Olga Mesmer

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File:Spicy Mystery Stories Sept 1937.jpg

Olga Mesmer is a superpowered fictional character in a pulp magazine's comic strip published from 1937 to 1938. Like the newspaper comic-strip character Popeye (1929) and novelist Philip Wylie's protagonist Hugo Danner (1930), she is among the precursors of the archetypal comic-book superhero, Superman.

Publication history

File:TheGirlWithTheX-RayEyes logo.jpg

Olga Mesmer, "The Girl with the X-ray Eyes", starred in a single-page comic strip that ran in issues of the pulp magazine Spicy Mystery Stories cover-dated August 1937 to October 1938.{{cite book | first=Peter|last=Coogan| title=Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre | publisher=Monkeybrain | date= 2006 | isbn=978-1932265187| pages=165–174}} Reprinted in {{cite book| title = The Superhero Reader |first1= Charles |last1= Hatfield | first2=Jeet| last2= Heer | first3=Kent, eds.| last3= Worcester| publisher=University Press of Mississippi | date =2013 | isbn = 978-1617038068 | page= [https://books.google.com/books?id=A-exXwYTg0oC&dq=olga+mesmer&pg=PA12 12]}} The first story, "The Astounding Adventures of Olga Mesmer, the Girl with the X-Ray Eyes", and subsequent installments are by an unidentified writer.{{cite book |title = X-Ray Vision: A Way of Looking Paperback | date = 2012 | first = Richard M. | last= Swiderski | publisher = Universal Publishers| isbn = 978-1612331089 | page = [https://books.google.com/books?id=ETr_OSk4_kAC&dq=olga+mesmer&pg=PA161 161]}} Art for the strip, created at a comics studio run by Adolphe Barreaux,{{cite book | authorlink=Les Daniels|first=Les | last=Daniels | title = Wonder Woman: The Complete History | publisher = Chronicle Books | location = San Francisco | date= 2000 | page=??? | isbn=978-0811829137}} is credited to Watt Dell, who sometimes signed his illustrations for the magazine as Watt Dell Lovett, and may be a pseudonym; as well, some of the Mesmer strips are signed "Stone".{{cite news | first= Will | last=Murray | title = The Spicy Strips| work= Risque Stories | publisher= Cryptic Publications | issue = 5 | date=1987 | url = http://www.oocities.org/pippl2/stuff.html}} Via webpage The Fine Print (requires scrolldown).

Powers and abilities

Mesmer's X-ray vision stemmed from experiments done on her Venusian mother, Margot, by her mad-scientist father, Dr. Hugo Mesmer, who exposed Margot to radiation.

Legacy

With scientifically enhanced super-strength and X-ray vision, but no separate alter ego and with her powers kept secret, she nonetheless is considered by comics historian Will Murray as "the superhero before Superman",{{cite news| first= Will | last= Murray | work=Comic Book Marketplace | issue = 51 |date=September 1997 | title =The Pulp Connection: The Superhero before Superman}} though an addition about her mother's extraterrestrial origin may have come only after Superman's debut.{{cite news| first= Will | last= Murray | title= The Roots of Superman! | work=Comic Book Marketplace | issue =64 | date= October 1998| pages=19–21}} More generally, writes historian Peter Coogan, she is considered a precursor:

{{quote|The only clear superhero convention present is superpowers. But many science-fiction superfolk and mythical heroes before Olga had powers equal to or greater than hers, so if she is a superhero, she is not the first and the superhero genre extends back to the legend of Gilgamesh. ... There is more to superheroes than superpowers. Further, Mesmer lacks the codename and costume aspects of the identity convention. Her tale generically fits within the SF superman (or woman), genre, particularly in the way she gets her superpowers, seemingly drawing directly on Wylie's Gladiator for inspiration. ... Unlikely to have influenced [Superman creators] Siegel or Shuster, Olga Mesmer merely demonstrates the same point that the other comics precursors to Superman demonstrate: that, like the pulps before them, comic books and comic strips contained all the elements of the superhero — the powers, the mission, the identity — but it took Siegel and Shuster to put them all together into Superman.Coogan in Hatfield, et al., p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=A-exXwYTg0oC&dq=olga+mesmer+merely+demonstrates&pg=PA13 13].}}

Olga Mesmer

Publication history

Powers and abilities

Legacy

References

Further reading