Sun Girl

by Otto on October 10, 2022 at 8:41 am

Table of Contents

History

Pop quiz, true believers!

What was the name of the Human Torch’s sidekick?

Sun Girl!

What? You thought it was Toro?

Let me explain.

The year is 1948. The golden age is about to shut down for the fifties and enter an era where only Superman, Batman, and Captain Marvel are virtually the only active superheroes amid a rising tide of genre comics–horror, science fiction, and romance. Timely sees females as an untapped market, and so, similarly to how Marvel would later try an estrogen blitz during the bronze age with Night Nurse, Tigra, and She-Hulk, Timely focuses on female characters–Namora, Venus, Blonde Phantom, Golden Girl, and Sun Girl. Most of these were sidekicks to established male heroes. Namora was a sidekick to Namor, Golden Girl was a sidekick to Captain America, and Sun Girl was a sidekick to the Human Torch.

But Sun Girl wouldn’t debut as Human Torch’s sidekick. She started as a solo act with her own comic…her very short lived comic.

3 issues.

Yeah, the “let’s-appeal-to-women” tactic didn’t work.

You’d think Marvel wouldn’t have to learn that lesson again…

There’s a couple of things misleading about this cover.

Sun Girl never used a handgun and was never yellow. Going from this cover you might think that Sun Girl was some sort of solar-powered golden age Starfire or a non-PC example of an Asian woman in comics, but no, I got no idea why she’s yellow.

Sometimes the inkers just mess up. You got to expect that when it comes to old comics. Do you have idea how many colors Galactus went through just in The Coming of Galactus reprints?

Sun Girl wasn’t given a name or an origin. She just was. That “mysterious beauty” tagline on the cover was spot-on.

She hit the ground running in Sun Girl 1 fighting a mad scientist that summoned a giant monster that was like a cross between Godzilla and the Bert I Gordon Cyclops and then becoming the temporary guardian of a juvenile criminal.

That’s so cute! I love it when superheroes are kind to brats. I like the fantasy that a kind heart can change a child’s life for a better.

It appeals to me as a fantasy because, as a teacher, I know firsthand that some children are just pure, ineducable evil.

Some people like superheroes because they’re a power fantasy, the fantasy of being able to beat the world into a proper shape through magic and muscles and wits. I like superheroes because they’re a moral fantasy, the fantasy that humans respond to kindness.

I have had a very difficult career as a teacher.

But enough of that.

Sun Girl 2 would see Sun Girl take a substantially less important role in her stories. She watches a scientist blow himself and his machine up to prevent it from summoning aliens from another dimension and then in the second story she follows around a nebbish scientist and his girlfriend who hates his guts because he disagrees with her scientist father as they go through a plot like a cross between The Blob and The Monolith Monsters. A experimental crystal concoction, when exposed to water, creates cool-looking crystal giants that petrify everything with just a touch.

In the final issue, Sun Girl finds herself playing the Fay Wray to a King Kong clone and then is abducted by egg-shaped aliens along with a thug she busts because they want a male and female human for their zoo.

If you’re interested in comic history, I do recommend reading Sun Girl. It’s three issues, won’t take you long at all to get through, and it demonstrates the sun setting on the golden age. Sun Girl herself is very interchangeable in most of the stories. She could be replaced by Captain America, Human Torch, Destroyer, Thin Man, whoever, and the stories would still the same beats.

The focus of most of her stories is on the monsters and she’s just along for the ride. She’s a Timely superheroine caught inside Atlas era monster stories, and if you know what I’m talking about, you’ll know why that’s interesting. It’s like if instead of the random scientist and explorers that would foil Fin Fang Foom, Groot, and Bombu you had a superheroine.

Sun Girl would sidekick to the Torch over in his titular magazine starting with issue 32 and carrying on to the magazine’s cancelation with issue 35. If you thought that now would be where she would get her origin story…you’re wrong. In fact, she doesn’t get an origin story in –any– Timely story. She doesn’t even give her true name. Her being Torch’s personal secretary named Mary Mitchell must have come from the modern age because I’ve read all her golden age stuff and the information is just not there. In the context of the golden age, she just shows up one day hanging out with the Human Torch instead of Toro.

Sun Girl doesn’t do much, especially when teamed up with the Torch. She stands around, she says things, but she doesn’t do much. Her issues have cool moments, but they’re all cool moments for the Torch. In issue 33, Torch flies to Jupiter to stop aliens from bombarding Earth with madness rays and Captain America risks his life to save him at the end. In issue 34, Earth gets invaded by two-dimensional creatures from another dimension who use rays to turn Sun Girl and Torch two dimensional, but Torch uses his heat to pop them back to three dimensions (!).

Sun Girl gets a solo adventure in 34 where, after she’s called a golden goddess by natives on a Hopi reservation (she’s living the modern liberal dream), she’s abducted by alien robots (there’s a lot of aliens in these stories…) working for a gold-obsessed evil alien brain. Think a combination of the spider mastermind from Doom and Goldfinger. He’s ugly as sin.

He’s a giant brain and he thinks a blonde woman is made of gold.

Just goes to show the difference between intelligence and wisdom.

When The Human Torch resumed with 36 in 1954, roughly five years after 35, Sun Girl was nowhere to be found and Toro was back to taking her spot as sidekick.

Bros before hoes.

Sun Girl appeared in Marvel Mystery Comics 88-91, though only her appearances in 89 and 90 are memorable. In 89, she stopped the invasion of aliens from the extradimensional world of Uncara, aliens that appeared in our reality as translucent phantoms. They planned to bomb the planet by teleporting large rocks into buildings, setting off huge explosions via the telefrag principle.

It was a pretty good story, and I like to think of the Uncarans as an off-shoot of the Space Phantoms, sort of like how the Dire Wraiths were off-shoots of the Skrulls.

In issue 90, a mad scientist believes he’s receiving mental messages from the cosmic sphere–think an asteroid with metal pincer claws.

I think its pretty neat. It’s clearly some sort of probe of some kind using a space rock either as a disguise or as armor. It’s a simple, neat design for a monster.

The scientist, following instructions from the cosmic sphere, creates a giant magnet to bring it into Earth’s orbit. The scientist thinks that the cosmic sphere is going to team up with him and together they’ll conquer the world, but instead the cosmic sphere grabs him and goes back into space, never to be seen again.

It’s never stated what the cosmic sphere actually wanted. Maybe it just wanted to abduct someone smart enough to build a giant magnet? But it’s never been seen again.

It’s been out there for almost 80 years with that scientist still trapped inside…

Man, if I ever get a chance to write a Marvel comic, I’d want to do a Sun Girl story where the cosmic sphere shows back up again and Sun Girl slaps her wrist lamp on to finish the one case she never got to finish.

Just like in the notable stories from her solo series, Sun Girl’s stories in Human Torch and Marvel Mystery Comics demonstrate how her identity as a superheroine was far less important than the drive-in sci-fi concept overshadowing her time and time again.

Sun Girl would then show up in a smattering of golden age titles, probably because they had leftover Sun Girl stories and weren’t sure where to put them.

In Marvel Tales 97, Sun Girl would have a very brief story in which she foils an Aztec sun cult. In Sub-Mariner Comics 29, she and Torch try and stop an old gangster from ruining his life after being released from prison. In Captain America Comics 69, Torch makes a stupid bet with Sun Girl that he can solve a case without his powers (he could, though at the cost of having to fist fight and brawl his way to the solution).

And then the sun pretty much went down on Sun Girl.

When Roy Thomas revived the Timely era of Marvel in the bronze age for The Invaders, the female characters were left out. Only Miss America got in, and only for 9 issues, and the reason she got in was likely due to her relative seniority. She debuted in 1943, essentially making her Marvel’s Wonder Woman, who debuted in 1942. Blonde Phantom, Venus, Namora, Golden Girl, and Sun Girl were all left out.

But while Blonde Phantom became a major She-Hulk secondary and Venus and Namora joined the Agents of Atlas (by the way, the first two volumes of Agents of Atlas are very good, I quite recommend them), no one ever brought back Sun Girl aside from the occasional one-panel flashback or cameo.

Will the sun ever rise again on Sun Girl?

I say give her her youth back through a plot device (if even Bucky can retain his youth after fighting in the forties, anyone can) and make her a vampire hunter, Boktai style, or a low-level paranormal investigator. Lean into her brief sci-fi run. Have her lead a team that functions as Marvel’s X-files or Planetary. Call the team something like Sunrise Investigations. The pilot issue–the cosmic sphere from MMC 90 finally returns. It’s done doing whatever it it is it needed the evil scientist for, and now its come back to Earth to initiate phase 2. Sun Girl sets out with a new time to solve the one mystery she had to leave in the dark.

I think its a bright idea.

Powers and Abilities

Wrist Light

Sun Girl’s signature device, which gives her her supername, is a wrist-mounted light projector.

Who made the wrist light is unknown. It’s possible she made it herself, or Torch’s creator Dr. Horton might have made it as a “sorry I’m an awful dad” present.

The wrist light was hardly ever used as a light source. It was more so used to blast objects–but it can be used as a light source. Sun Girl once used it to give surgeons enough light to see their operation (MMC 88).

But like I said, the wrist light is mostly for blasting things. In HT 34, Sun Girl used the wrist light to blast through rope bonds and then to kill an evil alien brain monster, in MMC 89 she used it to wreck the lab equipment of an invading race of extradimensional aliens.

At maximum power, her wrist light was able to irritate the eye of a giant monster enough to get it to turn back to the sea (SG 1).

Thank goodness the monster runs on Shadow of the Colossus logic and is too stupid to figure out “swat at the mosquito right in front of my eye.”

Strength and Judo Mastery

Like Black Canary and Black Cat before her, Sun Girl is a master of judo.

But of course, the existence of weight classes in judo proves that skill alone is not enough to make one a great hand-to-hand combatant. On needs raw power as well. Fortunately, Sun Girl has plenty of that.

With just her raw strength, Sun Girl can break through a wooden door, an impressive feat for a woman (SG 1).

And even more impressively, she can send a man through a window with a punch, an impressive feat for a human being (SG 1).

When Sun Girl combines her strength with her judo knowledge she’s able to easily overpower men. Check out her seoi nage! (SG 1, 2)

And don’t sleep on her submission skills. Here’s her applying a te-gatame (SG 1).

And here she’s applying a te-gatame with a half nelson (SG 1).

Watch out, or Sun Girl will put your lights out!

Durability

Due to cultural taboos toward depicting physical harm coming to women, Sun Girl wasn’t nearly as roughed-up as any given superhero, but she did have a few feats.

In MMC 89, she survives a few hours encased within a granite statue, An issue later in MMC 90, the survives (but is knocked out by) the cosmic sphere throwing her into a tree branch.

And…that’s it.

I told you, you aren’t going to get many scenes of her being slugged.

Speed and Agility

OH MY GOSH GUYS…LIGHT SPEED SUN GIRL? (SG 1, HT 34).

A NORMAL GIRL IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE HAS LIGHT SPEED REACTIONS?

OH MY GOSH, WE CAN UPCALSE FROM THIS!

LIGHT SPEED UNCLE BEN!

That’s what I would say if I did as many drugs as Louxi and Swank.

It’s obviously hyperbole. But there’s no doubt in my mind Death Battle would take it seriously. Look how fervently they cling to that “incalculable” speed narration box from Archie Sonic. They cling to it like a drowning man to drift wood.

Now Sun Girl isn’t a speedster, she isn’t even close to being a speedster, but she is quick on her feet. She’s capable of closing distance on a gunman and taking him down (SG 1).

And she’s agile enough to climb a giant monster (SG 1).

Funny how she never got to join the Monster Hunters. That seems like her team.

Sun Girl, in her brief career, had a surprising number of dive-in-and-save-the-civilian feats. Here she is saving a child from not-King Kong stepping on her (SG 3).