This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog will look at the early stories of Marvel’s superheroine Miss America from back when the company was called Timely Comics.
MISS AMERICA
Created By: Otto Binder and Al Gabriele
Secret Identity: Madeline Joyce
First Appearance: Marvel Mystery Comics #49 (November 1943) Her final Golden Age appearance came in 1948.
Origin: Sixteen-year-old Madeline Joyce was the ward of railroad magnate James Bennett, or “Uncle Jim” as she called him. He showed her one of the outside projects that he financed, an electrical research center set up in what had formerly been a lighthouse.
That night, during a violent thunderstorm, the fascinated Madeline snuck back to the laboratory to more closely examine the equipment. At one point a lightning bolt struck the lab and Madeline, destroying the equipment but granting her superpowers. Adopting the nom de guerre Miss America, she donned a costume and went into action.
Powers: Miss America possessed Superman/ Wonder Woman levels of strength. She could also fly and had x-ray vision. In addition, she had a large degree of invulnerability.
Comment: For a time in the 1970s Miss America was, according to Marvel Comics canon, the mother of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. The Whizzer was their father. That has since been retconned, but she and the Whizzer are still the parents of the Avengers’ foe Nuklo. Continue reading
OMEGON (1915-1916) – Written by George Frederick Stratton, this serialized story dealt with a fictional war of super-scientific weaponry between the United States on one side and China, Japan and Mexico on the other. 
TALES TO ASTONISH Vol 1 #49 (Nov 1963)
Meanwhile, an interdimensional villain called the Eraser has been abducting Earth’s greatest scientists via his hand-weapons that teleport them to his home dimension. Because the process looks like he’s erasing them bit by bit the media dubs him “the Eraser.” 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCE; MARS TO EARTH (1896) – Written by Boston’s John Mccoy in the form of reports sent from future Earth to Mars. 
HAPPY SAINT PATRICK’S DAY! From People’s Favorite Magazine in 1916 to Argosy in the 1930s, the saga of Irish pirate and mercenary soldier Denis Burke unfolded from the pen of H. Bedford-Jones. The fictional buccaneer deserves to be remembered in the same breath 
SUN GIRL 
SUN GIRL Vol 1 #1 (August 1948) 
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. 
KAPITAN MORS DER LUFTPIRAT – From 1908 to 1911 the masked Captain Mors, a combination of Robin Hood, Captain Nemo and Robur, appeared in weekly adventures running 32-33 pages. The character’s creator is not known but over his 3-year run various writers were linked to this German series, which was basically a late Dime Novel but early Pulp Magazine. 
After the initial run of 3 years and a few months, the Captain Mors stories were reprinted around Europe in various languages until 1916. The good captain at first adventured in the skies above, then later took his crew to other planets aboard his “world ship” (which we today would call a spaceship) the Meteor. 
SPIDER-MAN Vol 1 #36 (May 1966) 
She makes a point of showing up at an astro-science exhibit that Peter is visiting and is exasperated once again as the fragments of meteorites and other displays capture Peter’s attention instead of her blonde hotness. (Save your own life and just walk away, Gwen!) 
A TRIP TO THE NORTH POLE or DISCOVERY OF THE TEN TRIBES AS FOUND IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN (1903) – Written by Otte Julius Swenson Lindelof.
STANISLAV SZUKALSKI (1893-1987) – Just as L. Ron Hubbard went from being a pulp story writer to founder of a nutzoid religion, Stanislav Szukalski went from being a celebrated, even brilliant, artist to founder of an equally irrational belief system. 
The topic of this blog post, however, is Zermatism, the insane philosophy that Szukalski founded in 1940. He named it after the city of Zermatt, where he was convinced that survivors of a pre-deluge civilization settled. 
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