This weekend’s escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the Golden Age superheroine Moon Girl from E.C. Comics.
MOON GIRL
First Appearance: Moon Girl #1 (Fall 1947). Her origin story was also printed in The Happy Houlihans #1 (Fall 1947) and Animal Fables #7 (Nov 1947).
Secret Identity: Clare Lune, high school teacher
Origin: Moon Girl was a princess of Samarkand, but not the real Samarkand in Uzbekistan, but rather the mythic Samarkand of ancient legends. Women ruled in our heroine’s Samarkand, and once she reached marriageable age in 1947, Prince Mengu from a land 1,000 miles away came to woo her.
Her mother the Queen of Samarkand gave her a family heirloom – the Magic Moonstone which the first princess of Samarkand – a woman warrior – took on the battlefield from the evil wizard Ka-Zhan in the 1200s A.D.. The moonstone granted her super-powers, but even before she possessed the stone she had been able to defeat all men who desired her in combat. Continue reading
PART ELEVEN – Back at the home of his unfit uncle King Temugedege, Ozidi took Odogu’s Wife to bed with him that night. Though she seemed to willingly leave Odogu’s home, and in fact had led Ozidi by the hand as they fled, it became clear that the woman was playing a game of her own. 
ANNE OF THE INDIES (1951) – Jean Peters stars as female pirate Captain Anne Providence, commander of the ship Sheba Queen. One day she and her crew seize a British ship in the West Indies. 
TV’s DRACULA aka Jake Esau, hosted his Bad Movie shows in the old-school “vampire with a campy Bela Lugosi as Dracula accent” manner. His schtick involved the well-worn plays on words to emphasize anything that came close to “scary” or “bloody” during his Host Segments or his in-character gigs doing television commercials. 
PART 77 – As always, it’s fascinating to read the over 100-year-old opinions of James Larkin Pearson (and by extension his Fool Killer), including the opinions that one doesn’t agree with. Here are the Fool Killer’s targets in September 1915. There was no August issue that year.
U.S. STEEL HOUR: SEASON FOUR (1956-1957) – “The Broadway of Television” was back for another season. Some standout episodes from this season:
BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY – PAUL NEWMAN, George Peppard, Albert Salmi, Barbara Babcock and Clu Gulager star in the TV version of this classic story. A major league pitcher (Paul Newman) learns his catcher (George Peppard in his television debut) is dying from a rare disease. He honors the catcher’s request to keep the situation a secret from the rest of the team. 
SIX-STRING SAMURAI (1998) – 91 minutes – Directed by Lance Mungia … Starring Jeffrey Falcon and Justin McGuire … Written by Lance Mungia and Jeffrey Falcon … Soundtrack by Brian Tyler and the Red Elvises 
