Miss America Magazine #2

Miss America Magazine #2 (1944)
by Stuart Little & Ruth Atkinson

This is definitely one of the most unusual things I’ve had to review, since it’s not exactly a comic book. After its first issue as Miss America Comics, the series was retitled as an actual magazing.

According to the first page, the model on the cover dressed as Miss America ia Dolores Conlon.
I couldn’t find out if she did anything else of note.

The title is legit: this is an actual magazine, with teenage girls being its main target audience.

But it also has two full stories: we’ll talk later about the one that stars Miss America, but first let’s address the whole reason while I’m looking at this.

It has the first appearance of a character that will prove to have staying power and who much, MUCH later will become a superhero: Patsy Walker.

Later stories will retcon these Golden Age tales as being fictional adaptations of the real Patsy Walker, so it’s ironic that her very last page reassures us that she’s not a fictional character.

I sure hope her little brother is NOT real, because his face is haunting.

And speaking of the kid, he’s busy reading the adventures of “Super-Duper-Hero-Man” while Patsy is studying.

Or rather that’s what she told their parents, as she’s actually listening to a singer named Swoon Strong.
Yes.
That is his actual stage name.
Or at least I hope that’s a stage name.

Shenanigans ensue.

Later she learns that Swoon Strong will be performing live at a nearby theater, and she bumps into her rival Hedy.

She tries to get the money for the theater from her brother. For reference, 38 cents in 1941 would be about 6.8 dollars in 2025.

It’s hard to tell from the artwork how old Patsy is supposed to be, but I’m pretty sure she’s 15.
So I really hope Swoon Strong is supposed to be a teenage singer.

This is way outside of the kind of comics I typically read, but I can see how Patsy’s over-the-top personality would carry a regular series.

Patsy is so fixated on Swoon Strong that even rejects her future boyfriend/husband/stalker Buzz.

However she changes her mind and takes him to the school dance after her brother gives her vital information about Swoon Strong.

Specifically, that he wears a wig.

So he’s either a young Charles Xavier or a creep in his late 30s who was hitting on a 15 year old.

And that’s it! The only other Patsy Walker material of the issue is one of those cut-the-dress things.

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Historical significance: 0/10
The only legacy is putting Patsy’s name out there. It’s a neat curiosity but you really don’t need to read this to understand anything about her.

Silver Age-ness: 0.38 / USD
Does the Silver Age even apply to something like this?

Does it stand the test of time? 6/10
Look, I’m definitely not the target audience. Not just because it’s “for girls”, but I’m not big into slice-of-life comics or teenage dramas. That being said, I’ve come across a few that are WAY worse than this; I’m sure there are AT LEAST a dozen teen dramas that have done this plot.
Hopefully most of them without the weird age difference.

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How close is this to the modern character? 0/10
I’m going out on a limb and call Patsy Walker as one of the comic book characters with THE most unpredictable career EVER.
Strap in, this one’s WEIRD.

Her serial on Miss America Magazine had enough success to get her own comic book series in 1945.

More on that series later. Because she also kept her original serial on the rest of Miss America Magazine’s publication history. To the point that during its seventh volume (!!!), Patsy becomes the cover character from 1951’s issue 42.

By this point the book had stopped being a magazine and turned into a full comic book, so it was renamed simply as Miss America… although Patsy Walker was the title character (in her role as “America’s sweetheart”).
She would last on this series until 1958.

But those two weren’t even her only regular series, because there were “Patsy and her pals” (29 issues  from 1953 to 1957) and more importantly “Patsy and Hedy” (110 issues, lasting from 1951 up to 1966).

There was also the one-shot “A date with Patsy” from 1957, and MANY more appearances on other “teen comics”.

But remember that original series, starting in 1945? It’s one of the VERY few books that survive the end of the Golden Age.
It lasted so long that its publishing company changed name three times: it was Timely Comics until #36, then Atlas Comics until #94, and finally Marvel Comics starting from #95 in 1961.

In fact, Patsy Walker #95 holds the distinction, shared with Journey Into Mystery #69 that has the same release date, of being the first comic book published under the Marvel Comics name (signified by the tiny MC in the upper right corner).

Yes, she precedes even the Fantastic Four: issue #97 had a release date ONE WEEK earlier than Fantastic Four #1.
The regular writer was Stan Lee, and the penciler was Al Hartley of Archie fame… unsurprisingly, considering Patsy was basically “girl Archie”.

Not content with her own series, Patsy also showed up in the OTHER surprisingly long-lasting “girl comic” of Marvel, on Millie the Model Comics #103.
This ALSO pre-dates the Fantastic Four, by the way.

Her series lasted from 1945 to 1965, by which point Al Hartley was doing both writing and artwork.

So it shouldn’t be shocking that Patsy manages to make a cameo in Fantastic Four Annual #3, also in 1965, during the marriage of Reed & Susan.

Patsy seemed destined to the same legacy of Millie The Model: on the fringes of the Marvel Universe, relegated to sporadic cameos.
If it wasn’t for Steve Englehart, who in 1967 re-introduces her in Amazing Adventures #13 as a supporting character for Beast’s serial.
Although it’s easy to miss: she’s always called Pat and we’re mostly introduced to her through Buzz Baxter, who she has married in the meantime.

We actually have a quote from Englehart for why he brought her back:

Struck my fan’s eye by including her in the Marvel Universe. … I thought it would be cool to bring her in as a real character, with things to do. Part of my “training” as a Marvel writer was writing romance stories and Westerns, but Patsy was defunct as a comic by the time I got there. … Still, as a fan, I had collected everything Marvel, including Patsy Walker and Patsy and Hedy … so I knew them as characters.
STEVE ENGLEHART

The Beast serial went without a true finale, so in 1975 Englehart took the opportunity to re-introduce her on Avengers #141. At this point she went back to her maiden name as she was divorced.

In issue #144, she reveals that she’s so obsessed with superheroes that she basically blackmails Beast to give her powers.

She doesn’t get them, but in the same issue she’s lucky enough to come across the costume of superheroine Cat (better known as Tigra).

She has a better name in mind than “The Cat”, though.

Once again we have quotes!

I wasn’t real interested in the Cat. I read the books and they seemed like pandering, frankly- not very good stories written to appeal to a demographic. Once Patsy entered the Marvel Universe, met the Beast, confronted her husband — all that began to change the Patsy I had inherited to someone a little more savvy. By the time she became the Hellcat, she could stand back far enough to see the ironies in her taking over a feminist creation. But she was really more about jumping into the superhero pool than standing back. … She didn’t muse on the irony; she wanted to be a heroine.
STEVE ENGLEHART

Her time in the Avengers was brief but WILD, with Hellcat even going on space adventures (!!!) with Moondragon.

Although Hellcat WOULD have joined the Avengers if Moondragon hadn’t manipulated her into leaving.
Because Moondragon is just. The. Worst.

Hellcat didn’t really find a spot on the Avengers, but she was perfect for the Defenders, joining the “non-team” in issue 44 in 1977 thanks to Gerry Conway.

She was an important member of the team for a long time, but that created some questions: were the Golden Age stories still canon?
The answer came in 1980 on Defenders #89, where it was revealed that those were fictional stories created as comic books by her mother.

During the Defenders run she met antihero Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, in issue #92 and they married in #125, in 1983.

Said marriage was crashed by supervillain Mad Dog…

…also known as her ex-husband Buzz.

Hellstrom & Hellcat were shown to be a perfectly healthy couple for a while. This was my first exposure to them (on West Coast Avengers) and I found them to be extremely boring.

Until Hellstrom became a surprise hit during 90s series, during witch Patsy was driven to insanity by her husband’s demonic nature.
And in 1994’s “Hellstorm: Prince of Lies #14”… in one of the darkest moments ever in superhero comics… Patsy is manipulated by the demon Deathurge to kill herself.

But as a superhero who has the Devil as her father-in-law it couldn’t possibly last, and she was resurrected six years later on Thunderbolts Annual 2000.

Since then she’s had multiple attempts at giving her the spotlight.
There was a 3 issue miniseries in 2000 (with a terrible new costume), a 5 issue one in 2008, and a regular series in 2016 that attempted to mix superhero stuff with the more lighthearted tone of her earlier stories; it only lasted 17 issues, but I thought it was cute.

However, where Hellcat TRULY shined after her resurrection was as a supporting character.
Besides a few issues of various Defenders incarnations, she was established as a close friend of basically most superheroines.

Especially She-Hulk, who these days is pretty well-established as her best friend.

Also of note is her being the primary love interest of Tony Stark in Iron Man vol.6, from 2020 to 2023 (which I highly, HIGHLY recommend).

It was serious enough to ask her to marry him, but they eventually split.

I think that she works best as a supporting character. And she’s grown into a complex one, balancing both her fun-loving side, her dark past and her connection to the supernatural.

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There’s also one in Heroes Reborn.We don’t talk about her, she has basically nothing to do with the original and it’s basically Tigra with another name.

There is a Hellcat in the Ultimate universe. We don’t talk about her, she has basically nothing to do with the original and it’s basically Tigra with another name… again.

As the queen of genre-bending, of course Patsy has a live action adaptation.
She’s the adopted sister and best friend of Jessica Jones in her Netflix show, played by Rachael Taylor. In this version she used to be in a TV series when she was a teenager (wearing a red wig, while in the rest of the series she’s blonde). She never gets to be a superhero, and while she gets an incredibly depressing finale in the (disappointing) third season she was pretty good in the first two.

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What else was in Miss America Magazine #2?

The only other comic is a Miss America story, written by Batman’s co-creator Bill Finger (!!!) and with pencils by Pauline Loth.

She fights The Shocker here.

Although honestly he should be called The Eel.

Miss America also gets into the fashion industry.

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Comics clearly aren’t supposed to be the selling point of this magazine.
There’s also a contest for teenagers only!

I would love to know if someone actually won this thing.

The magazine generally has three kinds of content. The first one is comics, and the second is short stories with beautiful illustrations.

The third kind are articles and reviews, most with pictures.
Such as this one talking about Jeanne Crain.

Also an article on how to speak (which obviously works great in written format) and how to do your makeup.

I have seen all kinds of ads in comic books, but glow-in-the-dark flowers is a new one.

And finally an ad that takes up a whole page: a 172 page book that tells you what color to wear if you want to get married.

“Only 98 cents”, meaning that if Patsy’s story is historically correct you could have watched 2 ½ theater shows for the price of this book.