REA IRVIN'S SUPERWOMAN
Back in the 1940s, DC Comics was notoriously litigious regarding the golden goose that laid its ham and eggs – Superman . They had a copyright *and* a trademark and, gosh darn it, they were going to defend it against imitators, doppelgangers, and knockoffs! Their efforts to keep the newsstands clear of bullet-racing, building-leaping lookalikes took aim at Will Eisner’s Wonder Man at Fox Publications, Simon and Kirby’s Steel Sterling , Fawcett’s Master Man and, most famously, the original Captain Marvel . But no ersatz Super-who earned DC’s ire quite as quickly as Rea Irvin’s Superwoman . This urbane newspaper comic strip ran just once, on June 27, 1943 , in a handful of papers which were reporting its cancellation on the following day! Irvin was a San Francisco-born artist who is most familiar for his formative contributions to The New Yorker magazine. The monocle-spouting dandy, Eustace Tilley – the New Yorker’s longtime mascot – was a product of Irvin’s elegant sense of design...