June Tarpé Mills – The Dead Ladies Show

In this episode, the last of Season Six, we bring you a show live from PodFest Berlin! DLS-ers Susan Stone and Katy Derbyshire joined the city’s fine and friendly podcasters at the yearly event in front of a small but perfectly formed audience.

From that event, producer Susan brings us the fascinating story of June Tarpé Mills, a comics pioneer and the first woman to create a female superhero, Miss Fury. The alter ego of socialite Marla Drake, Miss Fury wore a cursed black leopard skin and travelled the world fighting evil (mostly Nazis). She was sexy and smart, and a global hit from 1941–1951, during which she appeared in 100 newspapers, millions of comic books, and on the side of several US bombers. Then she, like her creator, largely disappeared. Decades after her death in obscurity, Mills is finally getting the recognition she deserves, from a headstone for her unmarked grave to induction into the Comic Industry Hall of Fame.

We mentioned our wonderful friend Andy Horn, who introduced us to Tarpé Mills. Read more about Andy here.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download the transcript, created by Susan, here.

Show notes:

Miss Fury vs. a familiar-looking “impostor”

Fantomah was created by Fletcher Hanks in 1940

Wonder Woman debuted six months after Miss Fury (and looked very similar)

The 1947 image that caused 37 newspapers to drop Miss Fury

The picture Red took on his last assignment

The gorgeous cover of the 1979 Miss Fury collection

Miss Fury appearing on the cover of 2007’s *Twelve*

The gorgeous 2011/2013 Library of Comics reissues of the original Miss Fury run

Miss Fury watching over the Prada runway in Milan, 2017

To learn more, check out these books, and of course the official June Tarpe Mills website

One last note — If you’d like to support us and get a bit of Dead Lady content before we come back with season seven, please check out our Patreon where we have loads of exclusive content including interviews and book reviews, and even entire Dead Ladies Show presentations that you’ll get to hear before (almost) anyone else. Thanks to everyone who already supports us there, including our new friend Rita Durant!

Our theme music is “Little Lily Swing” by Tri-Tachyon https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tri-Tachyon/the-kleptotonic-ep/little-lily-swing

You can browse our TeePublic shop at this link: https://www.teepublic.com/user/dead-ladies-show

We are on Instagram and Twitter @deadladiesshow and on BlueSky @deadladiesshow.bsky.social

Thanks for listening! We’ll be back soon with a new season full of fabulous Dead Ladies!

We’re delighted to invite you to our second appearance at PodFest Berlin!

Florian, Katy, and Susan will be presenting a mini-Dead Ladies Show at the podcast festival on Saturday, October 14th starting at 8:15pm (doors open 8pm) at Noisy Rooms, Revaler Str. 99, 10245 Berlin (inside House of Music at RAW Gelände). Susan will reveal the writer and artist behind Miss Fury, and Katy will reprise the story of Germany’s first female airship pilot (auf Deutsch this time). See below for more information on the two ladies in question, who will, as always, be presented in a messy mixture of English and German.

Tickets are €12, and you get 23% off with our special promo code “DeadLadies23”! Each ticket covers the Dead Ladies Show plus a half-day pass to festival events on Saturday between 5-10:30pm, including workshops and panels, seminars, and other events! Please book in advance here.

You can also purchase day and weekend passes (23% off with our promo code, or even cheaper with a student discount), which will include our event on Saturday and everything else on offer! This is our last show of the year, and we’d love to see you there.

Can’t wait? Why not listen to our past shows as podcasts? Our latest episode comes direct from DLS NYC, as illustrator Nafisa Ferdous introduces us to Amrita Sher-Gil, a queer, feminist, Hungarian-Indian artist, writer, and art critic who left a profound impact on art despite her untimely death.

********************

JUNE TARPÉ MILLS created the first female comic-book action hero — Miss Fury, the secret identity of socialite Marla Drake. Mills’ fashionable crimefighter appeared 6 months before Wonder Woman, and won fans for her style, noir storylines, and bouts of self-doubt, although Miss Fury’s kinky costumes and proclivity for putting the ‘strip’ in comic strip got the series banned from several newspapers in the 1940s. Writer and artist June Mills created several other male action characters, and had her own alter ego, turning her middle name into a nom de plume, for a mysterious and possibly more masculine identity.

KÄTHE PAULUS was Germany’s first female airship pilot, a professional aerial acrobat, and the inventor of the folding parachute. On meeting a balloonist, she decided to learn how to pilot a hot-air balloon and perform parachute jumps. Having had his baby out of wedlock, she lost him in a ballooning accident and made a living for herself – and her mother, who she lived with throughout her life – flying balloons, airships, and planes, and jumping out of them, starting her own parachute production line during WWI. And yes, they have named a street at BER after her.

Tag: June Tarpé Mills

Podcast #68: June Tarpé Mills

PodFest Berlin 2023: June Tarpé Mills & Käthe Paulus