Catching Up

Tuff-Girl Primer
for “Unstoppable Tuff-Girl” No. 2

 
Did you ever read a re-print of Stan Lee’s and Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man origin tale from Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962)?
It’s only 11 pages, speeding through meek Peter Parker being fatefully bitten by a radio-active spider, gaining amazing spider-like powers, making a costume and trying a career as a masked wrestler, inventing web shooters and web fluid and catching the man responsible for his uncle’s death.
[preview at Marvel.com]

Did you ever read a re-print of the first published account of Superman’s origin by Jerry (Jerome) Siegle and Joe Shuster from Action Comics #1 (1938)?
It’s only 8 panels on one page (sharing space with a 4-panel side bar explanation of Clark Kent’s (a.k.a. Superman’s) amazing strength.). It hits the highlights of an alien space-ship borne baby who matures to discover super human abilities, and who puts those strengths towards the benefit of mankind on Earth. There’s no room for details like what that distant planet was like, much less who his birth parents were. There’s nothing about Smallville, Metropolis, the Daily Planet nor the inhabitants therein.
[Superman’s various origins at Superman Through the Ages]

The “Tuff-Girl Primer” strives to achieve the same while providing important “previously in Tuff-Girl” details. Strategically placed on the back cover of Unstoppable Tuff-Girl comics, I encourage novice readers to peruse the ten panels in answer to the query, “What is ‘Tuff-Girl’ about?”

This here is entirely re-drawn and re-written from the version in issue no. 1, not because  her origin had changed, and certainly not on a whim because I had the free time to do so. I thought it could do without so much of “Debby grows up to discover amazing powers” bit that occupies so much of the first and just get to the action. It is my intent with the primer (rhymes with ‘glimmer’) to only change or update a few panels for each new issue in place of “previously in” prologues.

Merrill and I won’t really tell her full origin until we start thinking about assembling a trade paper back. Until then, this is all you need to know.

Issue No. 2 coming soon.