Heroines, Abandoned!

 

Wow! It's been 7½ years since we looked in on these ladies:

Launched in late 1972 to coincide with the women's liberation movement, widow Greer Grant, former animal specialist Shanna O'Hara, and nurses Linda Carter, Georgia Jenkins, and Christine Palmer hit the comic book spinner rack starring in, respectively, The Claws of the Cat, Shanna the She-Devil, and Night Nurse--and to further entice female comics readers, all were staffed at least in part with female creative talent.

Immediately assigned to bimonthly publication, however, all three books had only a brief run of 4-5 issues, their final covers pictured above. But how did they fare in quality and interest? Did these titles show any promise? And did they end on a high note, or simply run out of steam? Let's look back some fifty years to those issues for the answers.

Claws of the Cat #4 - June, 1973
Writer: Linda Fite
Artists: Jim Starlin, Alan Weiss
Inks: Frank McLaughlin
Letterer: Denise Wohl (as Denise Vladimer)

With this title's third issue taking three months to get to press, each issue having a different inker, and cycling through four pencillers after Marie Severin left with issue 2, the writing was practically on the wall for the Cat with issue #4. While Ms. Fite had seen it through to the end, the script in this issue is an uncomfortable read, lacking polish throughout and giving the impression that Editor Roy Thomas was unavailable when its pages were dropped on his desk. Its villain, the Man-Bull, runs into Greer Grant and her friend Sally in a tavern while in his human form--rebuffed when neither woman wants anything to do with him and being subsequently soundly thrashed when the male patrons take offense at his behavior. In retaliation, he changes to his more brutal form and takes his revenge on the bar and everyone in it.

When the fight breaks out into the street, there's a running battle between himself and the Cat that also involves (as if on cue) a stampeding herd of wild steers. But in the end, the Man-Bull is handed his horns--and despite how we got here, this 15-page story concludes with a job-well-done vibe, as well as a sign-off that all but telegraphs the book's cancellation.

Shanna the She-Devil #5 - August 1973
Script: Steve Gerber
Pencils: Ross Andru
Inks: Vince Colletta
Letterer: Jean Simek (as Jean Izzo)

Series writer Carole Seuling's departure following the title's third issue opened the door for Steve Gerber (who provided additional dialog for Seuling in issue #1) to return and script its last two--with penciller Ross Andru finishing out the series after replacing George Tuska starting with the second issue. We don't really get cracking on the issue's story until eight pages in, where Shanna and her friend Patrick McShane are brought to a S.H.I.E.L.D. carrier by agent Jakuna Singh to be warned of mutant activity in her neck of the woods jungle, a warning delivered in part by you-know-who.

Aside from an awkwardly delivered plug for the X-Men book (on hiatus at this point in time) and misnaming our friend Fred Duncan, the scene is a solid segment that segues to the introduction of this story's villain--Nekra, who has come to seek revenge on Shanna for the capture of the Mandrill. Following that, we're given an interesting series of panels that have Shanna reassessing her life in the wild. Regardless of the status of the book's future, Andru appears to have been a good choice for the lead character and her adventures.

As for her inevitable clash with Nekra, Shanna is appropriately outmatched in terms of strength and invulnerability, but resourceful in methods of defense and attack--and at the story's conclusion, though couched in a focus on Nekra, we have yet another question mark as to what lies ahead for our she-devil.

Night Nurse #4 - May, 1973
Writers: Jean Thomas and Linda Fite
Artist: Winslow Mortimer
Letterer: Charlotte Jetter
Colorist: Andrea Hunt

As we see, writer Jean Thomas, who flew solo on scripting issues 1-3, is now joined by Claws of the Cat writer Linda Fite. Whether that's as co-scripter or as someone pitching in to complete the story is unclear--yet in the story's attempts to plant red herrings, it seems at times that there was no meeting of the minds between the two until the time arrives to reveal this story's villain. As for our night nurse this issue, elbowing her way past Linda Carter to come to the fore is Christine Palmer, accepting a position near Boston in a forbidding manor off the sea, in an opening segment which establishes the story's cast sufficiently enough to have us intrigued with how the story will play out.

Almost immediately we're provided with a well-balanced assortment of characters for a mystery that takes place on a dark and stormy night: The elderly and kind Edna Porter; the brusque and off-putting butler, Harold; Edna's paraplegic and curt nephew, Derek (who has "love interest" practically stenciled on his forehead); and Christine herself, an innocent who probably feels at this point that she's walking on egg shells.

As the story progresses, we never know what to think of Edna and Harold, who seem to be both at odds with each other yet concealing the same secret(s). And there's Sea-Cliff Manor itself, with its own potential danger to offer--by way of strange activity on its grounds, or even its own aging edifice.

It isn't the first instance of tense moments between Harold and Edna, so our sympathies have naturally gravitated toward the growing trust between Derek and Christine. But when Christine continues to encounter more signs of an unknown intruder on the grounds--well, yikes, did we misjudge the situation.

You would think Edna would swiftly be taking steps to recover her nephew's body (at the very least if only to ascertain that he hadn't survived), rather than assuming the worst and solemnly returning to the manor as if there was nothing more to be done. And in that, she and Harold appear to be of like mind.

Though there have certainly been lead female characters since this experiment of Marvel's (if that's what we're calling it) folded, to the best of my knowledge the effort to attach distaff writing talent to the company's stable of books hasn't been repeated; in fact, I don't think that I could name at least five female Marvel writers off the top of my head who worked on Marvel's books between, say, 1970-2010. (I get as far as Louise Simonson and Ann Nocenti, but that's about it. Oh, and Jo Duffy, slipping my mind only because I didn't read most of the books she handled.) A curious statistic for the House of Ideas.