Golden Girl

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Not to be confused with the television series The Golden Girls.

Golden Girl may also refer to the University of Iowa's Golden Girl who performs with the Hawkeye marching band.

Golden Girl is the name of two superheroines in the Marvel Comics universe who were active during the 1940s.

[edit] Betsy Ross

Betsy Ross (named for Betsy Ross, the seamstress of the flag of the United States) was the Golden Girl in the Golden Age of Comic Books. She first appeared as Betsy Ross in Captain America Comics #1 (Timely Comics, March 1941), and was his longtime confidant and sometime girlfriend, although she was unaware of his secret identity. In Captain America Comics #66 (December 1947), Captain America's sidekick Bucky was shot and wounded. Captain America revealed his identity to Betsy and trained her as his new partner. She became the Golden Girl, and remained with Captain America until Bucky recuperated in Captain America Comics #70, after which she retired her costumed identity. Outside of these issues of Captain America Comics, she also appeared in Marvel Mystery Comics #88 alongside Namora and Sun Girl, Timely's two other prominent female superheroes.

Betsy Ross has made no modern appearances as the Golden Girl, although her name and costume were used by Liz Allen in a Fred Hembeck comedy story in Untold Tales of Spider-Man Annual '97. Thanks to retcons to the post-World War II Captain America stories, Betsy Ross was actually partnered with the third Captain America (Jeff Mace, formerly the Patriot), and the Bucky that she replaced was Fred Davis, the second Bucky. She was referenced briefly by Jeff Mace in Captain America Volume 1 #283, and the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Update '89 further revealed that the pair had retired and married by 1953. Jeff Mace died in the modern era, as seen in Captain America Volume 1 #283; Betsy's Ross's fate is unknown, but she is possibly Blind Al in the Deadpool comics

[edit] Gwenny Lou Sabuki

Gwendolyne "Gwenny" Lou Sabuki was the Golden Girl in Invaders, a series that was published in the 1970s that depicted the adventures of a retroactive World War II superhero team. She was the daughter of Japanese-American scientist Dr. Sam Sabuki, and both debuted in Invaders Volume 1 #26 (March 1978). During a battle between the Invaders' sidekicks Bucky (the original, not Fred Davis) and Toro and their Nazi foe Agent Axis, one of Dr. Sabuki's inventions accidentally gave Gwenny Lou and her friend David "Davey" Mitchell superhuman powers. Gwenny Lou gained the power to generate light and energy, while Mitchell gained the ability to spin at superhuman speeds; she became the Golden Girl, he the Human Top. The four youthful heroes defeated Agent Axis, and later formed the Kid Commandos, who were allied with the adult Invaders. Gwenny Lou Sabuki and Davey Mitchell were both retroactive non-Caucasian Invaders characters who shared their codenames with Caucasian superheroes of the Golden Age. Although Sabuki was the second published Golden Girl, she is the first Golden Girl in the chronology of the Marvel Universe.

Years later, issues of Thunderbolts introduced Sabuki's granddaughter Goldfire, who was a member of Citizen V's V Battalion, and revealed that this Golden Girl had been among the founders of the post-World War II incarnation of this V Battalion. The first Citizen V and the V Battalion miniseries revealed that Gwenny Lou Sabuki had later taken the codename Golden Woman, and had died in 1961; it also named her daughter, Goldfire's mother, as Golden Sun. Goldfire herself was accidentally killed by the Collective Man in the second Citizen V and the V Battalion miniseries.