Madam Fatal, the Cross Dressing Superhero

Let’s say you’re a great stage actor and your daughter gets kidnapped. Now, let’s say your daughter gets kidnapped and you want to find the people responsible. After doing some detective work, you decide you’ll try to infiltrate the gang of criminals you believe responsible for kidnapping your daughter. So, how would you try to  infiltrate the gang?

If you’re Richard Stanton and your exploits are being printed in May 1940’s debut issue of Crack Comics, the only logical thing to do is to dress as an old woman and try to infiltrate the gang that way. Somehow within the pages of the comic that plan worked. Unfortunately for Stanton, the criminals he was following didn’t have his daughter.

So, Stanton decided that he would keep looking for his missing daughter and fighting all crime he found along the way, while still dressed as an elderly woman…and thus Madam Fatal was born. Stanton would continue fighting crime in drag for the remainder of Crack Comics‘ twenty-two issue run. The character’s rights are currently owned by DC Comics. Unsurprisingly, they have done very little with the character since acquiring him in 1956.