I would have bet good money that the obscure 1960s super-heroine Pow-Girl would never reappear, and I’d have lost that bet.
Debuting in Zip Comics 27 (July 1942), criminologist John Raymond “…merely theorized about criminals by day (but) at night, in his green-and-yellow costume, he dealt with them more practically — trapping them, as he put it, in a web of their own making,” comics historian Don Markstein recalled.
In his first recorded exploit, the professor saved a student named Rose Wayne from the Black Dragon of Death, accidentally revealing his secret identity to her in the process.
Ultimately, they married, but 20 years later, as a suburban housewife, Rose isn’t so thrilled about her middle-aged husband’s return to masked heroics.
Even the henpecked hero’s mother-in-law lets him have it: “The trouble with you, Mr. Smart-Aleck Web, is you’ve got cob-webs in the brain!”
In Mighty Comics 43 (Feb. 1967), Rose decides to fight fire with fire. Having secretly attended gymnastics classes, Rose goes to work helping her husband fight crime as the mysterious Pow-Girl.
“Thanks for saving my life,” the unsuspecting Web tells her. “I’ve never heard of you before — but I guess the world will be hearing a lot about you from now on. You fight like a tigress!”
“What a sweet thing to say,” she thinks.
There the matter might have rested, given the fact that the Mighty Comics heroes were scrapped shortly thereafter. But those surprisingly durable staples of 21st-century supermarket bookshelves, the Archie Comics Digests, had other plans.
In Betty & Veronica Double Digest 318 (Jan. 2024), writer Tom DeFalco and artist Steven Butler show us how the Riverdale rivals help Pow-Girl when her costume is ruined.
Meanwhile, over in World of Archie Double Digest 135 (Jan. 2024), Dan Parent, DeFalco, and Butler fill us in on how Pow-Girl teams up with Pureheart the Powerful for some holiday crusading.
So that’s “Pow-Girl.” I grant you it’s a silly name, but at least it rhymes with “Cow Girl.”
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