Girl Comics

The initial Marvel Comics publication entitled Girl Comics was an ongoing romance comics/girls'-adventure series edited by Stan Lee that ran 12 issues (October 1949 - January 1952), first by Marvel's 1940s predecessor, Timely Comics, and shortly afterward by the company's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics. It was renamed Girl Confessions with issue #13 (March 1952) and ran a total 35 issues, through cover-date August 1954.

Artist contributors to this series included John Buscema and Al Hartley in issue #1,[1] Bob Brown[2] and Bill Everett in #3,[3] Russ Heath in #5,[2] Ann Brewster, Mike Esposito, and Dick Rockwell in #8,[1][2] and Bernard Krigstein in #12.[2] Contributors to multiple issues of Girl Confessions included Hartley, Jay Scott Pike, Morris Weiss, and Golden Age Batman artist Jerry Robinson.[4][5]

The first four issues of Girl Comics were written as typical romance comics,[6] valuing plot over character development.[7] Most narratives were recycled, not changing drastically between issues.[7] Issues #5 through #12, however, adopted a new subtitle, Mystery, Adventure, Suspense! and featured plot-lines similar to those in Nancy Drew novels.[6]

Girl Comics vol. 2, #1 (May 2010). Cover art by Amanda Conner.

The second Girl Comics was a three-issue limited series released as a part of Marvel's year-long Marvel Women project.[8] Girl Comics was entirely written, colored, illustrated and lettered by female authors and artists.[8] Sister titles published during this period under the Marvel Women project,[9] included the limited series and one-shots Heralds, Black Widow, Namora, Lady Deadpool, and Her-oes.[10] It ran three issues cover-dated May to September 2010.[11] The collection was originally conceived as a celebration of both the 30th anniversary of She-Hulk and the National Women's History Project.[8]

Jeanine Schaefer, one of the editors, said of the initiative's timing: "Because 2010 is the 30th anniversary of the first appearance of She-Hulk, we got together to brainstorm some ideas for a celebration of women at Marvel Comics, much like we did for the 70th anniversary...."[12] She said the publisher felt the potentially controversial word "girl" in the title could be reclaimed: "It was one of the first titles we thought of (the actual first one, I think), because it pulled double-duty: Not only was it the name of an old Marvel romance title, it has a word in it that we could take back".[12]

The 2010 series contains contributions from Devin K. Grayson, Louise Simonson, Amanda Conner, Jill Thompson, Trina Robbins, and Molly Crabapple, among others.[10][13] The 52-page first issue included stories of the male characters Nightcrawler, the Punisher, and Spider-Man in addition to stories of the superheroines She-Hulk, Venus, and Jean Grey.[14] In addition, a two-page text article spotlighted Marvel Comics' Silver Age secretary and later independent comics publisher Flo Steinberg[14]

Illustrator and cartoonist Stephanie Buscema, who penciled and inked the eight-page story featuring Venus, is a granddaughter of the major comics artist John Buscema,[15] whose work appeared in the first issue of the 1949 series.