(1) One of the two will be reasonably well known by fans; the other not so much.

(2) One will be from the first sixty-something years of the 20th century; the other from any time later.

(3) One will originate in a "performance" form of media, like radio, television or film; the other will originate in a "non-performance" type like comics, cartoons, or prose fiction.

And that's all the explanation I'll give, until I get bored enough to change again.