Miss America Magazine #2 [14]
Miss America Magazine #2 (cover-dated November 1944) is the debut issue of one of Timely Comics' most enduring characters: Patsy Walker, the red-headed teen whose romantic-comedy adventures would run continuously across Timely, Atlas, and Marvel Comics for over two decades — a publishing longevity matched at the House of Ideas only by Millie the Model and Kid Colt, Outlaw. The issue also marks a pivotal editorial pivot: what had been a straightforward superhero comic retooled itself as a hybrid magazine aimed squarely at teenage girls, folding fashion columns, celebrity gossip, and prose fiction around its comics content — an early recognition that superhero readers were not the only audience worth cultivating in the 1940s. Every member of Patsy's core cast — boyfriend Buzz Baxter, sharp-tongued rival Hedy Wolfe, and parents Stanley and Mary Walker — debuts here alongside her, assembling the full ensemble that would populate dozens of spin-off titles. Patsy herself would eventually transcend her romance-comic origins to become the superhero Hellcat, making this issue the unlikely starting point for a character still active in the twenty-first-century Marvel Universe.
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With Stan Lee away on military service, Timely's interim editor Vince Fago oversaw the title's transformation from a straightforward superhero book into its new magazine format; the supervising editor credited on the issue itself was Jean Goodman, wife of publisher Martin Goodman. The Patsy Walker feature was written by Stuart Little — husband of the book's editor Bessie H. (Bea) Little — and drawn by Ruth Atkinson, one of the most accomplished female cartoonists working in Golden Age comics. The Miss America superhero strip in the same issue was illustrated by Pauline Loth, a former animator whom Fago had brought over from the Fleischer Studios animation house. The issue was published under the imprint 'Miss America Publishing Corp.' rather than directly under the Timely masthead, reflecting the magazine's deliberate positioning as a standalone girls' periodical rather than a superhero comic book.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Patsy Walker (Patricia 'Patsy' Walker), created by writer Stuart Little and artist Ruth Atkinson, in a seven-page debut story titled 'Introducing Patsy Walker.'
- First appearances of the full core cast: boyfriend Robert 'Buzz' Baxter, rival Hedy Wolfe (surname spelled 'Wolf' in this issue, corrected to 'Wolfe' by the next), and Patsy's parents Stanley Walker and Mary Walker.
- The debut story's plot centers on Patsy trying to win a date with a famous radio star while competing against Hedy — establishing the Patsy-vs.-Hedy rivalry dynamic that would drive the series for twenty-plus years.
- The issue also contains a fourteen-page Miss America story, 'The Mystery of the Shocker!', featuring the introduction and death of The Shocker, a villain with electrical powers, illustrated by former Fleischer animator Pauline Loth.
- This is the first issue to carry the magazine-hybrid format: the 68-page publication mixed comics strips with fashion pages, celebrity columns, advice articles, and prose fiction aimed at teenage girls — a sharp departure from the all-comics Miss America Comics #1.
- The cover is a photograph of fifteen-year-old model Dolores Conlon dressed in the Miss America superhero costume — cited by some dealers and historians as a candidate for the earliest known 'superhero cosplay' photo cover in comics.
- Patsy Walker's eponymous spin-off title launched the following year (1945) and ran for 124 issues through December 1965; the companion title Patsy and Hedy ran a further 110 issues through February 1967, making her one of the longest-continuously-published Marvel characters across the Golden and Silver Ages.
- Patsy Walker eventually crossed over into the Marvel superhero universe via Amazing Adventures #13 (July 1972, written by Steve Englehart) and officially became the superheroine Hellcat in Avengers #144 (February 1976); the character has since appeared in the MCU, portrayed by Rachael Taylor in Jessica Jones (2015–2019) and related Netflix series.
Cast · 7 characters
Full credits
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
On a school field trip Hedy causes Patsy and Nancy to get lost in the woods so she can spend time with Buzz.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).