5) BUTTERFLY (1971)
Though a certain X-Man is often credited with being the first black female superhero, she is predated by several years by Marian Michaels, The Butterfly, the first black female superhero. First appearing as a backup feature in Skywald Comics’ Hell-Rider #1 (a comic that I fought tooth and nail to get a copy of, thank you, so yeah it’s also a Retro Review) Marian is a Vegas lounge singer whose glittery gowns occasionally give way to a special costume featuring a jetpack and insectoid “sucker-fingers”, which she uses to stomp evil. Amusingly, she’s also meta well ahead of her time, thinking to herself at one point “Steady there, baby! This is no time for origin stories!”, forever endearing her to me…
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I’d like to put an honorable mention for Nubia, the black Wonder Woman, who appeared in Wonder Woman comics in the early 1970s.
While Nubia may not be the first black female superhero, she was the first to have a Mego doll made of her:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NmsbnVvWuM
“Gotchya Majyer!”
Mal Duncan (1970), aka Hornblower, aka Guardian, aka Herald, aka Vox, of the Teen Titans deserves an honorable mention.