Fantomah
Fantomah, mystery woman of the jungle, is one of the first super-heroines in comic book history, published in early 1940, two months after the debut of Princess Jane Q-X 3 Gem (Centaur's "Magician from Mars"). Her powers were very dependent on the plot. She basically develops whatever powers needed at the moment.
Name:
Fantomah
Publisher:
Real name:
Aliases:
- Paz Gallegos
Birth date:
None
Gender:
Female
Powers:
- Adaptive
- Flight
- Genetic Manipulation
- Illusion Casting
- Invisibility
- Precognition
- Psychic
- Sense Death
- Shape Shifter
- Super Speed
- Super Strength
- Unarmed Combat
First issue:
Jungle Comics (1940) #2 Jungle Comics
History
Fantomah is a mysterious godlike being who protects the jungles of Africa. She has vast magical power, to the point of being practically omnipotent, and can transform herself into a frightening blue phantom/skeleton creature as well as a floating skull with blonde hair. Fantomah often sentences her enemies to bizarre and brutal punishments. For instance, she transforms a band of greedy diamond miners who oppressed the natives into one man, then sends that man to an "unfound world" to be enslaved by hideous green fanged monsters, then sent into a pit of cobras, and then absorbed into a wall by a giant hand. Besides greedy treasure hunters and slavers she wreaked her brutal vengeance on such bizarre foes as Org, who controlled giant spiders with a hypnotic drum, and Professor Zomax, who wanted revenge on nature after being successively attacked by a lion, an elephant, gnats, a snake, and a gorilla.
Fantomah was created by Fletcher Hanks and shares similarities with her fellow Fletcher Hanks creation, Stardust. Later writers and artists who lacked Fletcher Hanks's uniquely grotesque imagination portrayed Fantomah as an ordinary human adventurer with some mystic abilities. As a pharaoh, too.
