Moon Girl
Entry updated 4 August 2025. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1947-1949). EC Comics. 8 issues. Artists include Sheldon Moldoff. Script writers include Gardner Fox and Bill Woolfolk. 36-52 pages with 3-4 long strips and a short text story in each issue, with short strips as filler. All but two of the long strips feature Moon Girl. The EC Moon Girl should not be confused with the Marvel Comics Moon Girl (see Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur).
Moon Girl was created by Woolfolk and Moldoff; though Woolfolk was not involved after #2, from which issue Fox wrote most of the scripts. #1 was titled Moon Girl and the Prince, #2-#6 Moon Girl, #7-#8 Moon Girl Fights Crime; the title then changed to A Moon, a Girl ... Romance for #9-#12, but only #9 included a Moon Girl story (the title change was to save on postage costs, implying it was the same comic despite a genre shift to romance). Of the text stories, those in #3, #4 and #5 were sf (written by Fox). Superhero Moon Girl is in the Wonder Woman mould and, though early on worrying how Prince Mengu might find her superior strength humiliating, the strip usually has her as a strong, forceful character (see Feminism) – as indeed are the female Villains, Satania, Sola and the Venusians (see Women in SF). The Prince – who even in #1 is very much the sidekick and gets the lesser font on the cover – does occasionally save Moon Girl, but usually she saves him. The strips where our hero fights mundane antagonists are the least interesting, but the sf and fantasy ones are entertaining. Moon Girl's origin story also appeared in Happy Houlihans #1 (1947) at about the same time it was published in Moon Girl and the Prince.
That origin story informs us that every seven hundred years there appears a man and a woman who are "so outstanding, so virile" that they "stagger our imaginations": in 1947 they are Moon Girl, from Samarkand, already formidable but who is given a Magic moonstone that gives her invulnerability and the strength of ten men (leaping to 10,000 men in #2), and the athletic, exceptionally strong Prince Mengu. Their predecessors were "described by Marco Polo in his adventures", with the moonstone acquired by a daughter of Kaidu, the thirteenth-century Mongol ruler, when she killed an evil wizard. This princess is clearly the historical Khutulun (aka Aigiarne), a warrior princess who was indeed the daughter of Kaidu and was mentioned by Marco Polo and Rashid al-Din Hamadani. Moon Girl and the Prince move to the USA, change their names to Clare Lune and Lionel Manning, and dedicate themselves to fighting evil.
#1's "Invaders from Venus" opens on matriarchal Venus where the males are dying out, having become "puny weaklings ... poor helpless creatures"; the queen orders the capture of several Earth males as fresh breeding stock (see Exogamy; Sex). Their victims include the Prince, who is saved by Moon Girl; though escaping with several men, one of the Venusians has become so besotted with the Prince that she orders their Spaceship's return, enabling Moon Girl to free the other prisoners. #1's other stories have no genre elements, though one criminal, "Satania, Queen of the Underworld", might be thought a borderline Supervillain due to her being costumed. #2's "Future Man" has a henpecked husband from 3000 CE who dislikes his dull but otherwise Utopian era and Time Travels to the present, intending to kidnap Moon Girl after having seen her in a film. Using advanced Technology he manages to do so, but then his wife arrives.
In #3's "Rockets For Riches" Moon Girl has acquired a "Moon-ray powered Moon ship" (see Transportation) and faces Satania again, whose sense of the dramatic (appearing in a puff of smoke, tying the Prince to a rocket) means for this story at least she can be considered a supervillain. At one point Moon Girl flies and lifts a liner out of the sea. #4 has "The Challenge of the Cyclops", where lightning shatters part of the Sicilian mountain in which Ulysses imprisoned the Cyclops (see Mythology), who is freed: he swims to America, there teaming up with crooks. "Vampire of the Bayous" has a Vampire. In "Peace for the Old Countries" Satania stirs up racial hatred among a city's communities for financial gain (see Race in SF). #5 includes "Slaves to the Sun", where "Sola, the girl Scientist" harnesses the energy of the Sun (see Power Sources) and builds Weapons "to enslave all men to women and form a world ruled by females". In "The Corpse with Will-Power" a professor proves his theory on the overwhelming strength of the mind by surviving several hours after his murder to enact his revenge (arguably a Psi Power); Moon Girl is largely a bystander. #6 has the Venusian women return to stock up with Earthmen in "The Day the World Trembled", now armed with an earthquake machine and a mass-Hypnosis Ray. However, Moon Girl's ability to bore through rock with her bare hands defeats them. "The Plunderers from the Past" has crew members from ships sunk in the Straits of Magellan over the centuries – including Romans and Vikings – and frozen in ice until a shipwrecked Nazi arrives and starts a fire that frees them (see Suspended Animation). They go on a crime spree.
In #7's "The Menace from the Moon" a child finds her own magical moon jewel only to be forced by criminals to commit crimes before being saved by Moon Girl and becoming her sidekick, initially called Star, that changed to the Starlet in her second and final appearance in #8's "The Man Without a Face". #8 also has "The Witch of the Haunted Hills!", where a witch enchants various Supernatural Creatures, including a female Werewolf and a mermaid named Undina. [SP]
links
- Comic Book Plus – #1-#6 only
- Grand Comics Database – Moon Girl and the Prince
- Grand Comics Database – #2-#8
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