Writers
Linda Fite
When Linda Fite was first asked to write the title Claws of the Cat for Marvel, she was a bit concerned. It was 1972, and to her, it felt a bit cliche. DC had their own “cat” woman. There was something a bit demeaning with a female character always having to don a...
Ruth Roche
Long before Kamala Khan and Simon Baz, there was another Muslim superhero. The first, in fact. His name was Kismet, Man of Fate, and he appeared in Bomber Comics in 1944. His creator was quite a powerhouse in her own right - her name was Ruth Ann Roche. Roche had been...
Joye Hummel
In 1943 Joye Hummel was a psychology student at Katherine Gibbs School. It was well known that one of the professors, William Moulton Marston, had created the character of Wonder Woman. Only a couple of years old, the character was already well-known worldwide. The...
Tarpé Mills
One of the most popular female characters in comics at the start of World War II was Miss Fury. The character, a socialite named Maria Drake, who donned a skintight panther suit to fight crime, was so popular that her name appeared on the nose of three American bomber...
Jackie Ormes
Readers of the Pittsburgh Courier received an unexpected treat in the comics section on May 1, 1937. It was the first appearance of Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, a fictional character who left Mississippi to perform in Harlem’s famed Cotton Club. Not content to...
Ray Hermann
There weren’t many women working in comics in the early forties. Those who were often had to write under a male pseudonym as it was felt readers wouldn’t accept a comic either written or illustrated by a woman. In 1938 Audrey “Toni” Blum walked into Eisner &...
Patricia Highsmith
In 1999 the world was introduced to the award-winning film The Talented Mr. Ripley starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jude Law. You may not know that the film is based on the 1955 novel of the same name, written by Patricia Highsmith. What is also not widely...
Virginia Hubbell
Virginia Hubbel Bloch began her career working for Lev Gleason Publications in the 1940s, scripting their Daredevil and Boy Comics series. She is also credited with having worked on the violent title Crime Does Not Pay! In the 1950s, she wrote for Dell, Marvel Comics,...
Ruth Atkinson
Among the longest-running female characters ever created is Millie the Model and Patsy Walker (who later became Marvel’s “Hellcat”). Both were co-created by writer/artist Ruth Atkinson in the 1940s. Atkinson began her career with Fiction House in the early 40s,...
Jill Elgin
Born Kathleen Jo Elgin in 1923, one of the things she loved to do was draw. It was no surprise to friends and family that she turned that love into drawing a comic strip for her school’s newspaper when she was fourteen - which she signed as “Jo Elgin.” Flash forward a...