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Thanks to Visual News
Comic Girl Power, 1940s
If you like this, check out:
"Photograph of a time-traveler", 1940
“A Little Jive is Good for You” – Martha Tilton
“Juke Box Saturday Night” – Glenn Miller Modernaires
“Clink, Clink, Another Drink” – Spike Jones and His City Slickers
“Love Turns Winter to Spring” – Martha Tilton
Marilyn Monroe as Norma Jeane
Mike the Headless chicken
'The Ropes at Disney', 1943
Adrienne Nichols, Girl Wrestler, 1948
'Life on Other Worlds', 1940s
New York, 1940s, by Stanley Kubrick
Colour photographs of Winston Churchill painting, France, 1948
Slumber Party for 300 Girls, California, 1944
Dizzy Dali Dinner, 1941
Radiation Posters, 1947
"How to Make Friends by Telephone" c.1940s
Summer on Cape Cod, 1940
"My Grandpa's Friends", 1940s
Beetle Wrecks, 1940s-1970s
Harley-Davidson Brochure, 1948
Willys Jeep Ads, 1945
In an odd way, most of these cover illustrations feel like a kind of gender-switched echo of the series of “Man’s Life” magazine covers you featured in another capsule. These are maybe a bit less lurid, but not by all that much.
I’m wondering if the girl on the cover of the “Exciting” comics is supposed to be the “Black Terror, Nemesis of Crime”. Each issue shows her on the cover while boasting the tagline “Featuring The Black Terror”, But she looks more like a typical “Jungle Goddess” type character than a Shadow/Batman type crimefighter.
Actually black terror is a man and it is interesting that he didn’t get the cover. he is a superhero who wears a black suit with a skull and cross bones on his chest.
“COMIC GIRL POWER”?
More like male fantasy material. Bikinis in space?
Princess Pantha must have a *really* sharp knife – after all, she seems to be able to shave her legs and her pits with it…
Those are Alex Schomburg covers.
Male fantasy, objectifying, whatever. I think it’s pretty awesome that the women are depicted as kicking ass and taking care of themselves. I can give a ‘hell yeah’ to that.
Had to come back to add that you have to consider everything within its historical context. 1940s? That’s a great thing, particularly for that time. It’s competing with a submissive, passive female image the majority of women and men were being socialized to expect and/or desire.
Definitely a sister-doing-it-for-herself and the rescuer rather than the rescued, but still scantily-clad and so appealling to the male buyer. All the same it might be a genuine attempt to attract the female reader. Give them the benefit of the doubt?