Olga Mesmer, who is Half-Venusian.
Venusians are an extraterrestrial near-Human species from the planet Venus. In the past the Venusians established an underground colony on Earth, there a rebellion would force the colonial Queen, Margot, to the surface for her own security. She married an Earthman scientist while in exile, and the man performed an experiment on her involving soluble X-Rays. Learning after the birth of their daughter what the man had done she, in a rage accidently killed him with her superior strength. Feeling no longer safe on the surface she entrusted her daughter into the care of a guardian before returning to the underground kingdom to reclaim her throne. Her daughter, Olga Mesmer, had seemed altogether Human but at adolescence, during that turbulence of teenage life she began to exhibit strength beyond the Human and to have moments of X-Ray vision. Her Guardian also began to fancy her and she rejected his advances, fleeing from his custody she came upon a man, Rodney, who was being attacked. She came to his aid and killed the man attacking Rodney. Rodney would join her and together they would fight injustice on the streets as a mystery solving crime fighting duo. It was during investigation of her own past that she learned that her mother still lived and eventually found the underground Kingdom and learned of her heritage. The experiment performed by her father had given both her and her mother X-Ray vision but the superhuman strength was naturally Venusian. With Olga's aid Margot regained the throne and soon after traveled to Venus where a marriage between Margot and the Venusian King was expected to reunite the colony with its home world.
Notes[]
- While Olga Mesmer was introduced in the August 1937 issue of Spicy Mystery Stories pulp-fiction magazine, her being half-Venusian would not be revealed until 1938, some time after June of the year following the publication of Action Comics #1. It's thought that this reveal was inspired by the origin of Super-Man.
- Olga Mesmer is a character in the US Public Domain.
- Olga Mesmer is considered by some the first Superheroine in American pulp-fiction, in the sense that she has a superpower (X-Ray vision in addition to superhuman strength) and uses it to combat crime and injustice while solving mysteries with her side-kick Rodney.