WANTED: Earth-Two's Most Dangerous Super-Villains
The Huntress
Personal information
Name: Unknown, Last name presumable now Crock
Residence: Usually Mobile
Occupation: Professional
Criminal
First Appearance (Golden Age): Sensation #68 (August 1947)
First Appearance (Silver Age): Brave and The Bold #62 (August 1965)
Character History
Little is known of the criminal known has the Huntress prior
to her first encounter with Wildcat in 1947.
Calling herself the Masked Marvel, she took out a series of newspaper
ads challenging Wildcat to a fight in the ring.
When Wildcat took the bait, he was astonished to find a woman as his
opponent and unwilling to hit her back, was captured when the lights when out
and she subdued him in the darkness. Taking him to her private preserve, she
revealed her identity as the Huntress, a criminal who hunts the law and
revealed that she had captured the Mayor, the Police Chief and other city
leaders. Leaving Wildcat behind, she sends
the civilian leaders into the forests on her compound to be hunted like
animals. In her absence, Wildcat lured
her henchmen close to the cage and taunted them into releasing him. Making short work of the untalented thugs, he
set off in pursuit of the Huntress. Intercepting
the civilians, he has them fake their deaths to lead Huntress toward a trap
that Wildcat has said, caging her until the authorities arrive. She
carted off to jail but escapes before she is brought to trial (Sensation #68).
A few weeks later, the Huntress again encountered Wildcat as she and her henchmen went to great lengths to intercept a letter en route to Washington DC. After failing to capture a postal carrier and intercepting a mail truck only after the letter had entered the post, she staged a release at a local zoo ro capture Wildcat before intercepting a mail train. Finding the letter, she exclaimed that the letter revealed her true identity and after her removal of the only man who know her true name, destruction of the letter would preserve her anonymity forever. Wildcat had escaped his bonds however and swung through the train door, thrashing the Huntress’ henchmen. The Huntress herself leaps onto the tracks but becomes stuck until Wildcat pushes her out of the way of an oncoming train. While he waits for the train to pass, the Huntress has made good her escape. The true name of the Earth-Two Huntress has never been revealed (Sensation #69).
Several weeks later, the Huntress – disguised as a
mysterious woman – lured Stretch Skinner to her car and kidnapped him, leaving
a note that Ted Grant should meet her on a ship docked nearby to retrieve his friend. Deciding to approach as Wildcat instead, the
hero was ambushed by the Huntress and left for the sharks while she headed to
the championship fight with a Ted Grant look-a-like to throw the fight. Escaping his predicament, Wildcat switched
back to Ted Grant and he and Stretch defeat the Huntress’s henchmen. As she
watched from the sidelines in a veil, the real Ted Grant charges in and defeats the
imposter while the disguised villainess slips quietly away (Sensation #71).
A few weeks later, the Huntress returned kidnapping Ted Grant and Stretch Skinner and dragging them to her hunting lodge home. There she caged Grant and sent Skinner to tell Wildcat to appear or Grant would be killed. Surprisingly, several hours later, Stretch returned with Wildcat in tow and they are ambushed in a hall of mirror in which there appear to be multiple versions of the Huntress. The ensuring confusion was enough to allow the Huntress to arrive with her gang and engage Wildcat, ultimately trapping him in a quicksand pit on the grounds. After she leaves to rob an wealth costume ball, Wildcat extricates himself, meets up with Stretch and gives chase. After thrashing her goons at the party, he follows her back to her home, where the find that Ted Grant had escaped hours earlier and that she is now captured at last (Sensation #73).
In her next effort, she had a henchmen impersonate Wildcat to lure a wealthy game collector into hosting a boxing match on his yacht with the price being his collection of animals or the capture of Wildcat. With the boxing match underway, the real Wildcat quickly appears and subdues the imposter but the intervention of the Huntress leads to Wildcat’s capture. Put on display as a sop to the guests on the yacht, Wildcat is “freed” by the Huntress who comes to collect him as a prize but he quickly turns the tables causing her to flee in the yacht. Corners by Wildcat, she leaps overboard into an explosive trap she had set as a back-up and is thought lost (Sensation #75).
In early 1948, the Huntress re-appeared, this time at an amusement park where she used a sky-writing ploy you challenge Wildcat and lure gawkers to a pier. From a plane above, she circled the gathering crowd, including Ted Grant and Stretch Skinner and gassed them while her henchmen robbed them as they choked. Seeing the turn of events, Grant quickly dives into the water and emerges as Wildcat. Excited at another chance to best her foes, the Huntress quickly snares Wildcat with a rope and hauls him to plane. After a brief struggle, Wildcat pulls them both free from the aircraft but the Huntress manages to escape. Shortly thereafter, Wildcat spies her on a roller coaster but as he grabs her, she is just a dummy and Wildcat is himself ambushed by her thugs and the criminal herself, who had been disguised as old woman. Leaving Wildcat and Stretch in a trap, the Huntress makes her escape on her plane, only to discover that Wildcat has escaped and replaced her pilot. When she attempts to strangle her nemesis, she falls out of the plane and disappears into the water below (Sensation #76).
A final solo case is recorded in which she staged an attack on carnival in August of 1948. Disguising her henchmen as Santa Claus, she created bedlam and confusion to conduct robbery in the presence of children to act as a distraction. She manages to trap Wildcat on a float in the carnival parade but he escapes and manages to body throw her directly into the arms of the police (Unpublished Sensation Comics story from DC 100-Page Spectacular #6).
The Huntress was quickly sprung from jail by the Wizard to form a new incarnation of the Injustice Society. The Society manages to captures the JSA and stage a series of brazen thefts of national treasures, the Huntress targeting Plymouth Rock. When the Black Canary frees the JSA, the Flash and the Atom chase down the Huntress but are subdued again by a post-hypnotic suggesting placed by the Wizard. When the villains use a captive stadium to show off their heists, the Black Canary again engages the JSA and frees them again, just in time to ambush the Injustice Society and cart them off to jail (All-Star Comics #41).
The activities of the Huntress in the next 15 years are largely unknown. What is known is that in this time, or shortly before, she was romanced and eventually wed to Crusher Crock, her follow Injustice Socialite The Sportsmaster. Her love of the hunt and his love of sport made them a natural criminal match and the adopted the nom du crime of Mr. and Mrs. Menace.
The next recorded activity of the Huntress occurred when she
and the Sportsmaster engaged in a series of brazen thefts in Federal City,
attracting the attention of the Black Canary, Starman and Wildcat. After a series of easy escapes, the heroes corralled
the villains during a heist at a golf course and turning the Huntress’ traps
against them, captured the married criminals (Brave and the Bold #62). The Huntress and Sportsmaster also continued
their membership in the Injustice Society, battling the JSA in the mid-1970’s
(Justice League of America #123-124).
The last recorded case of the Huntress occurred in the late 1970’s when she and her husband were employed by the Flash’s adversary the Thorn. While her husband provided direct aid against the Justice Society, the Huntress broke into JSA headquarters. Enraged that Batman’s daughter had also taken the code-name “Huntress”, she laid a series of traps to capture and kill her rival. When the Huntress and Green Lantern arrived to retrieve a weapon from their HQ, the Huntress subdued Green Lantern and engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse with her heroic counterpart. The Huntress was ultimately tricked into stepping into her own traps, leaving the older villainess raging at the younger hero (All-Star Comics #72-73).
While the Huntress was witnessed active during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, her fate on Earth-Two is unknown.
Powers and Abilities
The Huntress is an Olympic level athlete with extreme levels of combat prowess and physical resilience. She is equipped and armed with a series of hunting based weapons (claws, crossbows, hunting rifles) and is a master of snares and traps. She has considerable escape skills and is not known to have endured long spells in prison. Since her marriage to the Sportsmaster, she appears to share considerable wealth and engages in crime for primary recreational and egotistical reasons.
Weaknesses and Limitations
The Huntress has no inherent super-human abilities and out-foxed or separated from her equipment, she could be captured in a straightforward manner. Like her husband, she is also pathologically competitive, to a point of impairing her judgement.
Multiversity
Earth-One
The Huntress of Earth-One is likewise of unknown origins. Her first recorded activity was as an agent of O.G.R.E, an international crime cartel targeting Aquaman. After initially engaging in battle with the Sea King, she eventually turned on them and aided in their capture (Aquaman #26). She later married the Earth-One Sportsmaster and engaged in a criminal career that involved Robin and Batgirl (Batman Family #7) in a similar manner as her Earth-Two counterpart. In their most brazen activity, the argumentative married couple challenged each other to baseball match, with the more hero-sympathetic Huntress recruiting members of the Justice League while the Sportsmaster recruiting a team of villains. While the game was initially played fairly, the villains, facing a loss in the later innings, began to cheat, leading to a free-for-all baseball game using their super powers. Despite their efforts, the villains still lost and the players returned to their prior activities, leaving Mr. and Mrs. Menace to squabble over the outcome (DC Super-Stars #10). The fate of the Earth-One Huntress is unknown.
Prior Earth-0
The Huntress of the post-Crisis Earth-o is thought to have started her career as a heroine named the Tigress, The real name of this version of the Huntress is Paula Brooks and she began her career as a member of the Young All-Stars, a member of teen-aged and young adult costumed adventurers fighting alongside the All-Star Squadron in 1942 (Young All-Stars #6). After several cases, Tigress is killed then resurrected by the Valkyrie Gudra, though with a somewhat different, more aggressive personality which causes her to quit the team (Young All-Stars #23-26). She is known to have traveling through Africa hunting both man and beast with the costumed adventurer Manhunter by 1945 (The JSA Returns: All-Star Comics #1) and is thought to have become The Huntress full-time by 1947, beginning a parallel career as her Earth-two counterpart.
The career of the Huntress is thought be largely the same up until the Crisis on Infinite Earths, possibly melding in the history of the Earth-One Huntress as well. As Crisis faded, the Sportsmaster and the Huntress were broken out of prison to form the Wizard's new Injustice Unlimited and are revealed to have a daughter Artemis (Infinity Inc #34-36). After the new group is defeated, the Huntress largely retires and her daughter assumes the Tigress identity as a new member of the Injustice Society. The Huntress was last seen retired in the lawless nation of Zandia (Young Justice #25). Her ultimate fate is unknown.
Earth-22
The Huntress of Earth-22 is thought to also be Paula Brooks and follow a similar early history. She is active up until the 1950's when she is traumatized by the final battle with the Ultra-Humanite and Hitler in the body of Dynaman. She vanishes into the African savannah afterwards (The Golden Age LS). In the early 21st century, a similarly costumed African heroine appears as the Huntress with a similar motif. Her relationship to Paula Brooks is unknown (Kingdom Come LS).
Appearances
Issue |
Comment |
Reprinted in |
Sensation #68 |
1st appearance, vs. Wildcat |
|
Sensation #69 |
vs. Wildcat |
|
Sensation #71 |
vs Wildcat |
DC 100-Page Spectacular #20 |
Sensation #73 |
vs. Wildcat |
|
Sensation #75 |
vs. Wildcat |
|
Sensation #76 |
vs. Wildcat |
|
All-Star Comics #41 |
Joins the Injustice Society |
Justice League of America #113, Justice League of America 100-Page Spectacular, The Greatest Golden Age Stories Ever Told, All-Star Archives #9 |
Brave and the Bold #62 |
w/ the Sportsmaster, vs. Starman and Black Canary |
Best of DC Digest #21, Justice Society of America 100-Page Super-Spectacular #1, Black Canary Archives #1, Crisis on Multiple Earths: The Team-Ups Vol. 2 |
DC 100-Page Spectacular #6 |
Unpublished GA story, vs. Wildcat |
DC 100-Page Spectacular #6 Replica Edition |
Joins the Injustice Society, vs. the JLA and JSA |
DC Retroactive: Justice League of America - The '70s #1 (JLA #123 only), Showcase Presents: The Justice League of America #6, Justice League of America: The Bronze Age Omnibus #2, Crisis on Multiple Earths Vol. #4 |
|
W/the Huntress and the Thorn vs. Justice Society |
Justice Society TPB Vol. 2, Showcase Presents All-Star Comics Vol. 1, All-Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever |
|
Crisis on Infinite Earths #9-10 |
Participate in the Villain War |
Absolute Crisis on Infinite Earths, Crisis on Infinite Earths Deluxe Edition HC, Crisis on Infinite Earths TPB |