A look at a forgotten golden age character, and pondering: Why am I always drawn back to Lady Luck?
Welcome to Conductor Pat’s Perspective. Today I’m remaking one of my original blog posts, and delving into the history of Lady Luck.
The golden age of comics (Late 1930’s to 1950’s) introduced hundreds of comic book characters as publishers jumped on the superhero bandwagon created by Superman. You probably know a lot of characters who originated in comics’ “golden age”: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America and countless other characters are still published today.
A lot of characters by publishers (driven out of business by various factors such as changing interests and/or the 50’s comics moral mass panic) didn’t survive into the modern era. Many have fallen into the public domain (or, as we’ll discuss later, a gray area) and into obscurity. One of those characters is Lady Luck.
I first learned of Lady Luck when I was delving into the Public Domain Superhero Wikipedia, a resource for people to learn more about comic history, and possibly find characters you can use in stories. Lady Luck’s wikipedia page (at the time of writing) is very short, but it was enough to draw me into a rabbit hole, and even my senior project.
Why am I always coming back to Lady Luck? What is it about this character that keeps my interest? Let’s find out.
Background
Lady Luck was co-created by Will Eisner (famous for his character The Spirit), with Dick French and Charles Mazoujian. She first appeared as a back up story, according to Comic Vine, for The Spirit’s 16 page comic strip. Lady Luck’s stories took up 4 pages for the publication.
Nick Cardy and later Klaus Nordling would take over creative duties for Lady Luck. Nordling is most associated with Lady Luck, as he spent the most time working on the character’s stories.
Most of Lady Luck’s stories appeared as backup stories in the Spirit comic. (She appeared in 75 the Spirit comic issues). She also appeared in Men of Mystery (14) issues, and (which we’ll get into later), Smash Comics.
In 1946, Lady Luck was removed from the comic strip in 1946 when the 16 pages were halved. Her stories were picked up by Quality Comics, a Golden Age comic book publisher that published Eisner’s The Spirit.
Lady Luck appeared in 16 issues of Smash Comics. At Issue #86, Lady Luck was made the title character of the comic, and they continued with her on the front cover. Lady Luck’s comic was canceled after Issue #90 in 1950. She appeared in 126 comics issues in 10 years, not a bad count for a character who easily could’ve been made for a story, then tossed aside. A lot of experimentation was happening in the early days of the US comics industry.
Characters
Brenda Banks/Lady Luck: Brenda Bank is the alter ego of Lady Luck. She’s an Irish-American heiress who grows bored of high society and decides to fight crime (a common trope for Golden Age superheroes). The main difference is that Brenda Banks is a woman. Her first story also predates Wonder Woman.
Brenda doesn’t have any powers, though is trained in hand to hand combat, and is shown in many stories to be quick on her feet. She’s able to get herself out of awkward situations and handle bigger opponents. But she doesn’t fight alone.
Peecolo: Peecolo is Brenda’s Italian chauffeur who drives her around and provides additional muscle when necessary. Peecolo’s often used for comedic relief in the stories, though not as much as our next character.
Count de Change: The count is a French expat who often takes Brenda on dates, and is played for laughs. Despite his name, he’s often broke and has proposed on a few occasions marrying Brenda for her money and to avoid war service. Brenda, as Lady Luck, often has to save the Count, making him infatuated with Lady Luck too. The Count never finds out Lady Luck’s secret identity.
Chief Hardy Moore: Hardy Moore is Brenda’s main love interest. He’s the head of the police, so Brenda often helps him as Lady Luck. That is when the police aren’t trying to arrest her. Despite Brenda not wearing a mask (her costume consists of a translucent veil), he never discovers her identity.
Feeny O’Mye: A bumbling, comedic Irish cop who often assists Brenda, or rather she assists him.
Miscellaneous
We also see Brenda’s father in the stories, though Mr. Banks (from my limited reading) doesn’t take a large role in the stories. Rather, he helps introduce Brenda to situations which she needs to assist with. Like most of the characters, he’s unaware of her alter ego.
Another group is the Lady Luck Platoon. During World War II, Brenda enlisted several female friends to help her with the war effort. They dressed in green dresses like Brenda, but without the veil. Now, how the group didn’t wonder why Brenda didn’t join is beyond me. They’re played for laughs, but do assist in a few of the stories with them I’ve been able to find (more on that later).
One downside to Lady Luck’s original run is her lack of a rogues gallery. Most of the time Lady Luck fights gangsters and spies. The only villains she does have only show up a few times at most, then are never seen again. Which in some ways is for the best. A lot of the Golden Age comics aged poorly due to the open racism of the era, and Lady Luck wasn’t spared that.
I wonder if Lady Luck’s lack of a rogues gallery was part of her series’ downfall. It’d be hard to imagine Superman without Lex Luthor, Batman without the Joker, or Captain America without the Red Skull. Perhaps Eisner’s team wanted to do something different. The Spirit, Eisner’s most well known character, only really had a handful of returning villains, so perhaps more of her post-war villains would have returned. Sadly, we’ll never know.
Collections
In the 1980s a few volumes of Lady Luck’s stories were collected. I happen to own one, which includes a foreword by Klaus Nordling. In that volume Brenda takes a page from Denny Colt (the Spirit’s) status quo and fakes her own death. The details are a bit fuzzy, (the collection is in storage at the moment), but for a time Brenda Banks was assumed dead, and Lady Luck allowed her family and friends to believe that.
There’s at least one omnibus collection of Lady Luck, though most of her stories are out of print. Because Quality Comics failed to renew the copyright of the stories (on account of them going bankrupt) most of Lady Luck’s stories can be found online for free, or in independent, unofficial collections. Why unofficial, you ask?
Copyright Status
Unlike other comics creators, Eisner retained the copyrights to his characters. So when Quality Comics shut down in the 50s, his characters were protected.
While you can legally read Lady Luck’s original run, the character (to the best of my knowledge and understanding) still falls under the copyright of the Eisner Estate. She’s appeared as a supporting character in some stories, such as a modern take on Eisner’s John Law, a police officer who smokes a pipe and has an eyepatch. However, since her series was canceled in 1950, she’s not had her own series.
I get why. Lady Luck isn't the most famous of Eisner’s creations. Compared to the Spirit, she was a B-lister, and hasn’t received the same treatment as him, with characters such as the late Dawryn Cooke reimagining the character for the modern day. Which to me, is a shame. (I should also mention I haven’t read the John Law book, so maybe she gets the love she deserves. If you have read John Law, let me know in the comments below).
Lady Luck’s last appearance, as of writing, was in DC’s New 52 era. In The Phantom Stranger #6, Lady Luck has a cameo as a card dealer. Unlike her Golden Age rendition, Lady Luck has the ability to shape shift, including a skull face as a homage to another Golden Age character, Fantomah.
There’s a possibility a revamped version of the character was going to appear in DC’s the New 52 era Justice League, according to her Wikipedia page and a Comic Book Review article (via the wayback machine). However, I haven’t been able to find a definitive source confirming, so I can’t say if this’ 100% true. (If you do know, feel free to leave a comment below. I’d love to find out how close we were to a Lady Luck revival).
Why do I like Lady Luck?
So to review:
A lesser known character, with a limited run in her own book
No rogues gallery
No modern adaptations
So WHY am I a fan of Lady Luck?
I’m still trying to figure that out. What I can say is that when I first saw that wikipedia page on her, I was hooked. Perhaps it's the untapped potential of Lady Luck, or the sharp writing (minus the problematic writing tropes of the era), Lady Luck has a charm to her. As a ‘modern’ woman in the 1940’s, Brenda took agency in her stories and showed herself to be adaptable in comedic stories and tales with high stakes.
I’d love to see an adaptation of Lady Luck, perhaps something similar to the proposed Geoff Johns reimagining on the Justice League. There are luck power based superheroes (such as Domino at Marvel, who I know from Deadpool 2). There’s an untapped potential to her that I’d love to see further developed. Whatever it is, ever since I saw her Public Domain Superhero wiki page, I haven't been able to forget the character.
Perhaps I don’t need to explain it. Sometimes characters click for you, and are enjoyable. And Lady Luck is definitely one of those characters. Something had to have stuck, or I wouldn’t have written my senior thesis project about her (I’ll say more about that in another post).
QOTD
What’s an obscure character that you enjoy? Have you read any of Lady Luck’s comics? Share your thoughts in the comments below, or on social media. Thanks for reading.
Sources:
“Lady Luck (Character.” ComicVine. Accessed 2 July, 2022. https://comicvine.gamespot.com/lady-luck/4005-35407/
“Lady Luck (Comics).” Wikipedia. Accessed 2 July, 2022
“Lady Luck.” Public Domain Superheroes. Accessed 2 July, 2022 https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Lady_Luck
Parkin, JK. “SDCC ’11 | Lady Luck revealed as mystery Justice League member.” Comic Book Resource, via waybackmachine. 23 July, 2011. Accessed 2 July, 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20120114215804/http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2011/07/sdcc-11-lady-luck-revealed-as-mystery-justice-league-member/
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