FemForce #9
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFemForce #9 sits at the narrative epicenter of one of the most ambitious serialized storylines in Copper Age independent comics — the transformation of team leader Joan Wayne (Ms. Victory) into the renegade Rad, an arc set in motion when the villain Black Commando force-fed her the destabilizing V-45 compound. This issue escalates every thread of that fallout simultaneously: She-Cat spirals toward feral possession by the cat-goddess Sehkmet, Nightveil is compromised as a puppet of arch-villainess Alizarin Crimson, and the government agent Tom Kelly plants the seed that Joan's daughter Jennifer will inherit the Ms. Victory mantle. For a book that championed an all-female super-team years before that premise entered mainstream publishing, this dense multi-character issue demonstrates how thoroughly AC Comics had built a genuine shared-universe soap opera around its heroines.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
FemForce launched in 1985 under the creative direction of Bill Black at AC Comics (then operating as Americomics), conceived as the first ongoing comic series centered on an all-women superhero team, drawing on a mixture of original characters and public-domain Golden Age heroines. By issue #9, the scripting had passed to Wes Covington, with pencils by Don Secrease and inks by John Dell and Bill Koch — a sign of the small rotating creative stable typical of AC's Copper Age output. The issue continues directly from story threads running across multiple AC titles simultaneously, including Nightveil #7, reflecting the publisher's ambition to run interconnected crossover continuity on an independent-press budget.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Lead story is 'Step Out and Away,' scripted by Wes Covington, penciled by Don Secrease, and inked by John Dell and Bill Koch; cover penciled by Don Secrease and inked by Bill Black.
- The issue continues and escalates the 'Rad' transformation arc: Joan Wayne (Ms. Victory) has been permanently altered into the renegade Rad after the Black Commando force-fed her an overdose of the V-45 serum — the same faulty formula that originally turned government agent Dan Barton into the Black Commando.
- Black Commando escapes captivity within this issue, reintroducing him as an active threat at the same time Rad is operating independently.
- She-Cat's psychic bond with Joan Wayne — the mechanism that kept the cat-deity Sehkmet's possession in check — is severed because Joan no longer exists as Ms. Victory; without that bond, She-Cat grows increasingly feral, a subplot carried forward from issue #8.
- Tom Kelly (Captain Tom Kelly) visits Jennifer Wayne-Burke in this issue to propose that she step in as a government-sponsored paranormal in place of her absent mother — directly foreshadowing Jennifer's eventual assumption of the Ms. Victory identity.
- Nightveil (Laura Wright) appears in the issue not as a free agent but as the mind-controlled puppet of the sorceress Alizarin Crimson, confronting the distressed Claudette Meyler, who is identified as She-Cat's psychic bond.
- FemForce as a series is documented as the first and longest-running all-women superhero team comic book in American comics history, published by AC Comics beginning in 1985.
- The series blends original characters with revived public-domain Golden Age heroines; Nightveil herself evolved from the Blue Bulleteer, an adaptation of the Fox Feature Syndicate's Phantom Lady, renamed after DC Comics asserted rights to the Phantom Lady trademark.
Cast · 15 characters
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