MONSTRESS

Real Name: Unrevealed

Identity/Class: Unrevealed (but likely extradimensional/alternate reality) 

Occupation: Unrevealed

Group Membership: None

Affiliations: None (see comments)

Enemies: Unspecified criminals

Known Relatives: None

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: Unrevealed

First Appearance: Comics Feature#33 (January-February 1985)

Powers/Abilities: Monstress possesses superhuman strength and likely durability.

Height: Unrevealed (but tall)
Weight: Unrevealed
Eyes: Unrevealed
Hair: Blonde

History:
(Comics Feature#33) - (speculation/extrapolation from concept art) An unidentified teenage girl discovered the golden statue of a giant woman chained to a cave wall next to an inscription, and somehow found herself chained to the inscription too. The girl either somehow freed the statue who turned (back?) into flesh and blood, or else switched places with/transformed into the woman when their shackles were banged together. Calling herself Monstress, she went forth to combat crime.

Comments: Created by Stan Lee, Donald F. Glut and Doug Wildey; Stan came up with the title and a "very basic idea" for the show, then asked Don to develop it; Don then provided origin, powers and relationships for the show, and Doug drew the concept art seen right.

   "In the summer of 1980, Marvel Entertainment Group President James E. Galton and Marvel Comics Publisher Stan Lee,...traveled west from their New York corporate headquarters to establish an animation studio in Los Angeles. In conjunction with the Emmy and Oscar-award winning animator David H. Depatie and his longtime production associate Lee Gunther, Galton and Lee formed Marvel Productions, Ltd.... The primary reason why Lee and Galton wanted to start a production company was that they had been repeatedly disappointed with the ways in which other producers had portrayed the Marvel Comics characters in cartoons, live-action TV and feature films, and they felt they could do a more accurate job of bringing their characters to the large and small screen." - Robert Strauss, Comics Feature#33

   If the idea of Marvel setting up a Marvel studio to make movies around their characters so they could do a more better and (generally) more faithful versions of them sounds familiar, then it should, because that's basically the story of how we've ended up with the MCU. Naturally, Stan Lee had the idea decades earlier, though with far more mixed results, not least because while they developed ideas, they were then still trying to get other studios to buy them and pay to turn the ideas into finished products. They had numerous live-action movies in early stages of development - Captain America, Doctor Strange, Fantastic Four, Roger Corman's Spider-Man and X-Men are mentioned in Strauss' article in Comics Feature - but the only one mentioned that actually made it to the screen during the lifetime of Marvel Productions was...Howard the Duck. They also got ABC sold on a live-action Daredevil series to the point where a pilot script was completed, but it was in animation that they had the most success, both with Marvel characters (1981's Spider-Man, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, 1982's Incredible Hulk, and later Pryde of the X-Men) and developing cartoons on behalf of others (Dungeons and Dragons, G.I. Joe, Transformers, etc.). However, more successful doesn't mean completely successful, and there were still a lot of ideas that never made it beyond the development stage. There's not a ton of information available on most of these, but the article in Comics Feature#33 did at least provide concept art for a few, and snippets have emerged over the years from those who were involved in the development stage.

  Monstress is an example of these. Afaik, literally all we know about her comes from the single image used on this page. It looks to me like Monstress is made of gold or trapped in that form, and like the girl does a Captain Marvel/Shazam and either switches places with her or transforms into her, but I really am speculating based purely on the artwork. Likewise I suspect we're looking at magic and maybe something to with ancient myths - that outfit Monstress is wearing strikes me as Romanesque, something that wouldn't look out of place in a Hercules story. If the young girl in the red top isn't Monstress' alter ego then she's probably her friend and guide in the modern world.

Profile by Loki.

CLARIFICATIONS:
Monstress has no known connections to:

images: (without ads)
Comics Feature#33, p26, pan9-11 (main images)

Appearances:
Comics Feature#33 (January-February 1985) - Doug Wildey (artist)

First Posted: 08/03/2021
Last updated: 08/03/2021

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

Non-Marvel Copyright info
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