SUN GIRL (1948-1950)

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at Sun Girl, a Marvel character from back when the company was called Timely Comics.

SUN GIRL 

Secret Identity: Mary Mitchell, secretary for the Daily Views newspaper

Origin: Never revealed. Her very first story made it apparent that she had already been active for years.

Powers: Sun Girl was much stronger than any adult male. She was extraordinarily skilled at unarmed combat and was more agile than an acrobat.

Sun Girl wielded a Sunbeam Ray Gun (also a Sunbeam Wristlet-Ray) which shot solar light and heat.

Her emergency pouch contained a “super-sensitized tracer” and the cable/ lariat which she used to swing around the city like Spider-Man or Daredevil.

Comment: Marvel still hasn’t clarified if Sun Girl was a human or was an alien using the name Mary Mitchell as an alias. I would have made it that she was a human granted her powers and weapons by the Master of the Sun, who decades later gave Peter Quill his powers and weapons to become Star-Lord.

SUN GIRL Vol 1 #1 (August 1948)

Title: Flying Fists and Glamour

Villains: Gangs of bank robbers

Synopsis: A gang of armed robbers arrive in their getaway car at their hideout with their latest robbery proceeds.

Sun Girl emerges from hiding and reveals that she was surreptitiously clinging to their vehicle.

Our heroine outfights and outshoots the entire gang and hauls them into a police station. Expository dialogue reveals this is the latest in a rash of bank robberies and Sun Girl vows to lure out the secret leader of the gangs.

That leader turns out to be the crooked police chief, and she takes down him and his underlings.   

Title: The Menace of the Monster

Villain: Dr. Drearr

Synopsis: When Sun Girl arrives at Glenrock Prison too late to stop her old foe Dr. Drearr from being paroled, she chews out the warden (?) and resolves to be ready for whatever the mad scientist’s new plot may be. 

Dr. Drearr invents a Telescopic Reviver device which lets him summon a sea monster from the deep. That creature rampages through New York City with the army unable to stop it. Luckily, Sun Girl succeeds in driving the monster back beneath the waves.

The superheroine uses her tracer to locate where Dr. Drearr’s ray is originating from and attacks him there. He summons two more sea creatures to kill her but she wins out and even destroys the Telescopic Reviver.

Title: A Jolt for Johnny

Villains: “Nails” Nelson and his gang

Synopsis: In Juvenile Court, Sun Girl interrupts the sentencing of young Johnny Murphy and gets the judge to release him into her custody. She gets Johnny to reveal that he turned to crime to impress the gangster Nails Nelson in hopes of joining his gang.

Sun Girl goes to the joint run by Nelson, gets him to confess to crimes and when he and his gang try to kill her, she defeats all of them. Her final punch knocks Nails out the 1st floor window. Readers are told that Johnny went straight and eventually became a judge. 

HUMAN TORCH Vol 1 #32 (September 1948)

Title: Double Cross in Death

Villains: The Joe Esterban Gang

Synopsis: Sun Girl has replaced Toro as the Human (android) Torch’s crimefighting partner. NOTE: Marvel replaced Toro with Sun Girl and Captain America’s partner Bucky with Golden Girl to try attracting more female readers at the time. 

The pair track down prison escapee Robert Dammer only to learn that he is innocent and was framed by Joe Esterban. Sun Girl and the “Human” Torch corral the entire Esterban Gang and clear Robert Dammer.

Title: Jazz Murders (Hey, if Fur Kills, I guess Jazz can murder. I’m KIDDING!)

Villain: Timmy Jordan

Synopsis: Sun Girl and the Human Torch, sometimes in their civilian identities Mary Mitchell and Jim Hammond, investigate the deaths of wealthy jazz fans whose insurance policies paid big money to Timmy Jordan’s National Jazz Foundation.

It turns out that Jordan secretly muscles those wealthy jazz fans into making his Foundation the beneficiaries on life insurance policies, then murders them while making it look like they died of natural causes. Sun Girl and the Torch shut down Jordan’s racket. 

MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS Vol 1 #88 (October 1948)

Title: The Lethal Lollipops

Villains: International diamond smugglers

Synopsis: When a little girl samples a lollipop then suffers internal damage, Sun Girl and the Human Torch look into it. It turns out that an international smuggling ring had diamonds stolen in England hidden inside a consignment of lollipops sent to the U.S.

The little girl sampling one was not part of the plan, but our heroes corral the smugglers, including a surgeon who is helping them. 

Title: Doomed – One Town

Villains: The Grimes Corporation

Synopsis: Sun Girl investigates when buildings in Largetown (NOT the City of Townsville) begin collapsing into holes, killing and injuring many. Risking life and limb, our heroine learns that the played-out Grimes Mines were never properly sealed up, causing the recent carnage.

Sun Girl tries to get the story out via the newspaper, but the Grimes Corporation also owns that paper. When Sun Girl saves the next victims of a collapse, Mr. Grimes’ granddaughter is among the people who might have died. Grimes changes his ways and makes amends, dedicating the town to Sun Girl.

SUN GIRL Vol 1 #2 (October 1948)

Title: The Menace of the Sparks of Doom

Villain: Professor George Fredericks

Synopsis: Mad Professor George Fredericks exploits Sun Girl’s kind-hearted nature to convince her he was framed for the crime he was committed for. The heroine does her best to help him, only to learn he really was guilty. She is lucky to survive his “sparks of doom” herself and sends him back to the hospital for the criminally insane.   

Title: The Death That Waits

Villains: The Worth Family

Synopsis: Sun Girl gets involved when the heirs to the Worth Family Fortune decide to start using murder in pursuit of their potential inheritance. 

Title: The Crystal Monsters

Villains: Crystal Monsters

Synopsis: Scientific experiments involving radiation and crystals wind up spawning walking crystal monsters who go on a rampage. Luckily Sun Girl becomes involved and destroys the creatures.

HUMAN TORCH Vol 1 #33 (November 1948)

Title: The Ray of Madness

Villains: Aliens from Jupiter

Synopsis: Captain America guest-stars when Jovians ruled by Kleezar use their Madness Ray on Earth animals, causing them to go berserk and attack humans (at lower left).

Kleezar and his followers are the last living beings on Jupiter and want to take over Earth. They next plan to target human beings with the Madness Ray so that Earthlings will destroy each other, but naturally that plan is defeated. Kleezar and his people all wind up dead. 

CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS Vol 1 #69 (November 1948)

Title: Bargain of Death

Villains: The Patcher Gang

Synopsis: The Patcher Gang begin threatening the family of their former leader, who is still in prison and is the only member of the gang who knows the location of their hidden loot of $200,000 (equal to $2,681,000 in 2025).

Sun Girl and the Human Torch, who were performing for children at the Good Heart Children’s Hospital, become involved. They thwart the violent criminals and locate the missing $200,000. They get the reward money of $20,000 and donate it to the children’s hospital. 

MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS Vol 1 #89 (December 1948)

Title: The Case of the Granite Bandit

Villain: The Granite Bandit

Synopsis: Sun Girl and the Human Torch are called in when a supervillain called the Granite Bandit by the press is leading bank robberies. His gun shoots quick-drying granite (not “liquid asbestos”) which disables all the security guards until he and his underlings steal everything they want.   

Our two heroes clash with the villain and his gang a few times and, after surviving a death trap meant to leave them encased in granite forever, they go on to defeat the villain. NOTE: Say what you will, “the Granite Bandit” is still a less silly name than the much later Paste Pot Pete.

Title: The Terrifying Ghosts from the Unknown

Villains: The Uncarans

Synopsis: Alien ghost-like figures who can turn intangible at will begin popping up all over. With no one able to stop the untouchable menaces, not even Sun Girl, they begin using their Prism Bombs in a campaign to force the Earth to surrender.

Sun Girl’s scientist friend Professor Blair informs her that he and his son had temporarily captured one of the aliens and learned they are from a dimension called Uncara. Their dictator Kain wants to lead the men and woman of his dimension in taking over the Earth.   

Blair was able to invent a device to let one person travel to and from Uncara, so he entrusts it to Sun Girl. She travels to that dimension where she confronts Kain and his wife Cara, then destroys the very tangible weapons of the dictator’s army.

Next, she returns to Earth to fight the Uncaran army being led by Kain himself. She again uses her wrist-rays to destroy their weapons and when she likewise destroys the device keeping them on planet Earth, they die. Sun Girl is praised for saving the world. 

SUB-MARINER COMICS Vol 1 #29 (December 1948)

Title: The Flame That Wouldn’t Die

Villains: “Bull” Gresham and Nick Mordo

Synopsis: Rackets boss Bull Gresham is released from prison and makes it clear to his successor Nick Mordo that he intends to eliminate Nick and resume running New York’s organized crime himself. Sun Girl and the Human Torch get involved when bullets start flying in the resulting gang war.

Working with District Attorney Charley Vance, our heroes eventually manage to shut things down, but not before Bull and Mordo die in the final battle. Our heroes are guests at Charley Vance’s wedding.

NOTE: For all I know, Marvel has retconned Nick Mordo into one of Baron Mordo’s ancestors.

SUN GIRL Vol 1 #3 (December 1948)

Title: Bokk the Beast

Villain: Bokk

Synopsis: The Winterfield and Grimes Circus asks Sun Girl to watch over things when their ship arrives in port with Bokk the Beast, a King Kong-sized gorilla they found in the jungle. Naturally, things go wrong and Bokk breaks loose.

Neither Sun Girl nor the army prove able to stop the beast as it rampages through New York City. The next day Sun Girl volunteers to undertake a mission of driving a jeepload of poisoned fruit in hopes of killing Bokk if he eats it all.

The gambit works, but in his death-throes, the beast nearly kills Sun Girl and some innocent bystanders.   

Title: The Leap of Doom

Villain: Luther McCoy

Synopsis: Sun Girl saves Professor Wemblem from a death trap he was abandoned in by career criminal Luther McCoy. Wemblem’s anti-gravity experiments accidentally granted McCoy the ability to leap for hundreds of yards at a time.

Luther left the professor to die and pulled off an armed robbery, easily escaping afterwards through his incredible leaps. Sun Girl tracked him down to Central Park where they clashed, but that fight was interrupted by aliens in a spaceship from the planet Zarko.

Their mission was to abduct a male and female specimen from Earth and bring them to their ruler on Zarko. Two weeks later, the ship arrived and presented Sun Girl and Luther to their leader. Impressed by our heroine’s nobility, they offered to tell her how Zarko’s gift of peace could be granted to the Earth.

Before Sun Girl could accept, McCoy escaped for a crime spree. She and Luther again pitted their powers and their weapons against each other. The people of Zarko decided that Earthlings are too quick to violence and returned our heroine and the criminal to Earth, where she sent McCoy to prison.

HUMAN TORCH Vol 1 #34 (January 1949)

Title: The Flat of the Land

Villains: B4 and the flat dimension

Synopsis: Sun Girl and the Human Torch take action when the U.S. President, the Liberty Bell, plus other dignitaries and objects from around the world disappear. The duo wind up being spirited away like the others, where they learn they are in a two-dimensional world.

NOTE: It’s basically a comic book-level version of Flatlands. The 2nd Dimension is ruled by the alien named B4, who imprisons Sun Girl and the Torch with the other prisoners and objects in his royal museum.

Our heroes free themselves, then the other Earthlings and defeat B4’s forces. Then they force him to return them and the stolen objects to Earth, threatening to imprison B4 on Earth if he ever tries this again.

Title: They All Died Laughing

Villain: The Jokesmith

Synopsis: Tuxedo-clad standup comic Mark Funny is really the Jokesmith. Unlike Ant-Man’s much later supervillain the Voice, the Jokesmith is a mutant whose verbal powers manifest in the way that the laughter from his jokes lets him render his audience completely entranced while his gang members rob them.

Sun Girl and the Human Torch track down the villain and his gang to their hideout, where they capture all of the underlings, but the Jokesmith gets away. He spends the next days preying on lone victims one at a time, making them laugh themselves to death, then he robs them. Our heroes at last arrest him.

Title: The Brain Monster

Villain: The Brain Master

Synopsis: Sun Girl heads west to help out the Hopi Indians when they are suffering a plague of gold robberies being committed by robots. It turns out that the robots are led by a large brain-being who has telepathy and is also a technopath who can animate its army of robots mentally, with no need of a power source.

On the planet Autan the Brain Master and its robots had enslaved all humanoids to make them labor at mining gold, the only thing that the brain creature can eat. It plans to commit genocide on the Autan slaves which have rebelled and take over Earth, using Earthlings as its new gold-mining slaves.

Sun Girl fights back and ultimately kills the Brain Master with her wrist-rays, thus ending it and rendering its robot army inanimate.

MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS Vol 1 #90 (February 1949)

Title: The Giant of the Alps 

Villain: Professor Grimm

Synopsis: Sun Girl and the Human Torch are vacationing in the Swiss Alps when they witness the rampage of a gigantic humanoid called Borkor. Our heroes battle Borkor and trace him back to a mad scientist named Professor Grimm.

The professor experimented on a kidnapped baby with his growth injections and turned it into the giant Borkor. He’s been using it to ravage and plunder, stealing safes full of money for Grimm.

Sun Girl and the Torch outmaneuver Grimm, survive Borkor’s attempts to kill them and use the antidote to return Borkor to human size. Professor Grimm gets killed while trying to escape.

Title: The Vengeance of the Space Monster

Villain: The Meteor Monster

Synopsis: Three scientists have Sun Girl provide security when they conduct their latest experiment. They have created a beam which can fix on objects in space and pull those objects to Earth like a tractor beam.

What the scientists think is just a tank-sized meteor turns out to really be a tentacled monster when they pull it to Earth. The creature is hostile and withstands our heroine’s efforts to destroy it. At last, the scientists’ beam is set in reverse and used to expel the creature back into space.   

HUMAN TORCH Vol 1 #35 (March 1949)

Title: Flame of Fury

Villain: A Human Torch imposter

Synopsis: Sun Girl is left not knowing which fiery figure to help when a duplicate Human Torch arrives on the scene.

Title: The Killer Ray

Villain: A Mad Scientist (name unknown)

Synopsis: Sun Girl and the Human Torch clash with an evil scientist who is using what he calls his Death Ray to further his plans. 

MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS Vol 1 #91 (April 1949)

Title: Trapped by Dizzy Daze

Villain: Dizzy Daze

Synopsis: A criminal genius by the goofy name Dizzy Daze uses his inventions to steal the world’s largest emerald from “Spiffany’s” to cap off a successful crime spree. Sun Girl and the Human Torch vow to catch Daze.

Inspired by that development, Daze flies his aircraft over New York City the next day, pulling a banner challenging Sun Girl and the Torch to come get him. The two heroes approach the villain’s vessel only to have Sun Girl wind up rendered motionless by Daze’s magnetic beam and the Human Torch soaked with water, snuffing out his flames.

Next, the villain orders the Torch to be his go-between with Spiffany’s to return the emerald in exchange for ONE … MILLION … DOLLARS. If he doesn’t, Daze will shut off his magnetic beam, dropping Sun Girl to her death.

Naturally the Human Torch feigns cooperation, then turns the tables. He and Sun Girl proceed to shoot Daze’s aircraft out of the sky to crash in a nearby lake from which the police fish him out.

MARVEL TALES Vol 1 #97 (September 1950)

NOTE: Marvel Mystery Comics changed its title to Marvel Tales, Vol 1 but kept the issue numbering, that’s why it’s already at #97.

Title: Danger in the Sun

Villain: Fake Incan Priest

Synopsis: Borrowing a bit from Gaston Leroux’s horror story Bride of the Sun, this tale features Sun Girl investigating stories of human sacrifices in Peru. She finds a cult being led by a fraudulent Incan Priest who is tricking people into joining his evil organization.

Sun Girl survives the fake priest’s attempt to use her as his cult’s latest human sacrifice to the sun god and defeats his plans. 

FOR MY LOOK AT THE BLONDE PHANTOM’S 1946-1949 STORIES CLICK HERE. (She’s the masked woman in the long red gown in some of the above pictures.)