Golden Age Superheroine Comic Museum
Our Mission
The Golden Age Superheroine Comic Museum seeks to create and cultivate an appreciation in the stories, art, creators, and unique characters of superhero comics and explore their impact on American culture.
Collection Development
Female superheroes of the Golden Age of Comics have that unique quality of being the first attempts at female superheroes with a variety of different ideas and concepts. Writers had the freedom to explore themes and push the boundaries of the time period, limited only by their editor or employers wishes and many got away with radical stories or art that would be hard to get published even today. Female superheroes also had the unique flexibility that they adapted to the ever changing genres of the early to mid-1950’s, often allowing them to survive longer than male counterparts. This subject guide is designed to introduce anyone to the crazy ideas, zany concepts, and sometimes risqué art of Golden Age female superheroes.
The Golden Age of comics started in 1938 with first appearance of Superman in Action Comics #1 and would continue and ended in the early 1950’s to mid-1950’s depending on the source. Female superheroes would not come onto scene until 1940 with the mysterious Fantomah. After the appearance of Fantomah, female superheroes exploded as more and more female superheroes began appearing. The most famous and long lasting of female superheroes, Wonder Woman, would not appear until 1941 and would quickly become a star of her own comic. Miss Fury, the first female superhero created and drawn by a woman, would appear the same year in Sunday comic strips. It’s important to note that in this time during comic history comic books and comic strips were much more fluid than today. Miss Fury would later get her own brief comic reprinting her regular Sunday adventures while Wonder Woman would have a run in newspaper comic strips. The success of both lead to numerous other women getting a shot at titles and some would get several chances especially as the superhero genre seemed to be dying out in the early 1950’s.
This guide will specialize in those female superheroes and give insight into the characters, the stories, and the creators of the time period. Original source material will be highlighted including reprints and digital versions of the comics. Also any information on the creators will be included as well as information on the Golden Age of comics in general to give a better perspective of the time period and why the creators had such free reign especially since comics were viewed as materials for children. It also explains why comic books began to come out more irregularly and the tendency for big anthology-style titles.