A Brief History of Tarpé Mills and Miss Fury
High above the clouds, a B24 bomber flies over the hills of Germany streaked across the nose is a woman, brunette hair flowing behind her and the words “Miss Fury” written above. This is not a one-off occurrence in World War II, a number of bomber noses are adorned with this woman of mystery. The woman chosen to strike fear into the hearts of the Axis power was, in fact, the first major female comic adventurer to see the printed page, beating Wonder Woman to the presses by over six months. Her name was Miss Fury and, while her likeness was soaring above the clouds, her adventures were being published in newspapers around the world.
June Mills was born in 1912 in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up in the home of her widowed mother who worked in a beauty parlor in order to support June and the orphaned children of her sister, who died of pneumonia. To help support the family, Mills found work as a model.
Mills managed to squirrel enough away to pay for her tuition to study art at Pratt Institute, where she initially studied sculpture until one disastrous job made her change her career path. She soon found herself studying fashion illustration, a shift that would soon bear fruit in 1938 when Mills went looking for work in the burgeoning world of comic books.
Working on such titles as Daredevil Barry Finn, Catman, and The Purple Zombie, Mills adopted the sexually ambiguous name Tarpé, which was her middle name, a French-sounding version of her Irish grandmother’s maiden name, Tarpey. When later asked for her reasoning behind the name change Mills would often quip, “It would have been a major let-down to the kids if they found out the author of such virile and awesome characters was a gal.”
It wasn’t long before Mills landed a comic strip deal, signing with the Bell Syndicate in 1941. Miss Fury soon followed, debuting on April 6, 1941. When Marla Drake, a young socialite, first donned the black leopard skin outfit her uncle had brought back from his exploits in Africa, it was simply because she had no other costume to wear to that evening’s masquerade ball. Nothing could have prepared her for what the evening actually had in store for her. And nothing could have prepared the general public for the escapades Mills had in store for them.
Enrapturing her readers every day with plots of conspiracy, danger, and intrigue in exotic locations like Brazil, Mills populated her strip with powerful women and attractive men. So engaging were Mills’ characters, in fact, that it wasn’t long before Miss Fury was competing for facetime in her own strip. Few were more captivating than Miss Fury’s nemesis, the Baroness Erica Von Kampf, a ruthless adventuress who lived solely for material gain with platinum blonde bangs cut into a V-shape to cover the swastika that was branded on her forehead. She even, at one point, pulled in more fan mail than the heroine according to Mills.
Using her experience as a fashion illustrator, Mills designed outfits and wardrobes for her characters that, over the course of the strip, would make it read like a fashion history textbook. Garbing her women in satin and lace evening gowns and Joan Crawford style shoulder-padded dresses, the strip was not just fashionable but, also peppered with lacy lingerie and other risque outfits. This may have, in part, been the reason why on November 6, 1945, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune released an article titled “Catholic School Pupils to Burn ‘Undesirable’ Comics” which listed Miss Fury as a condemned comic that should be used as fuel for bonfires during Catholic Book week.
On December 22, 1946, Mills outdid herself when she portrayed her character, Era, dancing in a nightclub dressed as Eve in a bikini made of leaves. This upset the Boston Sunday Globe so much that it printed the strip with an ugly red band that obscured the dancer’s body. Thirty-seven other papers simply refused to print the strip that day.
Miss Fury also contained a host of brutally handsome male characters right out of a romantic fantasy like Albino Joe, the Havard-educated albino Brazilian Indian, and General Bruno, a Rommel-esque figure who is a German patriot, but plots to overthrow the Nazi party.
Thanks to Miss Fury’s eclectic cast and pulse-pounding adventures, the comic became so popular that, starting in the Winter of 1942, Timely Comics (who would one day become Marvel Comics) began releasing annual reprints of the Sunday strips as comic books which sold over a million copies an issue. On January 4, 1943, Time magazine even featured an article about Mills and Miss Fury entitled “Comic-Strip Generals” which compared real-life German General Gunther Niedenfuhr, then military attaché in Brazil, with Mills’ fictional one-armed, bald General Bruno who, in the strip, was attempting to open the way in Brazil for an Axis invasion.
Toward the end of the 1940s, due to health concerns, Mills began to rely on ghost artists and writers to help her meet deadlines. This became more and more frequent until the strip ended mid-story on December 23, 1951. Mills would spend the rest of her professional life working in the commercial art field only making a few brief attempts to return to comics. The latter part of her life was spent working on a never-to-be-finished graphic novel about her Miss Fury character, Albino Joe. Though both Miss Fury and Mills have faded from the public eye, their legends still soar above the clouds.
References:
- TarpeMills.com
- Miss Fury Sensational Sundays: 1941-1944 by Tarpé Mills, introduction by Trina Robbins
- Miss Fury Sensational Sundays: 1944-1949 by Tarpé Mills, introduction by Trina Robbins
- Tarpe Mills dies, Comic Buyer’s Guide obituary article by Trina Robbins
- Miss Fury, introduction by Tom Fagan
- Pretty in Ink: Women Cartoonists 1896-2013 by Trina Robbins
- The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum