A Couple Pulp Ladies
Although most women in the pulps fell
under two categories: one, they were pretty damsels to be rescued, or two, they
were Mata Hari’s or femme fatales. A few
exceptions do come to mind. Back in 1921, Johnston McCulley’s short novel, The
Masked Woman was originally published as a
serial in The Washington Post; this is another of McCulley's early costumed
characters, appearing nearly two decades before The Domino Lady and The Black
Cat. Like her future protégés, she brought beauty, brains, and sex appeal to
the female vigilante long before they were popular. Calling herself Madame
Madcap, she wears a sexy evening gown, long black cloak with hood, and a black
mask to cover her features. Appearing mysteriously, she recruits a gang of
hoodlums to do her bidding, demanding complete loyalty. Then she sets them up
for a fall, handing them over to the police with enough evidence to convict.
This was an interesting story from the very first. As with most of McCulley's
stories, his characters are heroes who act outside the law, but for the good of
society - or for a purpose, like Zorro. Though there are no gun battles or
sword fights, we see plenty of fisticuffs. Madame Madcap's chauffeur and
bodyguard is a huge, muscular black man, and her right hand man is a professor
of anthropology, who is studying the criminal element of society.
The Masked Woman was the forerunner of
The Domino Lady, a masked crime fighter that appeared in 1936. Truth is many of
Johnston McCulley’s characters were the influence of the pulp heroes of the
1930s. Like The Masked Woman, The Domino Lady was a beautiful woman in a mask.
Criminals had murdered her father, and she was after them, and any that got in
her way. She wears a gown of either black or white satin, daringly cut and
backless. The halter-neck of the negligible bodice revealed a gleaming expanse
of faultless white bosom and creamy shoulders. She drew a cape of black silk
around her shoulder, then a shiny black domino mask over her eyes. Her
adventures appeared in SAUCY ROMANTIC ADVENTURES and MYSTERY ADVENTURE
MAGAZINE.
Sheena, Queen of The Jungle, first
appeared in comic books, but was so popular she moved over to movies and pulps.
Wearing a leopard-skin, she is a golden-haired beauty. Slim, tall and bronzed,
with blue eyes. Unfortunately, she was short-lived in the pulps; only two
issues were published. Fiction House released SHEENA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE in
1951, with three novelettes; then a final story was published in JUNGLE STORIES
in 1954.
Lady super heroes fared much better in
the comic books, as the men seemed to dominate the pulp magazines, which to me
is a surprise. The Black Cat was merely
a secondary character in The Angel Detective, which ran for one issue, then
folded. However, there were comic books that featured The Angel and The Black
Cat, but I’m not sure these were the same. Could be, though. I’ve never been
able to figure out why there were so few masked heroines in the pulps. Of
course boys were probably the majority readers of the pulps, and I’m sure they
wanted to read about characters they could connect to. Still, boys were also
fascinated with girls and they read comic books that featured them.
No comments:
Post a Comment