Miss Fury - Trendsetter!

No, she's not the wife of Mr. Furious (thought I'd pay to see that movie), er, anyway…

I spoke about Sun Girl not long ago, but there are a host of forgotten female crime fighters in the comic-verse. Aside from die hards, historians and Alan Moore fans, who else has heard of the Purple Tigress or the original Miss Masque? And can you name the first female heroine?

The first known super powered female was a character named Fantomah. Created by Fletcher Hanks for Fiction House’s Jungle Comic #2 in February of 1940. Fantomah was an immortal Egyptian who could transform into a super powered skull faced creature whenever she needed to take on the forces of evil. A month later the first true costumed heroine was born, she was named The Woman in Red. Soon after the floodgates opened and fans were introduced to such figures like the Red Tornado (who wore a pot on her head to conceal her face and masqueraded as a man), At DC in 1940 Catwoman (then known simply as “the Cat”) made her debut in Batman #1 and a year later in 1941 Wonder Woman created a splash and became an iconic character. Squeezed in between those creations, in April of 1941, came a costumed heroine named Black Fury… later to be re christened Miss Fury and what was notable about her was that she was the first costumed crime fighter created, written and drawn by a woman.

Pure Imagination Publishing released the first 3 issues of Miss Fury in trade paperback form (the comics themselves were collections from the original Sunday newspaper strips) and I thought I’d share my impressions of the work: Out of costume her name was Marla Drake. A debutante who was heading out to masquerade ball wearing a suit made of black leopard skin (it was all she had, because she’d angrily torn off her original choice after receiving a call that someone else was wearing the costume she had planned wear). An Uncle sent the skin to her and it was once worn by an African witch doctor! (Hmm, I wonder how he looked wearing such a thing?) Anyway, Marla never made it to the ball because she crossed paths with a killer who she helped apprehend… and thus a legend was born. Sadly despite the fact that the incredibly popular strip ran for over 10 years the character and the creator have been largely forgotten.

June Tarpe Mills, went by the name Tarpe Mills because it was tough for women to get work or respect in the field back in the day and she felt readers might respond better if they thought a man was scripting a saga such as this. She created several characters before Fury, including Cat Man and a guy named Daredevil (Not the Matt Murdock version) but Fury was her most notable. Marla looked a lot like Mills (described as an Irish Beauty), and the similarities continue, as both creator and creation owned a cat named Peri Purr.

Mills art was solid but raw; her faces were well rendered and she had a strong fashion sense (she once worked as a fashion model) though the ink work was at times too heavy. She continued to improve over the years but sadly, some health issues (including arthritis) made it tough for her to keep deadlines and she resorted to hiring a less talented ghost to do the work at the end. Her stories relied on too many convenient happenstances and there are a few outlandish situations (as when her fiancé discovers and then tosses an explosive that just happens to blow up a car filled with the villains who created the device). Despite this, the tales are fast paced, exciting and held my interest from page to page.

Fury wasn’t a traditional crime fighter; in fact after one of her early adventures she buried her cat suit and vowed never to be troubled by it again. Somehow trouble always found her and gave her excuses to slip into her skintight costume - but she wasn’t happy about that one bit! Marla was -for the most part- a strong willed woman, self-assured and liberated at a time when it wasn’t trendy to be so, and perhaps this trait was modeled after the creator as well?

There was a large supporting cast: Fury was aided by her French maid Francince and a doorman at her Hotel who went by the name Cappy, In addition to that was the tough detective Dan Carey, who carried a secret crush on Marla Drake. Later on her stories would shift to political intrigue in Brazil where she would team up with Albino Joe, a favorite of the creator and one she would attempt to revisit later in life (there is an unfinished, unpublished Albino Joe story she was working on at the time of her death). Her main foes were the scheming Countess Erica Von Kapf and a one armed German with great strength and perseverance, Bruno Beitz.

Marla didn’t wear the black leopard skin suit very often, and I’ve read she put it on less and less as the years progressed. Though it was suggested that the suit enhanced her natural athletic abilities Throughout the book Marla Drake was known as the Black Fury, or Miss Black Fury, rarely Miss Fury. Not having read the other adventures I’m not sure when they dropped the word “Black” but the title was Miss Fury as seen in an early newspaper strip. I found it interesting to compare her to Catwoman, as Selina would later don skintight suits with ears, sometimes a tail. Fury once used that tail like a whip (Catwoman’s weapon of choice) and as Drake climbed up the side of buildings, lithe and sexy I couldn’t help but think of DCs playful thief and sometime anti-hero.

To sum things up - The strip entertained me, it was a real page-turner and I hope another collection finds its way to comic shops soon. (There were 8 collected issues in total; each issue was 50-plus pages long)

In 1952, after the cancellation of Miss Fury, Tarpe Mills retired from the industry, returning briefly by contributing a 7-page tale for Marvel’s “Our Love Story” published in 1971. She died in 1988 at the age of 73. Miss Fury and June Tarpe Mills should be better known. As a talented writer and artist and the first female to publish a popular costumed female hero, hers should be a name spoken with the same reverence as Jack Kirby or Will Eisner