Golden Age Heroine - Woman in Red

 
After reviewing my previous posts it has come to my attention that I have yet to feature a golden age heroine. I did feature a villainess (one of Blue Beetle's), but not one of the good girls. So here she is - along with one of her villains as a bonus feature - the Woman in Red. She was actually the first "superheroine," first appearing in March 1940. (OK so a certain school of purists claim that no one without an actual superpower or two qualifies a a superhero or heroine, but then that would also exclude Batman and a number of others - also a character named Fatomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle was published a month before the Woman in Red, but she fit more into the jungle girl genre than superhero genre). Anyway, the Woman in Red was from the Better/Standard/Nedor house and first appeared in Thrilling Comics, the feature character of which was Doc Strange (not to be confused with the later Marvel character of Doctor Strange). Whew!! Got all that?? At any rate the Woman in Red was another one of those police people who didn't seem to think the law was catching the criminals and took the law into her own hands with a disguise and an automatic. Her real name was Peggy Allen, a policewoman who seemed to work directly for the police commissioner and be sent out on cases by him. Not sure how that was suppose to work. She actually had a pretty good run for essentially a second-string character, lasting until 1946 in Thrilling Comics and appearing in a couple of issues of America's Best Comics to boot. Due to the very nature of the strip she was mostly a private detective in a costume, but was certainly not shy about using the automatic she carried. The Woman in Red was revived by AC Comics for their vault of heroes story line and also by Dynamite Comics for their Project Superpowers. The action figure was created by using a Marvel Jean Grey figure, on which I painted the mask, gloves and shoes, and then exercising my (admittedly meagre) sewing skills to create the cloak and hood she wore. In the comic this garment seemed to conceal rather than accent her figure, setting the Woman in Red apart from a number of the other female heroines of the Golden Age. Next up will be one of her more interesting villains - Black Death.