Mother Hubbard

Bizarro Back Issues: The Most Terrifying Superhero Story Ever! (1942)
Bizarro Back Issues: The Most Terrifying Superhero Story Ever! (1942)
Bizarro Back Issues: The Most Terrifying Superhero Story Ever! (1942)
I've written before about how a lot of the fun of reading Golden Age comics is in seeing people who have no idea what they're doing scrambling to figure out the limits of a whole new medium, but if you ever need definitive proof that it was the Wild West back then, just flip through the pages of 1942's Scoop Comics. It's the home of an early superheroine called Mother Hubbard, and if you haven't heard of her, don't worry. I hadn't either, until I read about her in Jon Morris's League of Regrettable Superheroes, and I think he said it best: "Back then, everyone in a cape and cowl fought a few Nazi masterminds. Only Mother Hubbard confronted a race of gnomes who pried the eyes out of children's heads with a crowbar!" Now that is how you sell a comic book.