Comic writer-artist June Tarpé Mills was one of the first significant female comic creators. She is best known for her comic strip Miss Fury, the first female action hero created by a woman.

Mills was active during the Golden Age of comics and since women weren’t prominently employed in the period, she signed her work using her middle name Tarpé so that it wouldn’t be judged negatively by her gender.

Mills hailed from Brooklyn where she attended Erasmus Hall High School, worked as a model, and studied at the Pratt Institute. Her professional career started as a fashion illustrator before she moved on to comics. Mills created several characters like Devil’s Dust, the Cat Man, the Purple Zombie, and Daredevil Barry Finn. She wrote original scripts, penciled, and inked stories in multiple titles like Amazing Mystery Funnies, Target Comics, Funny Pages, Masked Marvel, Star Comics, and Amazing Man Comics.

In 1941, Mills created Miss Fury six months before Wonder Woman’s famed introduction. Miss Fury is the superheroine identity of wealthy socialite Marla Drake who gains strength and speed through power instilled in her catsuit costume. Inspired by Milton Caniff’s work, she drew action across multiple panels and gave her characters realistic facial expressions and poses. The character became a favored symbol during World War II with her images painted on the noses of American warplanes.

The strip ran in Sunday comics and at its top circulation, the strip appeared in 100 newspapers. It ran until 1952 when she retired from comics and Timely Comics collected the strips in comic book format.

Mills returned for a brief period in 1971 with Our Love Story at Marvel and later in ’79 for a Miss Fury graphic novel, though it was not finished. She died in 1988 in her hometown of Brooklyn and was inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame in 2019.