Tarpé Mills (25 February 1912 – 12 December 1988) was the pseudonym of the American comic book creator June Tarpé Mills, one of the first major female comics artists. She is best known for her action comic strip Miss Fury, featuring the first female action hero created by a woman.
Biography
June Tarpé Mills created several action comics characters ("Devil's Dust", "The Cat Man", "The Purple Zombie" and "Daredevil Barry Finn") before creating her most remembered character, "Miss Fury," in 1941. Mills also wrote original scripts, penciled, and inked stories for these comic book series prior to Miss Fury: Funny Pages, Star Comics, Amazing Mystery Funnies, Amazing Man Comics, Masked Marvel, Prize Comics, Target Comics, and Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics.
Miss Fury ran until 1952, when Tarpé Mills mostly retired from the comics industry.
She died on 12 December 1988 in Brooklyn, New York, and is buried in Forest Green Park Cemetery in Morganville, New Jersey. The strip "ran in full color in the Sunday comics pages for 351 consecutive weeks from 1942 through 1949, and was also collected in comic book form by Timely Comics." Circulation included over 100 newspapers at its most popular stage. As the Miss Fury strip became more popular, it eventually became public knowledge its creator was a woman.
Fashion
The artwork was created in a glamorous style with considerable attention placed on the heroine's outfits. These outfits varied from lacy evening gowns and lingerie to bathing suits and athletic costumes. Mills' attention to fashion in Miss Fury was mirrored in the work of her contemporary Dalia Messick's "Brenda Starr," and in this sense the women were ahead of their male counterparts who typically "dressed [their] heroines in plain red dresses."
Cut-out paper fashion dolls were included for the first time in the comic-book reprints of Miss Fury, leading Trina Robbins to guess that these books were intended for a female audience.
Censorship
Miss Fury was notoriously full of "kinkiness," including "whips, spike heels, female-on-female violence, and lingerie scenes."
Trina Robbins said on Miss Fury: