We Had Super Heroines Too!

By LC Van Savage

Ever want to be an action figure? I’ll bet we all fantasize from time to time, especially during interminable meetings we’re all forced to sit through far more often than any decent human should have to, about being one of those invincible men or women who can save the world every day by ten-thirty AM. I sure do.

Females are allowed to be action figures, you know, although I’m not sure who today’s lady action figures are. In my day, and yes I too groan at those 3 words, there were a couple. Superman was permitted a Supergirl in his life although her relationship to the S-man was a little fuzzy. S-girl arrived around 1958 and since I was 20 then, I wasn’t supposed to be enamoured with comic book heroines, but I was. S-girl was blonde, sassy and built like a brick Kryptonite house and in fact came from that very place as did her mentor, S-man. She was brought to earth by the fervent prayers and wishes of the very lonely, and I do mean really, really lonely Jimmy Olsen. If they ever actually became a couple I don’t know, but when you think about it, Olsen was pretty nerdy and S-girl was a smart-mouthed hottie with all the same powers of S-man. Poor Jimmy; he gets his wish and can’t consummate much with the young damsel of his nightly passions since she was off competing with S-man about who and what needed saving. By ten-thirty AM. And back then, there was really an awful lot of saving work to be done.

S-girl lived in an orphanage I think until she grew up and decided to change her name to Linda Danvers and become a Soap actress in New York City. In the seventies she updated her S-girl skirty threads to a very revealing, very sexy, very short new hot-pants costume, still in the same red, white, blue and gold colors so as to be easily recognized when she flew faster than a speeding bullet to rip thundering locomotives from their tracks nanoseconds before crushing a box of whimpering puppies. S-girl did crave a bit of dashingly good publicity from time to time. I think she eventually became a brunette, or who knows? Maybe she always was one. Hussy.

But long before S-girl screamed onto the scene, there was an older woman charging about saving people by ten-thirty AMs. Her name was Wonder Woman and she blasted onto the All Star comic-book scene around 1941. Thus S-girl had competition, although she didn’t much worry, because Wonder Woman couldn’t even fly. But she did have a Barbie body hard as sculpted steel, her costume all American flag colors, Madonna-like mams of pointed titanium that absolutely never jiggled, sexy boots and those wrist bracelets. Oh my, those Amazon Chain Bands that she’d casually raise up and deflect absolutely all bullets aimed at her fabulous bod, sometimes bouncing them right back at the baddies shooting at her. She also had her magic lariat that got her out of a whole lot of scrapes. And nothing could hold her down. Not even miles of battleship anchor chains. WW would sit around in them for a while, and snap! Off they’d fly and she’d lasso something and pull herself quickly toward her aggressors and dispatch them. Her hair, perfectly coiffed even while blasting through the air on her lariat, was blue-black and thickly curly, held back by that golden forehead band. She was billed as, “stronger than Hercules and more beautiful than Aphrodite.”

WW was Diana something in her civilian life I think, and maybe had a boyfriend who perhaps didn’t really appreciate how truly bewitching his lady love could be in that costume when she was saving folks by ten-thirty AM every day. Wow, what a woman. A real wonder. How I loved those lady saviours. You GO girls!