Who knew junior high school history teachers could be so sexy? EC Comics did when they introduced Moon Girl, a.k.a. Claire Line, whose costumed superhero outfit was distinctly inappropriate for a junior high teacher in 1947. She also did not git the mold of the teachers I had in junior high a dozen years later.
The character was created by Bill Woolfork and Sheldon Moldoff for an appearance in The Happy Hoolihans #1 (Fall 1947) and was immediately rushed into her own title, this time with Gardner Fox doing the writing while Moldoff continued with the artwork. The Moon Girl comic had a few title changes over its twelve issue run. With issue #2, the title became simply Moon Girl; for issues #7 and 8, the title was Moon Girl Fights Crime!; it then changed again for the final four issues to A Moon, A Girl...Romance -- but Moon Girl only appears in one story, and that in issue #9; the remaining issues tried to cash in on the burgeoning popularity of romance comics. The comic book's numbering was then transferred to Weird Fantasy #13 (transferring a book's numbering to new title was common and done for accounting reasons).
Moon Girl retains credit as being one of two comic books that paved the way for EC's noted horror comics.
Moon Girl ("Princess of the Moon") was, you guessed it, a princess in her native land of remote Sarmakind. She had a magic moonstone that made her invincible in battle. This made her verklempt and saddened because there was no male she could not defeat. She could never marry a man who was not better than she on the battlefield. So when Prince Mengu from another kingdom (and a true son of Hercules) came to woo her, she beat him up and sent him away. But the heart knows what the heart wants, and Moon Girl felt very guilty. Mengu traveled to America, where he became a gym teacher named Lionel Manning. Moon Girl tracked him down, became Claire Lune, and got a job in the same school. There, they joined to fight crime and wear tight costume.
Take my word for it, if you were a young comic book reader in 1947 this would all make sense.
Alas, costumed heroines and comic book publishers can be fickle. With issue #2, Mengu was dropped from the title and his role in the series became severely reduced. C'est la vie...et amour.
This first issue contains four stories about Moon Girl:
- "Moon Girl and the Prince" (the origin story)
- "Invaders from Venus" (Venus is ruled by women, all of whom have healthy bosoms and gorgeous gams; the queen sends some female warriors to Earth to capture men who will replace their planet's weak stock; thin a role reversal Mars Needs Women)
- "Satana, Queen of the Underworld" (Satana wears a low cut tight black dress and a cowl with a hood that has horns, so you know she's evil. Moon girl and the Prince spoil her plans, but she gets away. She will return!)
- "Smuggler's Cove" (The Navy has sent the submarine Excelsior to check out a small group of islands where a a gang of smuggler's is thought to have their base. The baddies drop a depth charge on the sub and it is not heard from again. The daughter of the sub's captain is one of claire student and she is distraught, so Moon Girl decided to lend a hand.)
As noted elsewhere, hastily drawn women with Kewpie doll faces never did much for me...the standards of illustration, with some noble exceptions, was better (for the most part!) if less bestselling in the early '70s comic books I would dig into (while still enjoying the reprint comics then for less-tame scripting).
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