Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: golden age, marvel, Miss Fury

The Black Widow-Inspiring Miss Fury by June Tarpé Mills, at Auction

"Like some fantastic creation, Black Fury relentlessly fights crime in all its phases, in the distorted minds of ruthless men.  A beautiful girl, like a phantom crusader for what is right…"  So began a March 29, 1941 teaser for a new comic strip which included the first image the public ever saw of this early female superhero, who is best remembered today by the name Miss Fury.  A second teaser the next day elaborated, "A beautiful girl sets out to fight crime alone, with the aid of a power that is accidentally put under her control."  But more importantly, the second teaser revealed that this comic strip had been created by Tarpé Mills.

June Tarpé Mills (1912-1988) had an incredibly underappreciated career as a newspaper strip and comic book artist during the Golden Age.  She is best remembered for her long-running comic strip Miss Fury (1941-1951) which was also made into an eight-issue comic book series (1942-1945) from Marvel/Timely containing reprints of Miss Fury Sunday pages by Mills with covers by Alex Schomburg.  There's a rare high-grade issue of the final issue of this series with Miss Fury #8 (Timely, 1946) CGC VF/NM 9.0 Off-white to white pages up for auction in the 2022 September 8 – 11 Comics & Comic Art Signature® Auction #7279 at Heritage Auctions.

After attending the Pratt Institute, Mills worked as a fashion artist, and may also have worked in animation, with a New York Post article noting, "she created a few cat characters which were used in a series of pictures."  Her first known comic work was Daredevil Barry Finn which debuted in Amazing Mystery Funnies volume 2 #2, hitting newsstands in early January 1939.  Mills did somewhat regular comic work late 1938 through late 1940 via comic book production studio Funnies Inc.

And then came Miss Fury, which was originally titled Black Fury. While many references call Black Fury/Miss Fury a Sunday-only strip, at least one newspaper, the Washington Evening Star, ran a short-lived daily version that began on March 31, 1941.  The first Black Fury Sunday strip began the following Sunday, April 6, 1941.  The daily strip ended on May 31, 1941, in the Washington Evening Star.  The last issue of the Sunday strip under the Black Fury title came on December 7, 1941.  The newly retitled Miss Fury then commenced on December 21, 1941.

What prompted the title change?  As it happens, there were no fewer than three comic features named Black Fury launched in early 1941.  Such coincidences and their resulting potential fallout were more common than one might think in the early boom years of the Golden Age of comic books, as publishers rushed to stake out their territory.  Fantastic Comics #17 from publisher Fox Feature Syndicate with a superhero character named Black Fury drawn by Dennis Neville hit newsstands around February 10, 1941.  Street & Smith's Super-Magic Comics #1, debuting on newsstands around March 14, 1941, was primarily a vehicle for real-life stage magician Blackstone the Magician and also contained a feature called Rex King, Black Fury.  And of course, Mills' Black Fury was first depicted in newspapers in a teaser on March 29, 1941.

While we can't say for sure how subsequent matters might have played out absent further information, this sequence of events and the people involved tells a possible story.  Fox Feature Syndicate publisher Victor Fox was notorious for legal wrangling with rivals.  When Rex King returned in Super-Magician Comics #2, with a newsstand date of July 22, 1941, he had been renamed Rex King, Adventurer.  And as noted, Black Fury was renamed Miss Fury on December 21, 1941.  In addition to comic books, Fox had previously published some of his characters, most notably Blue Beetle, as newspaper strips as well, and he was not a publisher who would have let such coincidences go unchallenged.  The 1941 renaming of both Street & Smith's Rex King, Black Fury and of Mills' Black Fury, while Fox's version continued in various titles through to his 1942 bankruptcy, suggests that he may have noticed and forced the name changes of those other two characters.

The apparent rising success of Miss Fury through its first two years was such that Mills began to get a public profile by 1943, as a number of newspaper articles profiled her and the popularity of her comic strip.  This success may have helped prompt the Marvel/Timely comic books series, which launched in late 1942.  Despite ostensibly being a quarterly, the series managed only eight issues from 1942-1945, perhaps in part as a result of the difficulty in obtaining paper due to WWII-era newsprint usage restrictions.  This same difficulty certainly caused the page count of the series to drop from 64 pages in issue #1 down to 32 pages by issue #8.  Most comic book titles on the stands over this period experienced similar page count drops.

According to a John Romita interview in Comic Book Artist #6, his now-iconic skintight 1970 costume redesign for Black Widow was based on Miss Fury: "I did the costume on the Black Widow. One of my favorite strips from when I was a kid was Miss Fury. They had done a Miss Fury book at Marvel, and when I found out they had the rights to her, I said I'd love to do a Miss Fury book sometime. I had done an updated drawing of Miss Fury, and Stan said, 'Why don't we redesign the Black Widow costume based on Miss Fury?' So I took the mask off her face, and made the Black Widow the one in the patent leather jumpsuit. That was why the Black Widow changed."

There is currently a documentary film, Miss Fury: The Tarpé Mills Story, in post-production according to IMDB, and the character has continued to enjoy popularity in recent times.

This CGC 9.0 copy is the second highest graded copy on the CGC Census, with only a single CGC 9.2 graded higher.  The CGC 9.2 copy has apparently never come up for sale at public auction, and it's been seven years since a CGC 9.0 copy has traded hands at public auction.  One of the earliest female comic superheroes, Miss Fury debuted nearly seven months before Wonder Woman's first appearance in All-Star Comics #8, and there's a rare chance to get a high-grade copy of this Golden Age Marvel/Timely comic book featuring a historically important character with Miss Fury #8 (Timely, 1946) CGC VF/NM 9.0 Off-white to white pages up for auction in the 2022 September 8 – 11 Comics & Comic Art Signature® Auction #7279 at Heritage Auctions. If you've never bid at Heritage Auctions before, you can get further information, you can check out their FAQ on the bidding process and related matters.

Miss Fury #8 (Timely, 1946) CGC VF/NM 9.0 Off-white to white pages. Alex Schomburg drew the super-heroic cover for this final issue of the title. To date, only one other copy of #8 has been assigned a higher grade by CGC. Overstreet 2022 VF/NM 9.0 value = $1,164; NM- 9.2 value = $1,650. CGC census 9/22: 2 in 9.0, 1 higher.

CGC Grader Notes:
light foxing to cover
light staple rust
very small crease left top of back cover

View the certification for CGC Certification ID 2708171002.

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