Joan Dale was a wartime superhero Miss America.
History
Joan Dale was a courageous New York reporter, who had a dream in which the Statue of Liberty appeared to her, gave her several amazing super powers, and instructed her to battle evil. Joan awoke to find that she now really had these powers. Adopting a secret identity, but no costume or mask, she began fighting criminals and spies as Miss America.[1]
After a short time, Joan quit her reporting job at New York's Daily Star, and took a job with the FBI, where her boss was Tim Healy. They worked in the New York City office of the FBI.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
- Molecular Reconstruction: Miss America had complete control over the structure and nature of matter. She could transform the clothes of a person or turn objects into living beings.[2]
- Metamorphosis: She also could turn persons into animals or trees,[3] and turn animals into lesser animals.[4]
- Animate Objects She could animate wax figures and set them to work fighting hoodlums. The fighting figures could speak.[4]
- Animate Image She could turn the etching of an eagle on a war bond into a full-sized, live, talking eagle, and have it attack a gang.[5]
- Retrocognition She could look into a fragment of a demolished building and find the home of the agent of its destruction.[3]
- Size Alteration She could enlarge or contract objects or animals to whatever size she chose.[6]
- Superhuman Durability She once fired herself into the ocean from a submarine torpedo tube, then overtook a previous torpedo, and wrestled it onto a new course.[7]
- Superhuman Speed
- Superhuman Strength
- Telekinesis She could cause objects, including herself, to fly around in any direction, and could move heavy objects long distances at high speeds without touching them.[3]
- Teleportation She could transport herself instantly to any place and appear in a puff of smoke.[8]
Abilities
Notes
- This version of Joan Dale (Quality Universe), including all history and corresponding appearances, was erased from existence following the collapse of the original Multiverse in the 1985–86 Crisis on Infinite Earths event and later restored following the rebirth of the infinite Multiverse during the Dark Crisis of 2022-2023. Even though other versions of the character may have appeared, this information does not apply to those versions.
- Miss America did not kid around when dealing with evildoers. On her first super-powered day, she transformed three thugs into doves, turned three others into trees, and blew up two more with their own bomb.[9] She once hit at least twenty Brownshirts with an incandescent mass of molten steel, then turned the survivors into miniature soldiers, and marched them into a puddle.[10] She set fire to the Moth's getaway autogyro, and it was still on fire when it hit the river far below.[11]
- Joan Dale quit her newspaper job in Military Comics #3, at the end of the story, and quit it again, and joined the FBI, in Military Comics #4.
- Miss America was head-konked unconscious only once in her career.[12]
- In her brief career, Miss America changed costumes twice, and changed artists four times:
- Military Comics #1 and #2, she wears her bright red business-office dress, with no mask, and is drawn by Ed Wexler.
- Military Comics #3, she wears the same outfit, and is drawn by Tom Hickey.
- Military Comics #4, she changes from the business suit dress to a much skimpier and more colorful costume, still with no mask.
- Military Comics #5, in that same costume, she is again drawn by Ed Wexler.
- Military Comics #6, in a redesigned costume with more stars and more stripes, she is again drawn by Tom Hickey.
- Military Comics #7, in pretty nearly that same costume, she is next and last drawn by Maurice Kashuba.
Trivia
- Joan Dale was prone to breaking the Fourth Wall in the final panel of a story, and winking at the readers. She did so in Military Comics #1 and #6.
Related
- 9 Appearances of Joan Dale (Quality Universe)
- 2 Images featuring Joan Dale (Quality Universe)
- Quotations by or about Joan Dale (Quality Universe)
- Character Gallery: Joan Dale (Quality Universe)
External Links
Footnotes
This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Miss America (DC Comics). The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.