HER LITTLE MARGIE

 This essay was one of many I've written about the appearance of sadism-scenarios in popular comics, taking issue with "Gershon Legman's claim that all teenage comedy comics were just filled to the brim with young women panting with desire to harm/humiliate fathers and boyfriends." That didn't mean that no particular artists didn't exploit such scenarios, in keeping with all of my posts about Chic Young's BLONDIE and such imitators as Timely's RUSTY.

Another example was Timely stalwart Morris Weiss, who used such scenarios frequently in the two teen features for which he did the most work: TESSIE THE TYPIST and MARGIE. I'll looked at TESSIE a while back, so now I'll devote a few posts to MARGIE. 

MARGIE #36 (1946), the second issue of the teen heroine's own comic (I have no idea what the numbering continued from), puts her dad "Pat" in hot water right away, though the torture's only symbolic here.

In "Margie's Big Date," the teen is suddenly aware that some company publishes fictional versions of her adventures. (And the Fantastic Four thought they were so special!) But she doesn't like the way she's portrayed, so she goes down to the publisher and clobbers editor Stan Lee himself. I like the way she tells the editor not to "blame the poor artist," meaning Morris Weiss, who was IMO probably both writing and drawing the feature.

Editor Lee (looking nothing like Real Lee as a young man) is so turned on the head-bash that he asks the high-school girl out for a dinner date. However, at the restaurant Lee ducks out on Margie because she embarrasses him by chasing after "Bang Swoonatra" for an autograph. Lee is thus spared Margie's feminine wrath, which Margie takes out on Bang (whose real-world model, like Lee, was considerably older than a high-schooler). 

  In the next story, Poor Old Pat gets both symbolic bondage--

And a real kicking-out from his wife, who was usually seen punishing the father in place of any direct daughter-mayhem.   

   We get a pause for variety with a RUSTY strip. The loyal redhead Blondie-clone spends most of the story watching her stupid husband injure himself in skating stunts, and only at the end she threatens to wreak violence on him herself rather than allowing him to continue his behavior-- though of course by the next story, he'll find some new way to act the ass.   

And finally, Pat and his son "Poison" try to rig things to reduce the impact of Margie's social life on their quiet lives, with the result that the mother (not sure she had a name) once more sends Daddy flying.