Charlton VS Mighty MLJ

Friday, May 7, 2010

Friday Fiends: Covert Carrot-Tops

We already met one  sultry scarlet sister of the sinister and then saw how she turned the tables on the bad guy in our last installment to aid our working class heroes. Maybe it was some chick named Black Widow over at another publisher (who makes her big screen debut tonight!), but the trend of red head femme fatale spies with a soft spot for the good guys was not unique to that marvelous comic brand. Over at Tower, they rolled out their own version in the form of Iron Maiden (again with the "Iron" connection).

The Maiden of Ferro never revealed much about herself, so her origin and motivations are left a mystery. Except that she loved the thrill of the dark side, and wearing form fitting armor that would make Doctor Doom drool didn't hurt either. And to continue our tie in with the metallic movie event of the summer, check out this fantastic meeting between our gal and guy of Iron by the fabulous Fred Hembeck! Gotta love it!

Sparks flew when Rusty first met Len Brown's Dynamo alias, and the fire was only stoked further when they were introduced in their civilian duds. While she at first worked for the Warlord and his faction of underworld alien minions, she later freelanced until finally siding with the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents in order to stave off an alien invasion. Alas, their romance was doomed to failure due to differing sensibilities for right and wrong.






Charlton decided that after a dozen or so issues of Fightin' Five, the missing ingredient (which perhaps caused them to lose their title and then shack up in Peacemaker's back pages) was the feminine touch. And so, shortly after introducing Sonya in issue #1, they immediately brought her back as a substitute for poor Irv the Nerve who bit the dust last ish. And she continued to assist the Five (actually Four including herself, as team leader Hank operated behind the scenes due to injuries from last issue that killed Irv). Until Peacemaker's final issue she aided the team.



And so, two lethal lasses add their clout to the proceedings aiding a pair of doomed franchises that briefly capitalized on the Cold War spy genre of the day. Not unlike a myriad of other covert carrot-tops back then.

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