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Miss America
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Real Name
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Madeline Joyce Frank
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First Appearance
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Mystery Comics #49 (September, 1943)
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Creators
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Otto Binder, Al Gabrielle
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Team Affiliations
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The Invaders, Liberty Legion, All-Winners Squad
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Aliases
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None
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Base of Operations
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New York City
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Powers
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Superhuman strength, superhuman stamina, limited invulnerability, and flight
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Skills and Abilities
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Skilled Martial Artist
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Miss America (Madeline Joyce) is a superhero in the Marvel Universe.
History[]
Socially aware teen-aged heiress Madeline Joyce was born in Washington, D.C., and was the niece and ward of radio mogul James Bennet. Bennet was sponsoring Professor Lawson, a scientist claiming to have gotten superpowers through a device that had been struck by lightning. Joyce secretly tampered with the device during a thunderstorm that night and was struck by lightning. She awoke to find she had gained superhuman strength and the ability to fly. Joyce decided to use her powers to fight crime as the patriotically garbed Miss America, appearing regularly in Marvel Mystery Comics and All Winners Comics.
In the latter, she was a member of Timely's superhero team the All-Winners Squad, fighting alongside Captain America and Bucky, the original Human Torch and Toro, the Sub-Mariner, and the Whizzer in the group's two Golden Age adventures. In the second of these, she wore glasses, one of the extremely few superheroes to require them. Miss America made her final Golden Age appearance in Marvel Mystery Comics #85 (Feb. 1948).
Joyce was later revealed to have married fellow Golden Age superhero Robert Frank (the Whizzer). Because the two had been exposed to radiation, their first child was the radioactive mutant Nuklo. However, Joyce died of complications stemming from childbirth with her second, stillborn child due to radiation poisoning from her first offspring while at Wundagore Mountain, Transia. It was also suggested during this time that Joyce and Frank were the parents of Avengers members Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, although this was ultimately refuted when it was revealed that Magneto and his wife Magda were those twins' biological parents. Miss America was then retconned in 1976 as a member of the World War II super-team the Liberty Legion, set between the creation of the Invaders and the post-war All-Winners Squad. As a member of the Liberty Legion, she battled the Red Skull, and alongside the Liberty Legion and Invaders she batted the Nazi super-team Super-Axis.
Powers[]
- Flight- Miss America has the psychokinetic power to disrupt gravity around herself and levitate. If she uses her superhuman leaping ability in tandem with her gravity disruption she can launch herself through the air at high-speeds and fly.
- Superhuman strength- Miss America has strength levels said to be equal to the strength of "1,000 Men".
- Superhuman stamina- Miss America can use her powers at their highest peak for hours before fatigue sets in, and she can recover from exhaustion far quicker than a normal human.
- Limited invulnerability- Miss America has very dense skin and is far more resistant to damage than a normal human, but she can be harmed by high-powered attacks.
- X-Ray vision (formerly)- Miss America initially had the power to project x-eyes from her eyes and see through solid objects but that power eventfully faded away after it began to damage her eyesight and left her requiring glasses or contact lenses to see normally.
In other media[]
- The Madeline Joyce version of Miss America appeared in the 1990s Spider-Man animated series in the "Six Forgotten Warriors" story arc, voiced by Kathy Garver. In this version, Miss America is one of several characters that includes Black Marvel, Destroyer, Thunderer, and Whizzer who got their powers as the result of an attempt at recreating the process that empowered Captain America, and who activate them using a special ring.
- The Madeline Joyce version of Miss America appears in the Ultimate Spider-Man episode "S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy." She is shown in a World War II flashback fighting Arnim Zola with Captain America, Bucky, and Whizzer.