The portrayal of women in American comic books has often been the subject of controversy since the medium's beginning. Critics have noted the roles of women as both supporting characters and lead characters are substantially more subjected to gender stereotypes, with femininity and/or sexual characteristics having a larger presence in their overall character.
History
Golden Age of Comic Books
During the Golden Age of Comic Books (a time during which the medium evolved from comic strips) women who were not superheroes were primarily portrayed in secondary roles, with some examples being classified as career girls, romance-story heroines, or lively teenagers. Career-oriented girls included such characters as Nellie the Nurse, Tessie the Typist, and Millie the Model, each of whom appeared in comic books working jobs that non-wartime women of the era typically worked. Romance heroines were popular in the romance genre, pioneered by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Typically, the heroine was either a "good girl" or "bad girl", with both roles having small effect on a male character's decision. In the Archie Comics, the titular character can never definitively chose between his two love interests Betty and Veronica, who typify this dichotomy between the good Girl-Next-Door type versus the dangerous allure of her foil respectively. The duo got their own title in 1950, Betty and Veronica, which quickly became a popular comic, featuring the two lead characters continuing to obsess over boys and fight over who would get to date Archie.
Female costumed crimefighters were among the early comics characters. One of the comics' earliest female superheroes appeared in newspaper strips, the Invisible Scarlet O'Neil by Russell Stamm. The tough-fighting Miss Fury, debuted in the eponymous comic strip by female cartoonist Tarpé Mills in 1941. One publisher in particular, Fiction House, featured several progressive heroines such as the jungle queen Sheena, whose sex appeal is what helped launched her comic series. As Trina Robbins, in The Great Women Superheroes wrote:
One of the earliest female superheros is writer-artist Fletcher Hanks's minor character Fantomah, an ageless, ancient Egyptian woman in the modern day who could transform into a skull-faced creature with superpowers to fight evil; she debuted in Fiction House's Jungle Comics #2 (Feb. 1940), credited to the pseudonymous "Barclay Flagg". The first widely recognizable female superhero is Wonder Woman, from All-American Publications, one of three companies that would merge to form DC Comics. In an October 25, 1940, interview conducted by former student Olive Byrne (under the pseudonym 'Olive Richard') and published in Family Circle, titled "Don't Laugh at the Comics", William Moulton Marston described what he saw as the great educational potential of comic books (a follow-up article was published two years later in 1942). This article caught the attention of comics publisher Max Gaines, who hired Marston as an educational consultant for National Periodicals and All-American Publications, two of the companies that would merge to form the future DC Comics. At that time, Marston decided to develop a new superhero. In the early 1940s the DC line was dominated by superpowered male characters such as the Green Lantern, Batman, and its flagship character, Superman. According to the Fall 2001 issue of the Boston University alumni magazine, it was his wife Elizabeth Hollowy's idea to create a female superhero. Marston introduced the idea to Max Gaines, cofounder (along with Jack Liebowitz) of All-American Publications. Given the go-ahead, Marston developed Wonder Woman with Elizabeth (whom Marston believed to be a model of that era's unconventional, liberated woman). In creating Wonder Woman, Marston was also inspired by Olive Byrne, who lived with the couple in a polygamous/polyamorous relationship. In a 1943 issue of The American Scholar, Marston wrote:
Wonder Woman is an Amazon Princess; the Amazons were created by Aphrodite, according to the stories, and were made to be stronger and wiser than men.