Pat Patriot: From Riveter To Rescuer

Most everyone has seen the We Can Do It poster of Rosie the Riveter, but two years before Norman Rockwell did that famous painting, the comic book character Pat Patriot probably served as the idea prototype. Lev Gleason Publications started the story in the pages of Issue #2 of the original Daredevil comics in 1941 created by the combined talents of Charles Biro and Bob Wood who both popularized the genre of crime comics. Unlike most superheroines of the time, Patricia Patrios wasn't a bored debutante who fought crime but a genuine working girl starting off on a military assembly line that moonlighted as an actress playing a female Uncle Sam (or Aunt Sam) wearing an American flag outfit. One night after a performance while she was still in costume, she stops a plot by her factory boss who was selling airplane parts to the Axis powers. From this point on, she was given the professional name of Pat Patriot and gets into one scrape after the other as both a government mascot and spokeswoman when she's not scripted into nabbing Nazis. Despite not having powers of any kind, Pat already had extensive skills in fighting, piloting, and firearms, although how she learned all that when she was merely a part-time showgirl is never explained. Pat also went through a bunch of possible boyfriends after ditching her first one Mike after her first adventure. Somehow, Pat Patriot became a publicly licensed superhero just on the benefit of merit and her eye-catching stars 'n stripes getup, which is like making someone dressed as Yankee Doodle into a four-star general simply because they look like a nationalist. The US army even gave Pat her own unit made of all female fighters called the Death Battalion a few months before Pat Parker: War Nurse ripped off the idea when she formed the Girl Commandos. Even though she was called "America's Joan Of Arc", Pat Patriot was fortunate enough to not get burned at the stake.