DAREDEVIL COMICS "Pat Patriot: America's Joan of Arc"

Here's the Introduction to One of the More Unique Patriotic Golden Age Heroines...

Read the story and see if you can guess what makes her different from the other Golden Age heroines!

Brave, patriotic, can handle herself in a fight!

"What's so different about her?"

Her name!

"Patricia Patrios", the name chosen by writers Charles Biro & Bob Wood to conveniently "lead" into the Pat Patriot nom-du-guerre, was not the typical WASPy name most comic characters used!

It's never mentioned in the stories, but she appears to be a 1st or 2nd generation American of Greek or Greek/insert ethnicity ancestry.

The art on this tale from Lev Gleason's DareDevil Comics #2 (1941) is confusing in that it has elements of both Frank Borth and Reed Crandall's styles.so it's impossible to say who did what!
Pat Patriot kicked Nazi and neo-Nazi asses from #2 to #11, after which almost all the features besides DareDevil himself were replaced!

Support Heroines!

Visit Amazon and Buy...

Divas, Dames & Daredevils

Lost Heroines of Golden Age Comics

Paid Link

Halloween Heroines ZATANNA "Doppelganger!"

When Last We Left the DCU's Premier SuperHeroine/Sorceress...

...She Had Been Lured into Another Dimension by...Herself???

While the Justice League tales relating how Zatanna's powers were reduced have been reprinted, this story from DC's World's Finest V1N277 (1982) by Paul Kupperberg and Dan Spiegle hasn't (though it was footnoted in JL)!

Check out another never-reprinted story featuring Zatanna (with Supergirl) HERE, HERE, and HERE!

Next Week:

We conclude our Countdown to Halloween 2024 participation with a powerless Wonder Woman taking on a real witch!

Support Heroines!

Visit Amazon and Buy...

Zatanna

Everyday Magic

Paid Link

Halloween Heroines ZATANNA "Magic in the Air!"

She's a member of the Justice League and a second-generation sorceress/superheroine...

...and, usually, one of the most powerful magicians in the DC Universe!

But, this tale takes place at a point when her powers are lessened...

Actually, this never-reprinted story from DC's Worlds Finest Comics #276 (1982) will continue on

Thursday!

Written by Paul Kupperberg and illustrated by Dan Spiegle, this was part of Zatanna's second strip, running in World's Finest from #274 to #278.
Daughter of Golden Age magician/super-hero Zatara and Sindella, a member of Homo Magi (humans born with the ability to manipulate magical forces), Zatanna initially uses her human father's technique to manipulate reality by speaking incantations backwards, and later learns to utilize her inborn talents.

Support Heroines!

Visit Amazon and Buy...

Zatanna

Everyday Magic
Paid Link

Halloween Heroines BLACK ORCHID Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

Cover art by Bob Oksner

(Note: Despite the "Origin Issue" blurb on the cover, there's no actual origin story!)

When a disguised District Attorney infiltrates a criminal conclave (which includes the town's mayor and police chief) and is uncovered, a purple-costumed woman with superhuman abilities (including flight, hyper-strrength, and invunerability) saves his life.

She also displays extensive knowledge about the DA's personal life and family, recommending his recently-widowed sister, an MD, come to patch him up to avoid publicity by showing up at a hospital.

Meanwhile, the criminals are keeping an eye on the DA via a concealed TV camera in his house...

While DA Ken Ransom won't see her again (nor will he ever reappear in the DC Multiverse), this blog's readers will get to view her adventures, since, to paraphrase the end credit on 007's cinematic adventures...

Black Orchid Will Return!

Support Heroines!

Visit Amazon and Buy...

Black Orchid

by Neil Gaiman & David McKean

Deluxe Edition

Paid Link

Halloween Heroines BLACK ORCHID Part 1

Welcome to Our Contribution to Countdown to Halloween 2024...

...as we introduce the never-reprinted adventures of the most mysterious heroine of all!

To Be Concluded...Thursday!

Written by Sheldon Mayer, illustrated by Tony DeZuniga, this premiere tale from DC's Adventure Comics #428 (1973) will offer no actual clues as to who (or what) The Black Orchid is...despite the fact it's promoted as an "Origin Issue"!

Superhuman Being?

Scientific Adventuress?

Spectral Avenger of Evil?

Or All of the Above?

Her strip ran for three issues in Adventure Comics before becoming a back-up strip in The Phantom Stranger for eight issues...which should tell you something about the direction of the series!
The unresolved concept was so intriguing that the creators of DC/Vertigo's Sandman, Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, took a crack at resolving it in a Vertigo series a couple of decades later!

Support Heroines!
Visit Amazon and Buy...

Black Orchid
by Neil Gaiman & David McKean

Deluxe Edition
Paid Link

Golden Age SuperHeroine PHANTOM LADY Battles Saboteurs at the Olympics!

Our Female Olympics Athletes are Truly Amazing...

...we offer up this Golden Age tale of the one and only...

Phantom Lady

...participating in the 1948 Olympics while stopping a criminal plot and proving herself the equal of any male athlete!

Click

HERE

to read it!

NIGHTGLIDER "She Glides in Beauty Like the Night..." Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

Revived from suspended animation after 15,000 years, the warrior named NightGlider discovers Earth of the 1990s is not like the civilization she left behind!

Her language is unknown to the present-day inhabitants of Chicago, which is built over the ancient lost city of Garza where her stasis chamber lay.
And the confusing primitive (to her) transportation technology inadvertently injures her when she impacts a helicopter's rotors and falls forty stories to the ground!
She's transported, unconscious, but alive, to a nearby hospital, where...

To Be Continued at...

HERO HISTORIES

on Monday!

Created by Jack Kirby, plotted by Roy Thomas, scripted by Gerry Conway and Illustrated by Don Heck, this never-reprinted tale from Topps Comics' one-shot NightGlider (1993) was an integral part of the projected "KirbyVerse" featuring concepts and characters created by Jack (King) Kirby, one of the major creative forces in comics from the birth of the Golden Age in 1940 to the then-present of 1993!.
Glida/NightGlider, with her fellow genetically-enhanced soldiers Bombast and Captain Glory, would battle the evil forces that had also survived the disaster that doomed the Ninth Men 15,000 years earlier and keep them from dominating the humans of the present (aka "Tenth Men") in the Secret City Saga mini-series!

After the end of that series, the group were to continue fighting the good fight in a new mini-series, Victory! along with other, already-existing characters created by Kirby like Silver Star and Captain Victory and the Galaxy Rangers, but it was cancelled after the first issue, with the remaining four parts unpublished to this day!