Saturday 5 September 2009

70 Years Of Marvel - 1944


Miss America was one of the more successful Timely heroines, though given how few of them there were in the '40s, this perhaps isn't saying very much. Created by Otto Binder, who who would go on to do a power of work for DC, Miss America gained her powers through a not-yet-a-trope lightning strike. She would go on to be a member of the All-Winners Squad, before disappearing at the tail end of the decade.

Years later, Marvel Editor-in-Chief, Roy Thomas, would make use of Miss America in one of his continuity-establishing exercises. According to Rascally Roy, Miss America had married fellow hero, the Whizzer, and the two of them had gone on to have children, two of which were now famous superheroes: Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Later, of course, the Maximoff twins' parentage would be revised somewhat, and the Miss America connection would be severed.

Since then, Miss America's been pretty much gone, other than a brief reappearance, in the pages of X-Statix, a couple of years back. God bless Pete Milligan, for remembering a little bit of Marvel history.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the war was going badly for the Axis Powers, the Normandy invasion and the Battle of Guam among several setbacks. Terrible things continued to happen in various concentration camps, and Anne Frank was on her way to one of them.

July 6th saw the Hartford Circus fire, which killed several hundred members of the audience, when the big top they were, which was waterproofed by means of parrafin and gasoline, caught ablaze, Nasty stuff.

Film fans may note that 1944 saw the release of Double Indemnity, a nice bit of film noir, in which she-vixen Barbara Stanwyck persuaded Fred MacMurray to participate in a spot of mariticide. More related to our topic, Captain America was starring in a Republic serial, which by all accounts was terrible.

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