HEROINE HEADCOUNT: PURDEY

I've already covered the other three femme-adventurers from the British AVENGERS franchise, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel, and Tara King. The last of this group, known only as Purdey, appeared in the 1976-7 series THE NEW AVENGERS, where she teamed up with old hand Steed and a new younger male agent.

Though competently acted, Purdey's character never came alive thanks to desultory scripting.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: ORACLE

Way back when I wrote this essay on the 1966 Batgirl, I said that her identity as the wheelchair-bound "Oracle" deserved a separate write-up.

Oracle was created by John Ostrander and Kim Yale as an enigmatic information broker, though it didn't take long for her identity as the crippled Barbara Gordon to be revealed. Though writer Chuck Dixon deserves credit for initiating the concept of making Oracle the center of the all-female team Birds of Prey, later writer Gail Simone gets the lion's share of approbation for making the Oracle version of Barbara Gordon more interesting than she'd ever been as Batgirl.

Of course, eventually the character went back to being Batgirl, with interesting if mixed results, but that's another story.

Incidentally, it looks like "O" will be one of the first letters I run out of. Apparently names like Olive and Odetta just aren't popular as heroine-names.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: NAMORA

At a time when DC had yet to give birth to Batwoman or Supergirl, Timely Comics introduced a female cousin for their popular male hero, Namor the Sub-Mariner. She first appeared as a guest star in the Sub-Mariner story for MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #82 (1947), and made the majority of her appearance in her cousin's tales, though she had three issues of her own series in 1948.

Namora had largely the same powers of strength and ankle-winged flight as Namor, and disappeared during the Silver Age, until a retcon story accounted for her absence and introduced her daughter Namorita, who would later join the supergroup New Warriors.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: MARGUERITE KRUX

As noted here, the original Conan Doyle LOST WORLD practically sports a sign "no girls allowed." But starting with the 1925 silent film, cinematic adaptations have almost always included female characters on the expedition, the better to engage female audiences.

As far as I can tell, Marguerite Krux (Rachel Blakely) seems to be the first such female explorer who could fight as well as a guy.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: LAS LUCHADORAS

Mexican superhero wrestlers caught fire in the 1950s, particularly with the famed "El Santo," but the first "luchadoras" feature in film begins with 1963's DOCTOR OF DOOM. The film introduces Gloria Venus (Lorena Velasquez) and Golden Ruby (Elizabeth Campbell) as two tough lady wrestlers who have to destroy a mad scientist and his humanized ape. It's delirious fun, though the second in the series, WRESTLING WOMEN VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY is only so-so, despite crossing over with the "Aztec Mummy" series.

There were four more luchadoras films, none of which I've seen, though not with the same actresses, since Velasquez never returned to the role.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: KITTEN

Boy sidekicks were all over the comics-world in the Golden Age, but young girl partners were rarer than hen's teeth-- except for one particular chicken-chopper, Kitten.

The superhero Catman (sometimes Cat-Man) began as a solo act in 1940. About a year later, in CATMAN COMICS #5, the hero liberated Katie Conn, a ten-year-old circus-girl from a "bad uncle." and eventually made her his ward. When Katie learned of her mentor's secret identity, she donned a costume like his, called herself Kitten and began fighting crime with him.

The first origin is pretty much lifted from the first appearance of Robin, right down to giving the youngster an acrobatic background, but Kitten got a very weird revised origin in 1945, though the series was cancelled about a year later. Occasionally AC Comics revived these public domain characters for guest-spots.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: JAELITHE

Andre Norton's 1963 WITCH WORLD provides a female's take on the John Carter trope, wherein Earthman lands on a medieval-style world whose people have strange powers and/or weapons. But whereas Dejah Thoris was not a character equal to her paramour Carter, WITCH WORLD concerns both the Earthman Simon Tregarth and the witchy woman he meets on the titular planet.

Jaelithe-- whose name sounds to my ears like a combo of two Biblical females, Jael and Lilith-- is a witch whose limited powers are largely explicable by then-contemporary ideas about psychic powers. She's no "sorceress supreme," but she does bring some power to stand alongside that of her more martial partner, though the two of them are only the stars of this book and its immediate sequel, WEB OF THE WITCH WORLD. They appear as support-characters in the third novel, THREE AGAINST THE WITCH WORLD, which concentrates on the couple's three grown kids, and to my knowledge Simon and Jaelithe never assume positions of narrative stardom again.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: INVISIBLE GIRL (1993)

The date should be enough to tell readers (if any) that I'm not talking about Sue Storm. The character is called "Invisible Girl" in at least one subtitled release of 1993's THE HEROIC TRIO. She's a kung-fu daredevil who possesses a cloak that grants her the power of invisibility. The performance of Michelle Yeoh reflects the character's complicated history with both the villain of the story and her sometime ally "Wonder Woman." (Wonder what those names became in the English-dubbed version.)

The character also appears in the dreary sequel EXECUTIONERS.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: HAWKGIRL (1940)

The first Hawkgirl presents something of a mixed bag. Although she has a prominent role in the origin of the Golden Age Hawkman, analyzed here, in subsequent issues she just became "the hero's girlfriend." In FLASH COMICS #24 she donned an imitation version of Hawkman's costume, complete with functional wings, and tried her hand at solving crimes, with a spectacular lack of positive results.  However, Hawkman must've given her some training in between issues, since Hawkgirl became a regular member of the team for the remainder of the feature's original run.

For me her main significance is that of providing a dry run for the better handled Silver Age Hawkgirl.

HEROINE HEADCOUNT: GINGER MCALLISTER

Ginger McAllister (Cheri Caffaro) was slightly ahead of the spate of seventies "tough girls" like 1973's COFFY and 1974's POLICEWOMEN. GINGER, like its two sequels THE ABDUCTORS and GIRLS ARE FOR LOVING, spotlights Ginger's role as an undercover cop who can't seem to help running into cases with a sexy angle. Trashy, softcore fun.