Profile: Hellcat

Patsy Walker, Hellcat
First appearance: Miss America #2, November 1944. She made appearances in the romance comics that Marvel did up until the early 1960s in such books as Patsy and Hedy, and was later officially established in the main Marvel universe when making a cameo appearance in the 1965 Fantastic Four Annual #3 (Marvel subsequently stopped publishing annuals for about a decade before trying them again). In Amazing Adventures #13 in 1973, that’s when she began to take up a more adventure filled life, when she met Beast and asked for his help in establishing a superheroine career. She officially became Hellcat in Avengers #144 in 1976. She also worked with the Defenders.

Current status: currently inactive as a crimefighter.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: Patsy later married Daimon Hellstrom, whose demonic inheritance took possession of him and in this case drove her insane. She was confined to a mental institution and later, the otherworldly villain named Deathurge drove her to commit suicide.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Exactly why must Patsy be the one to be driven nuts? Shouldn’t it have just been Daimon himself? IMO, it was a grave mistake, and Patsy did not have to be injected with insanity, and certainly not driven to suicide, which was awful.

Was there anything good to come out of this? Thankfully, when Kurt Busiek was writing the Avengers and the Thunderbolts in the past decade, he wrote that Hawkeye brought her back from hell, having mistook her for his own dead wife, Mockingbird. She maintained some special powers she’d obtained during her time there, though they later wore off. She joined the Defenders again for a time, until they again disbanded.

She became victim to editorial misuse, however, when during Civil War, she was on the pro-registration side of the whole crossover mess.