The Blackhawks & the Tigresses

 
In the story "The Mystery of Tigress Island" (Blackhawk #110, March 1957) we are introduced to a team of female Blackhawk wannabes called the Tigresses. In the story the Blackhawks had been searching for a bad guy named Kurt Ostrec from their secret island base (some secret - it was about as busy as Gilligan's Island with visitors) when a lone jet lands and a woman in uniform climbs out. She says her name is Joan and that she leads a team of females who have patterned themselves after the Blackhawks and that they know how to find Kurt Ostrec. Blackhawk shows his male chauvinist side by chastising Joan and telling her that the idea of some group of girls fighting crime was just plain silly. At any rate, in order to capture Ostrec, the Blackhawks follow Joan to her own secret base, called Tigress Island, where he meets the other five members of her team. Altogether they are Joan, an American, Norwegian Ilse, British Edith, Spanish Rita, Italian Tina and French Yvette. The (rather pompous) Blackhawks are captured by the girls and offered up to Ostrec as a prize. Ostrec comes to the island but it is all a big trap. In reality the girls all lost their husbands to Ostrec and were gunning for him all along using the Blackhawks as bait. The two teams end up banding together and capture Ostrec, who will be held for trial rather than killed as the girls wanted. To my knowledge this was the only appearance of the Tigresses but I rather enjoyed the group. The action figures all used the Star Wars Juno Eclipse figure for their bodies and caps. The heads were from a variety of sources, including another Star Wars figure for Joan, a Pirates of the Caribbean Elizabeth Swann head for Yvette, Juno Eclipse's head for Ilsa, Elizabeth Swann's head from her pirate outfit for Edith, Princess Leia from her prisoner outfit for Tina and the head from a Susan figure from Chronicles of Narnia-Prince Caspian for Rita.