YEAR 1935: QUEEN AZURA

I don't have a collection of the early FLASH GORDON strips handy, but I have the general impression that Queen Azura, aka "the Witch Queen," was the first of many insidious but lustful queens who attempted to seduce Flash away from Dale Arden.  Admittedly, in the first sequence Aura, daughter of Flash's principal foe Ming the Merciless, also seeks to warm the form of the hero, but Aura didn't command her own kingdom.

I did notice from one reference that just before Flash, Dale and their retinue encounter Azura, the queen of the "Blue Magic Men," Dale is fussing at Flash about their impending nuptials, which he's conveniently put off, due to the greater importance of the rebellion against Ming.  Perhaps not coincidentally, after Azura's forces take the Gordon group prisoner, Azura uses a drug to make Flash forget his past, including Dale.  Dale, forced to become a serving-wench, tearfully looks on as Flash allows Azura to make love to him.  Since it was a family newspaper, readers could only use their imaginations to speculate as to how far the lovemaking went. Though eventually Flash got clear of Azura, somehow that wedding never did go through.  But Flash kept meeting dozens of horny lady rulers, and all Dale ever got was nasty old Ming.

In the initial episode as I recall it, all of Azura's "sorcery" is of scientific origins, though I can't say the same for all of her later incarnations.

YEAR 1935: KYRA ZELAS

Published in the November 1935 issue of ASTOUNDING MAGAZINE, "The Adaptive Ultimate" had the honor of being more frequently adapted than the majority of pulp SF short stories: once on radio, twice on television, and once in a 1957 film entitled SHE-DEVIL.  However, it may be theorized that the main reason for the relative popularity of this Stanley Weinbaum tale is that it's a fairly talky variation on the Frankenstein theme, and didn't require much in the way of expensive sets or FX.

The idea of scientists experimenting on female subjects had been touched on elsewhere, as in Hans Heinz Ewers' 1911 novel ALRAUNE.  In this story, researcher Daniel Scott attempts to transfer the adaptive capacities of fruit flies to human beings, on the theory that they'll be able to heal diseases or fatal wounds through the power of "adaptation."  I don't think that even in 1935 any biologists would've bought into Scott's heavily hormonal theory of adaptation, but as is often the case, bad science can make a good story.

A colleague gives Scott the go-ahead to experiment on a drab, impoverished woman named Kyra Zelas, because she's in the final stage of tuberculosis.  For what it's worth, Scott does at least ask Kyra's permission before injecting her with his wonder drug.  The serum works too well: not only does Kyra recover from her disease, she loses all moral compass as a side-effect.  Almost immediately after recovering, she commits the crime of bludgeoning an old man to death for his money.  When called to trial, she simply changes her appearance to that of a dazzling beauty so that the witnesses to the crime cannot swear that she was the perpetrator.

Scott and his colleague plot to kill their pet monster, but when their first attempt fails, Kyra escapes.  Rather improbably, she comes back, apparently because she's become fascinated with her "creator."  Eventually the scientists come up with a way to kill their adaptative adversary, but in a minor ironic touch, Scott has fallen in love with her.  Even though in death she reverts to her original body, he still sees her as a gorgeous siren. One may see Kyra Zelas as the modern-day descendant of myth-figures like the Loathly Lady of the famous Gawain story.

YEAR 1935: THE FLAME

1935 isn't nearly as rich in femmes formidables as 1934, and my choice for this entry-- "the Flame"-- feels derivative of 1934's Dragon Lady.  Artist Will Gould initiates his strip RED BARRY with the introduction of a mysterious female crime-boss in Chinatown-- which not only duplicates the initial antagonist seen in Milton Caniff's TERRY AND THE PIRATES, but also the setup of a white hero struggling against Asian opponents.  However, in terms of attitude the main hero, a roughneck U.S. undercover agent, is less reminiscent of any Caniff hero than of the Dick Tracy of Chester (no relation to Will) Gould.

I suspect Will Gould wasn't all that invested in the character of the Flame, who may also borrow an element from Sax Rohmer's Fah Lo Suee.  Unlike the Dragon Lady, the Flame is tagged as "Eurasian," and is presumably half-Russian (as is Fu Manchu's daughter) since the lady crime-boss also goes by the name "Tanya."  Of the four stories reprinted in the illo above, only two concern the Flame.  She doesn't do all that much in the first narrative, but does assume a more dominant role in the second tale, though as expected she's still womanly enough to fall for the straight-shooting hero.  I don't know how often Gould used her in the remainder of the strip's run, but evidently she didn't impress the producers of the 1938 RED BARRY serial, as she was not adapted to film.  The Flame lacks the intelligence and resourcefulness of the Dragon Lady, and seems most interesting as a pale reflection of a superior character.