June Tarpe Mills was born February 25, 1918, in Brooklyn, New York.  The home was run by her widowed mother, and filled with June’s sister’s orphaned children. June worked as a model to support her family, and to help pay her way into the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn’s prestigious art school. She would work as a fashion illustrator before turning her hand in 1938 to the burgeoning world of comic books, with work on such titles as Daredevil Barry Finn, Catman, and The Purple Zombie. She created these works under the sexually-ambiguous nom de plume Tarpe Mills as, “It would have been a major let-down to the kids if they found out that the author of such virile and awesome characters was a gal.” This anonymity would cease with the April 6, 1941, debut of The Black Fury, as the strip was initially known. Utilizing an art style that was equal parts high fashion and high adventure, Ms. Mills would introduce readers to socialite Marla Drake, who upon discovering that she’d be wearing the same outfit as a rival to a masquerade, instead donned an African witch doctor’s ceremonial panther skin catsuit quipping, “At least no one else will be wearing the same thing!” En route, she encounters two seeming ne’er-do-wells whom she subdues with a stylish combinations of punches, kicks, and the whip-like tail of her costume.

During this time, Miss Fury’s writer/artist Tarpe Mills would become as well-known as her creation, with newspaper and magazine articles highlighting the beautiful Ms. Mills as the model for her own four-color avatar (not to mention the inclusion in the strip of her own cat, Perri-Purr, and his often vital role in sniffing out trouble!). Polls taken at the time showed newspaper readers across the gender lines were fans of the exploits of Miss Fury, and at the strip’s height, it was published in more than 100 newspapers, and the Timely Comics reprints of them sold well over a million copies an issue!