In reviewing Johnston McCulley‘s output, I came across a story that I had missed. In looking at it further, I found what may be a forgotten pulp heroine!
There have been few female pulp heroes, and most have been secondary to the hero. Only a very few have been solo characters in their own right, and this one might be the first: Madame Madcap.
She appeared in a story serialized in six parts under McCulley’s Harrington Strong pseudonym as “Alias Madame Madcap” in Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine from September to October 1919. It was then reprinted in hardcover in 1920 as The Masked Woman by W.J. Watt & Co., as well as Grosset & Dunlap. There was also a 1925 edition published by Grosset & Dunlap. I was actually puzzled why Street & Smith’s Chelsea House didn’t reprint this in hardback, but that didn’t start until 1921.
Then in 1921, a shortened version of the story was syndicated as “The Masked Woman” in dozens of newspapers, including The Washington Post on Jan. 2, 1921. The two books out there that reprints the story actually use this shortened newspaper version. I’m not sure how much shorter this version is, but the shortened version has about half the number of chapters, so a lot has been cut out. I have read the longer book form, and it’s much better.
Let’s take a look at this character. She appears to be one of the first of McCulley’s “vengeance heroes,” a frequent trope of his. Interestingly, the main character is female, but McCulley has done this in other stories.
When a criminal mastermind is betrayed by his men and goes to jail, his twin children decide to seek revenge against them, creating a costumed persona: “Madame Madcap.” The difference is they are twin girls, so this is one of the very few and may be the first female pulp heroine.
The twins also have a hulking black manservant, so there’s also the “master and man” trope — the difference is the master is female! Maybe this is an early inspiration for The Domino Lady? This not the last time that McCulley has a strong female lead in his detective stories.
As Madame Madcap, the twins create a new criminal mastermind and work to bring together the main members of their father’s old gang, with the aim of betraying them to the police. They capture and humiliate another man, who gave testimony that their father had used a gun during his last crime, which added 15 years to his sentence, before letting him go. A strange character in the story is the Professor Salwick, who gets an interest in criminals and winds up joining Madame Madcap’s gang.
This is an interesting story, as well as another early example of the pulp hero. Hopefully someone can reprint the original story for others to enjoy.
