Butterfly...the FIRST Black SuperHeroine's Premiere Tale!

Who was the FIRST Black superheroine?
Most people say X-Men's Storm...

...and they'd be wrong!

Four years before Ororo Munroe made her first appearance in 1975's Giant Size X-Men #1,  another costumed Black superheroine flew across comic pages (in her own strip) for two issues!

Butterfly debuted as a back-up feature in the b/w comic magazine Hell-Rider #1, August, 1971.
She predates Marvel's Storm by four years and DC's BumbleBee by five years.

Secretly Las Vegas cabaret singer Marian Michaels, the flying femme's origin and crime-fighting motivations were never revealed.

Butterfly wore a somewhat-skimpy winged costume (note: there are no color pics of the character) with an anti-gravity device/mini-jet for propulsion, and high-intensity strobe lights to blind her foes.
Whether she created the costume and equipment herself or was given them is another mystery.
She's also a trained hand-to-hand combatant.

This premiere story was written by Gary Friedrich, pencils by Ross Andru, inks by Jack Abel and Mike Esposito.

Enjoy...

Tomorrow: Enter...the Wild Bunch!