The First Black Superheroine

Sol Brodsky set up Skywald Publications after leaving Marvel Comics at the dawn of the Bronze Age. Brodsky teamed up with Israel Waldman who founded Super Comics which specialized in reprinting Golden Age comics during the Silver Age such as Phantom Lady and Blue Beetle. Skywald began with doing a troika of black and white horror comic magazines which is an idea they basically lifted Warren Publishing best known for Vampirella, however one other magazine they did featured the mystery man named Hell Rider. This anthology had the title character being a super-strong Vietnam veteran who fought crime as a vigilante, plus as a well-meaning biker gang called The Wild Bunch, and the costumed superhero known as The Butterfly. She was significant as she was the first black superheroine ever printed in comics years before Marvel first introduced Storm. Weirdly enough, Gary Friedrich who was one of the creators behind Bumblebee went on to work for Marvel in creating their character of Ghost Rider which was basically a copy of his earlier character of Hell Rider with more of a supernatural background. Hell-Rider, The Wild Bunch, and Butterfly were all set in the same fictional universe, although the heroes only met each other in their civilian identities. Butterfly in real life was Marian Michaels, a torch singer performing at a Las Vegas casino who leads a double life, although we never get an origin story about how she got into the superhero business or where she got all her fancy gear. Marian wore a two-piece bikini with a mask and butterfly wings that allowed her to fly along with a miniature jet pack to propel her, plus her wings could create a blinding prism that would blind her adversaries, all this and gloves with thin suction cups that allowed her to cling to shear surfaces which she probably made because she was envious of Spider-Man. Artist Rich Buckler and/or John Celardo did an astounding job designing Butterfly's outfit which when you look at it isn't too dissimilar from Storm's initial costume minus the bug-eyed mask, plus the very revealing attire is something you might expect for a superhero based out of Vegas. Butterfly's first case had her confronting the supervillain known as The Claw and his cat-themed henchmen who previously tangled with Hell Rider, then she teams up with the hunky FBI agent Tony Morris to take down the underground white supremacist clan called the Brotherhood of the Crimson Cross secretly run by a corrupt senator. After only two issues of Hell Rider, Butterfly never got another official appearance in comics which is a shame considering she was a trailblazer for black comics, even though her skimpy outfit would need to be retooled if they ever decided to make a Saturday Morning cartoon based on her along with other estranged superheroes in the 70s like Spider-Woman and The Thing.

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