To All the Girls I've Loved Before

 This afternoon, I'm looking at another late -Sixties giant from DC comics. I only bought it on ebay last year but I first saw it advertised here or here:

  Dark DC goes head to head with Marvel as the Flower Power Era wanes.

I like everything about the Neal Adams cover of  DC Special 3 ( April-June 1969) -the guys are baffled or exasperated; Supergirl has rarely looked so ecstatic. I particularly like the groovy masthead and its swingin' font and the vivid combination of black, yellow and red. It would seem that this was an attempt to win over some of the romance comics fans to the super-hero market. It was probably always a doomed effort but the material from the Forties always had a certain cachet.

 The Cheetah's Thought Prisoners: An unpublished Golden Age tale. Priscilla Rich reverts to her criminal Cheetah persona when she's summoned to Man's World to claim an inheritance. She uses Paula Von Gunter's mind-control prism to enslave sorority girls  It's typical kinky Wonder Woman madness but there is something interesting about this schizoid villainess, whose rage is incorporated in a second personality  Arr-rr-gh!

  The Maid of Menace: poor Linda Lee, Superman's neglected cousin, discovers she has a notorious descendant in 4000 AD who is a space-pirate queen. The duplicitous and sadistic Black Flame not only has a great name, she also has a rather twisted fixation on deceased super-foe Lesla-Lar. As another Kandorian genius,she has devoted herself to destroying Supergirl but her dental fillings are her downfall! Don't forget to floss, girls.

(Aside: Kryptonians come across as an inbred lot. Lesla-Lar was the double of Kara and Kal-El had two Kandorian lookalikes- Van-Zee and Don-El!)

Special Delivery Death: another unpublished story. The gimmick of the Golden Age Black Canary is that she's the guardian angel of hapless private eye, Larry Lance. Picture Bacall punching out gunsels to save Bogart! This isn't a terribly eventful story but Larry looks more handsome than usual here.

The Girl in the Golden Flower: a sci-fi romance about an astronomer and a flower-maiden for outer space. It's quite sweet but really, couldn't we have had the Golden Age Thorn or even gorgeous Alanna of Rann with Adam Strange?

 
The Secret Life of Star Sapphire: introduces the costumed identity of Hal Jordan's girlfriend Carol Ferris. Alien amazons called, er, Zamarons, use their magic space-organ to give heiress Carol a costume and a magic gem. This is a rather silly story in which neither colourful opponent realises the identity of the other.

A second Star Sapphire starred in Secret Society of Super-Villains but the Golden Age iteration was an extra-dimensional queen who fought Jay-Flash.

 
 Having first seen her dominatrix routine in Superman, Star Sapphire shocked me when she made John Stewart a widower by murdering Katma Tui in the late 80s.It also made a victim out of a Green Lantern. Not clever.

One significant figure overlooked in this Special was the original Batwoman.  A casualty of Batman's New Look, Kathy Kane was a vibrant, colourful character who could hold her own with the World's Finest team.

Unfortunately, she didn't have the bad girl allure of Catwoman and faded into obscurity. But, like the Vixen in the 80s, Batwoman could have been a break-out character in the 60s with foresight and the right creative team.

DC threw the spotlight on its super-heroines again in Adventure 416 in 1972. Then, five years later, the fabulous females of the House of Ideas were assembled for Fireside Books' The Superhero Women. Aside from Red Sonja and Ms. Marvel, who headlined in their own titles, the book featured those failed experiments from the early days of Women's Lib, the Cat and Shanna the She-Devil; distaff team members dithering Sue Storm and the attention-seeking Wasp; and Bad Girls Gone Good, alien isolationist Medusa and the morbid ex-Commie spy Black Widow. It's one of my favourites in the series and one day I'll get round to reviewing all the Origins compilations.

 But what if...DC  had jumped on the compilation bandwagon with a hardcover/softcover sequel to the DC Special and the Super-Spec in the liberated 70s? In addition to Mod Wonder Woman, Black Canary, Batwoman and Supergirl,  The Fighting Females might include some slightly more positive role models:

Lois Lane -got to be "I am Curious: Black!"; Hawkgirl clipping the claws of C.A.W. in her guise as a hot blonde CIA agent; 

One of the Zatanna shorts by Len Wein; a highly-qualified professional woman with a political consciousness- Batgirl Babs- perhaps in her Million-Dollar début or one of her Gil Kane exploits ( perhaps the Andy Warhol/ Underground movies story?)

Rose and the Thorn: from her back-up strip in Lois' comic
( although the Thorn-personality is a reworking of the Cheetah's schtick)

 
 and the statuesque Big Barda from "The Great Scott Free Bust-Out". Naturally, DC's larcenous lady, Catwoman would have to be included -but we'll look at her Secret Life from 1950 in more depth on the 'optikon around November or December.

So: let's hear it for the girls! Is there a glaring omission that I should have included? Did Mlle. Marie, Lana Lang, Tula the Aquagirl,The Enchantress or Element Girl deserve a spot? Feel free to comment below and check Materioptikon for the Supergirl and Diana Prince episodes I'd suggest for the (sadly) fictional DC's Fighting Females book!

Coming soon: Asylum of the Daleks!

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