Early Black Comic Book Heroes: Butterfly (I)

Hell-Rider was a black and white magazine published by Skywald (Sol Brodsky and Herschel Waldman) in the early 1970s, and it ran for just two issues, thanks to brutal competition from Marvel. Issue #1 features the origin of Hell-Rider, by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, and the way the book is put together is interesting as a concept. There are two other features in the book - The Butterfly, and The Wild Bunch - but rather than be separate entities, their stories are part of the bigger Hell-Rider story.The book has a painted cover by Harry Rosenbaum.



We're going to pick up the story at the Butterfly chapter, because she happens to be the first African American female superhero in comics, that little piece of important comic book historical knowledge courtesy of fellow blogger Britt Reid. So far in the story we've been treated to Hell-Rider's origin, and introduced to the bad guys, a bunch of heroin smugglers dressed up as cats. Gary Friedrich's involvement in this script, and subsequently in the creation of Ghost Rider at Marvel, is no coincidence - there are a lot of similarities. Anyway, the story so far is that Brick Reese, upon graduating Harvard Law School, doesn't want to follow his dad's footsteps into his law firm. Instead he goes out to the West Coast, and starts riding with a gang of Hell's Angels known as The Wild Bunch, living a debauched lifestyle. Then he gets called up, and ships out to Vietnam. His tour of duty is just about over when he's caught in an ambush and badly wounded. He recovers after surgery, but still has a bullet lodged near his brain. He agrees to be a guinea pig for a new shot that it is hoped will dissolve the bullet, and it's working, only the side effects are similar to the super-soldier serum used on Steve Rogers to turn him into Captain America. Brick has superhuman strength. Back in the States he gets a call from his Uncle Richard, telling him he's inherited some dough from his grandfather. Brick buys himself a nice home and throws a lot of parties. He also gets himself a cool Harley chopper. But boredom, and dwindling financial resources, prompt Brick to get a job with his uncle's law firm. He's just started when this happens:

Brick goes to the party, wary of Julie Storm's previous addiction to hard drugs. He keeps an eye on her, and notices her being bundled away by a guy dressed in a cat suit. It turns out that the boss of the cat gang, The Claw, wants to see her. He was the one who pushed the heavy drugs onto her in the first place, but although he's not pleased that she's managed to kick her smack habit, what he really wants are the boots she wears on her performances. For some reason he's hidden lots of heroin in those boots, and he wants it back!! Julie's happy to give him the boots, except she already gave them away to a singer friend of hers, Marian Michaels, who works in Las Vegas, which is where The Butterfly comes in. You'll note that she combines the use of an Adam Strange-style jet pack with sucker-tipped fingers like the Beetle, as well as the power to use blinding light that preempts the eventual appearance of the Dazzler in the X-Men years later:

So this leads the reader into The Wild Bunch chapter of the story. The Wild Bunch has an African American member, Deke:

Without really asking any questions, The Wild Bunch accept the task of taking the boots to Brick Reese in LA, but on the road they begin to have doubts.

The Wild Bunch stop to talk, and right then The Claw and his goons speed past in a limo. The Claw spots the boots on the back of a bike, pulls up, and sets his men loose to recover the drugs. The Wild Bunch win the fight, but while they're engaged in the melee, the Claw swipes the boots and escapes, leaving his men behind. Cut to Vegas and Marian, alias Butterfly, along with Ruby of The Wild Bunch:

Meanwhile the Wild Bunch catch up with The Claw and retrieve the boots, but are then outnumbered by The Claw's reinforcements, parachuting in from choppers. Slink, however, escapes with the boots, and makes it to Vegas and to Marian and Ruby's room. The rest of the Wild Bunch are tied to stakes in the desert and left to die. In Vegas Ruby examines the boots, discovers the heroin, and they put in a call to Brick:

It turns out, meanwhile, that The Claw and his men have some kind of fascist commune out in the desert, and they're funding the build up of a private army by selling drugs. The Wild Bunch manage to escape to freedom, jumping a chasm on their bikes (this was in the age of Evel Knievel!). Claw, however, had already flown off in his chopper to get the boots from Slink and the girls in Vegas. He gets there, but Ruby and the others stall him, in the hope that Brick will arrive in time to help. Brick is on his way okay, as Hell-Rider. The story actually started with this great double-paged splash...

...which is reprised by another spectacular entrance from Hell-Rider:

And so it's all over, for now, until the next, and what turns out to be the last issue. Here's some background on the book that was printed at the beginning of the magazine, and also some biographic info on Andru & Esposito.

In the next Out Of This World post, we'll take a look at the second issue of Hell-Rider, and The Butterfly's part in that. We'll also attempt to analyze the image presented by Marian Michaels, alias The Butterfly, the first female African American super-heroine. Thanks to Jodyanimator for the scans.

Nurses At War: Our Fighting Forces 53 - "The Gunner and the Nurse"

This Jan/Feb 1960 issue of DC's Our Fighting Forces (#53) features a great Joe Kubert cover, not included here. The set of scans I have available (not mine) has a defaced cover. The splash page is the same scenario as the cover but redrawn by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, who are the story artists in this one.

The script is by Robert Kanigher and follows his formula which uses the first half of the story to set the scene and lay the groundwork for the introduction of the main idea. This first section ends with Gunner taking a rest in a trench after some enemy action has been dealt with.

It should be mentioned that Gunner and Sarge are on a Pacific island. Gunner wakes up from his nap to find a gorgeous army nurse looking down at him. She's on a mission to kiss every American hero on the island, and Gunner is about to be a beneficiary of this enterprise when Sarge steps in and whisks the nurse off on a tour of their habitat. Sarge is also berating his subordinate in front of the lady, which frustrates Gunner even more. Suddenly the group is set upon by a couple of enemy troops, and Sarge has to take the responsibility of dealing with them while Gunner protects the nurse. When the skirmish is over it puts Sarge even more in the hero's light, and the nurse plants one of her hero award kisses on him, which winds Gunner up even more.

Sarge utilizes the rest of Nurse Julie's visit to impress her with his battle tales, but when it comes time for her to leave, Gunner is entrusted with the job of taking her back out to the ship. Just as he delivers her on board and is saying farewell, the vessel is struck by an enemy torpedo and they are forced into the lifeboat as the ship starts to sink. Before they can reach safety a Japanese Zero joins the attack and strafes them with its machine guns. Gunner shoots back but is clipped by the Zero's wing on its first pass. As it comes round a second time Gunner opens up and downs the plane, saving Julie's life. When Julie pulls herself back together after her near death experience, she gives Gunner that kiss he's been craving, sending him into a state of bliss.

Some panels stand out, like this one where Gunner takes on the enemy plane.

Julie comes across as a confident, assertive young woman, very feminine but ultimately supportive of male dominance. Although in some ways acting in a liberated fashion, she also willingly makes herself an object of male exploitation. She has a cute, practical, short hairstyle suitable for war in the Pacific, but is still angelic in overall appearance and demeanor.

Some late 50s/early 60s DC Comics depictions of kissing behavior are quite interesting. In this story we've got a nurse who is consciously going around kissing the soldiers, which undoubtedly would have had an uplifting effect on their morale but in a real life situation might have earned her a questionable reputation. An upcoming post on this blog will examine the phenomenon of the kissing booth and kissing fund-raisers, starting with the example presented by Lois Lane 21 (November 1961). But for now, back to Our Fighting Forces 53.

Essentially, in this story the nurse's presence creates a loose, temporary 'family' situation with Julie and Sarge as the couple, and Gunner in the role of something like a teenage boy. Julie respects Sarge for his manly superiority, justified by his acts of heroism, which Gunner is aching to emulate and finally gets the chance to when he protects the nurse. He's become a man, and Julie will petition the Sarge on his behalf to allow him to engage in 'grown up' activities - going on patrol, much as a mother in a traditional nuclear family might persuade her husband that their son is now ready to drive. Because it's not actually a family, Julie is free to reward Gunner with the adult privilege of a sexy kiss, now that he's proved he's a man.

The image of nurses presented by this story includes that of the sexy nurse, toned down for code approved comics and because DC generally provided respectable reading material appropriate for a younger audience in the Silver Age. So although it's a mild example, nevertheless Julie appears as beautiful, desirable, and importantly for this stereotype, available, and even promiscuous, albeit in this fairly muted way. She's there for men to enjoy. This can be a particularly damaging popular image of nurses and nursing which, in the worst of instances, can encourage sexual harassment and assault of female nurses by male patients and medical staff. It may also have contributed significantly to the lowering of the nurse's professional status in the eyes of the public, something the profession has long fought to counteract with stereotype disconfirming media campaigns. No harm was intended with this story, of course. It was simply using a popular theme from the time -American soldiers loved having nurses around - and surely there were few other western women for them to interact with when they were deployed. I think it's no coincidence that the great war veteran comic book writers and artists reverentially portray nurses in a variety of ways in their stories. I can't think of any examples where nurses are disrespectfully portrayed by them - Jack Kirby's and Bob Kanigher's nurses seem to always be the self-sacrificing angels, and Nurse Julie in this story is also that primarily. She's sacrificing her own safety to see to the well-being of the fighting men. This story does incorporate a little of that sexy nurse image as well, however, although nothing like the way Stan Lee used that image for Nellie the Nurse, the subject of some upcoming posts right here on Out Of This World.