Lady Luck: Sixteen Complete Stories (Graphic Novel) (Superhero)

by Klaus Nordling, et. al. 

Publisher: Ken Pierce, Inc., 1st edition (1980)

Softcover, 64 pages 


          This is a collection of sixteen, 4-page, stories from the original golden age of comics, the 1940s, surrounding an obscure character, Lady Luck. The character originally was conceived by the legendary Will Eisner as a back-up piece for his 16-page Sunday comic supplement, The Spirit. Lady Luck shared this distinction with Mr. Mystic and eventually fell into obscurity along with him.

          One of the reasons she fell into obscurity, only to be revived in reprints briefly in 1980 (where this volume hails from) is that there isn’t anything really new here except for the addition of a vagina. Heiress Barbara Banks masquerades as an air-head socialite by day, but at night, dressed in a green veil, hat, dress, and gloves with clovers embroidered on them, she is Lady Luck. She has no powers, apart from being attractive to every man around her and simply beats-up, strangles, and shoots her enemies. You’ve heard this one before? Of course, you have. She’s essentially a female Spirit, Batman, or Green Arrow. She wasn’t even the first female superhero there were at least eight by the time she came around, Fanotmah, Phantom Lady, Miss Fury, Wonder Woman etc.

          These were produced during World War II so Lady Luck’s enemies were your standard schmear of axis spies, saboteurs, black marketers, fifth columnists, and so on. As typical of Eisner productions, she has a racial stereotype assistant (ie. Ebony White, Chop Chop) called Peecolo, a big dumb Italian who is in love with his boss.  Some of his dialogue is as follows, “Ees eet porsible? Brenda? Lady Luck?” The one thing different I will say about Lady Luck is that inevitably a lot of people find out her alter ego. Nearly everyone close to her and a few enemies just tear off her mask and figure it out. Apart from that, it is your standard four-color beat-em-up fare.

          The history of this character is somewhat shaky. As it is stated above, she started as a back-up character for the Spirit in 1940 with Eisner production. Then was sold to Quality comics (as many of Eisner’s characters were) and began appearing in Smash comics in issue #43. She grew somewhat in popularity to the point where the title was changed to Lady Luck Comics in issue #85, then ended at issue #90 in 1950, when the initial superhero bust happened. 

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.