Today, see how Patsy Walker's comic book past was retroactively worked into the Marvel Universe.

In "Our Lives Together," I spotlight some of the more interesting examples of shared comic book universes. You know, crossovers that aren't exactly crossovers.

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PATSY WALKER DEBUTS

By 1944, Archie Andrews had proven to be so popular that he had received his own ongoing title a few years earlier and it was clear that Archie was a major success...

Meanwhile, Marvel Comics had launched a female superhero named Miss America earlier in the year. After a single issue of her comic book, Marvel (well, Timely Comics at the time) decided to reformat the comic book as a magazine, with the name changing to Miss America Magazine. In the comic, Stuart Little (husband to Bea Little, the editor on the comic book) and Ruth Atkinson (one of the top female artistic talents of the Golden Age) introduced Timely's answer to Archie Andrews, a female version named Patsy Walker, as Timely Comics was a big fan of basically following whatever trends were popular in comics at the time.

Patsy Walker made her debut

Patsy had your typical teen problems with her little brother...

But her main problem here is that she is trying to win a date with a famous radio star, but her rival, Hedy Wolfe (spelled Wolf in this first appearance) wins the contest first...

Patsy is so upset that she even turns on her steady beau, Buzz Baxter...

Luckily, her little brother has some information that he helps let Patsy in on and suddenly Patsy has a whole different take on the radio star (he wear a toupee and Patsy makes it so that the toupee falls off while he's dancing with Hedy and Hedy is embarrassed. Like Archie, Patsy was not always the nicest person).

Of all of the various Archie Andrews knock-offs from different companies, Patsy Walker was by far the most successful. In fact, Patsy Walker remained one of Marvel's most popular books for the next DECADE plus! Even when Marvel launched their superhero series in the 1960s, they kept on making room for new Patsy Walker comics. She was just too popular. Eventually, though, Patsy's sales petered out a bit and they tried one last ditch approach to keeping it afloat by having Patsy graduate from school and become a career woman. It didn't work and both of her ongoing titles ended in the late 1960s.

PATSY WALKER JOINS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE

In 1971, Marvel was expanding their comic book line in a big way and as a result, there suddenly were more features and comic books out there than there were writers to write them (especially with Stan Lee cutting back on his comic book writing), and so a whole new generation of comic book writers were joining Marvel.

Already new writers, like Gerry Conway (not even 20 years old at the time) were quickly replaced by even NEWER writers as Conway was moved on to bigger books.

So after Conway launched Beast's feature in Amazing Adventures #11...

New writer Steve Englehart got his first regular Marvel assignment in the following issue, as he took over the Beast feature...

In the following issue, Englehart, a true student of comic book history, cleverly brought Marvel's answer to Archie Andrews, Patsy Walker, firmly into the Marvel Universe by having the now-adult Patsy become a supporting character along with her husband, Buzz Baxter, now in the military and assigned to the same operation where the Beast worked at as Dr. Hank McCoy...

The series was not particularly popular, and so Englehart kept thinking of ways to help the book sell more. That led to him, in Amazing Adventures #15, coming up with the direction for his artist, Tom Sutton, to simply "Draw Patsy Walker in a negligee"...

It was worked into the story as Beast comes to Patsy for help and she learns his secret identity in the process (and blackmails him over it)...

At the end of the issue, Patsy covers for Hank in front of Buzz (you have to love Buzz's reaction to Warren's good looks. "I could believe THIS guy could get ladies. He's GORGEOUS!") and we learn that it is due to that mysterious talk that they had...

The problem is that the Beast feature ended after the next issue (technically it went to Amazing Adventures #17, but that was mostly just a reprint issue), so Patsy and Hank's deal was just not discussed again.

That is, until Beast joined the Avengers and Patsy showed up telling him he had better pay off the debt he owed her.

He agreed to let her come along on a mission. Sadly, the mission ended with the Avengers captured.

In Avengers #144 (by Steve Englehart, George Perez and Mike Esposito), when Patsy and the Avengers were cornered and up against some tough bad guys, Captain America was forced to let Patsy use a super-suit to help them fight their way out of the mess. We learn that getting a super-suit and becoming a superhero had been Patsy's request of Hank all along!

Later, Hellcat became a longtime member of the Defenders.

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PATSY'S COMIC BOOK PAST IS WORKED INTO THE MARVEL UNIVERSE

As we saw above, Patsy's mom in her comic was named Mary, and she was just a typical teen humor comic mother. However, years after Patsy had entered the Marvel Universe as a grown woman and become the superhero known as Hellcat, Marvel decided to try to tie in those old Patsy Walker comics in with the Marvel Universe, and they did so through Patsy's REAL mother.

On the Jessica Jones TV series, Trish was a child star who starred in a TV show called It's Patsy, pushed into it by her controlling, abusive mother. In Defenders #89 (by David A. Kraft, Ed Hannigan, Don Perlin and Pablo Marcos), we see the basis for that story, as here, her mother used her as the basis for a popular teen comic book heroine, transforming her daughter into the kind of daughter she always wanted to have...

That sadly wasn't even the worst thing that Patsy's mom did to her (she also sold her soul), but that's a story for another day!

Okay, folks, if you have a suggestion for another interesting piece of shared continuity, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!

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