Comics

[stryder]

While busy looking into stereoscopic anaglyphs I chanced upon Starr Flagg from Manhunt Comics and wondered if CC had perhaps come across "Undercover Girl".

[Image: flagg_starr_cb15.jpg]

https://spyguysandgals.com/sgShowChar.aspx?id=1228

[C C]

Seems like I recall a character's name of "Starr Flagg", so I probably encountered a cover or two somewhere, minus noticing her secret-agent status.

Sally Sleuth is the oldest action woman in comics I ever came across who goes all the way back to 1934 (four years before the official dawn of male superheroes). Though I guess she was originally featured in a pulp magazine (Spicy Detective) rather than a straight-up comic book. The Lone Ranger debuted in the entirely different medium of radio in 1933.

Compared to the sanitized 1950s (with the possible exception of EC comics), it's startling what they could get away with back in the 1930s in terms of profanity, drug use and peddling, violent crime and naughtiness. No surprise that Adolphe Barreaux's artwork looks similar to the illustrators who produced the Tijuana bibles of that era. He did drawings for children's books in the early 1950s. Any tamer (in color) version of Sally Sleuth during that decade (and perhaps the late '40s) was probably done by somebody else.

"Sally was tough and fierce, and with the help of her associates she nabbed the bad guys more often than not. She was also especially dedicated to helping the women who were used and abused by the criminal underworld. It was a sensationalistic nudie strip, to be sure, but one with some surprisingly progressive aspects."

Yeah, the "far from reality" realm of comics, science fiction, fantasy, and exotic adventure was the only genre sphere you could have skilled and derring-do females (who weren't villainesses) without creating a stir. Of course, due to the age and gender of most of those reading them, they also had to look like Charlie's Angels nabbing the bad guys. (Has that really changed much in even the 21st century?)