Today in Comics History, August 18: Happy birthday, Virginia Dare!

Born on this day in 1587 (so you know she's more mature than you): Virginia Dare, the first English child born in a New World English colony. And not the last, but you know how that went.


from Batman/Spawn: War Devil one-shot (DC/Image, May 1994); script by Doug Moench, Chuck Dixon, and Alan Grant; pencils, inks, and colors by Klaus Janson; computer colors by Steve Buccellato; letters by Todd Klein
And now, a much less creepy depiction of that event!:


from "The Story of Jamestown, Virginia" in Flash Comics (1940 series) #63 (DC/All-American, March 1945), script by M. C. Gaines and W. W. D. Sones, pencils and inks by Allen Simon



Even tho' you and I know better from our American history lessons (because it's early enough in American history we don't win d up rushing through it in the last two days of school), Virginia Dare was important in American myth and folklore, and apparently she lived right up through the 1940s, just because she had a cool adventure name.


from Flyin' Jenny #1 (Leader Enterprises/Pentagon, 1946), script by Glenn Chaffin, pencils and inks by Marc Swayze; reformatted from the newspaper strip
Naw, I tell a little white fib (shh! don't let anybody know) — altho' this heroin'es name is really Virginia Dare in full, she's known as Jenny Dare or Flyin' Jenny, or in this case, just plane plain Crashin' Jenny.


Jenny (Miss Dare if you're nasty) has all sorts of jungle adventures, including meeting cavemen...


...and fighting off terrible relettering.


But I betcha didn't know that Marvel Comics, of all places, featured Virginia Dare so prominently in a comic book that it's a wonder she doesn't have her own entry in OHOTMU ("Virginia Dare has the strength of endurance of a girl who exercises moderately and who is born without protection to any virulent diseases she will encounter in the New World.")


cover of Marvel 1602 #8 (Marvel, June 2004); pencils, inks, and colors by Scott McKowen
Yes, that's her in the upper-right hand corner of that comic book cover, entangled in the misadventures of pre-1968 Marvel Universe characters trapped in the early 17th Century. I think we've all been there a few times. Virginia explains Who She is and How She Got in This Weirdass Predicament She's In™:



from Marvel 1602 #4 (Marvel, January 2004), script by Neil Gaiman, pencils and inks by Andy Kubert, digital paint colors by Richard Isanove, letters by Todd Klein
Virginia is accompanied and protected by her faithful Indian compendium Rojhaz:

from Marvel 1602 #1 (Marvel, November 2003), same credits as #4
(Click picture to New World-size)
Does Rojhaz seem a little familiar to y'all? Well, here's a hint: he's really good throwing a large round metal disc at an opponent:


from Marvel 1602 #2 (Marvel, November 2003), same credits as #4
Unlike all the other Marvel heroes spirited back to 1602 (somethin' to do with the Purple Man, it ain't important now), Rojhaz/Steve Rogers is the only one who really knows who he is:


from Marvel 1607 #7 (Marvel, April 2004), same credits as #4
Steve recounts his side of the story:


from Marvel 1602 #8 (Marvel, June 2004), same credits as #4
At the end of it all, Steve goes back to his modern day to have his exciting adventures like turning into a werewolf and fighting Ronald Reagan turned into a snake, but Virginia's left with perfectly ordinary everyday Peter Parquagh who doesn't have any super-powers at all WHOOPS


And that's all we know about Virginia Dare,
She was here one day then she wasn't there.