Monday, October 30, 2023

MINOR SUPER-HERO 043: MISS AMERICA

(Military Comics 001-007, 1941-1942) 

I am not the first to note this by a country mile but it must be said every time she comes up: she wishes to have all of the powers of the Statue of Liberty and then the Statue of Liberty visits her in a dream and gifts them to her. If USA didn't exist then this would be a shoe-in for "most outlandish patriotic hero concept" but as it stands I reckon that they're tied.


Those powers, by the way, aren't "being enormous and made of bronze" like you might expect but rather a host of generic Golden Age magical abilities such as teleportation, telekinesis and transmutation - particularly of goons into birds and trees and such.

Miss America gets brought back every once in a while but the most noteworthy thing about her, her wild origin, was retconned in the Eighties. Now instead of wishing for the powers of the Statue of Liberty and then getting them (absurd, laughable) she wished for the powers of the Statue of Liberty near the entrance to a secret government project underneath the statue and was given powers by them (high concept, realistic).

In conclusion: I quite like Golden Age Miss America but find it hard to get excited about her later incarnations.

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