Today in Comics History, February 12: Happy birthday, Anna Pavlova!

Today we celebrate the birth (in 1881) of the heroine known to the criminal world as Super-Ballerina, the dexterous crimefighter Anna Pavlova! PS: I was lying about the crimefighting. And if you're as dessert-minded as yours little stuffed truly is, you'll also know that she's the inspiration for the delicious creamy meringue and fruit dessert named after her, the Anna Pavlova! Mmm, them's good eatin'.


As usual for this birthday feature, here's everything you need to know about Anna Pavlova from a comic book!


"The Ballerina's Last Dance" from Ripley's Believe It or Not! (1965 series) #11 (Western/Gold Key, November 1968), pencils and inks by Joe Certa



What? Too long, didn't read? You want your Anna Pavlinfo spelled out for you in sequential pictures and words? Well, have I got the comic book for you!: The Brave and the Bold #177, starring Batman and the Elongated Man! But if you wanna learn about Anna Pavlova, here's an alternate book:


from The Story of Anna Pavlova free promo comic (Selva and Sons, 1956), creators uncredited and unknown
The story is narrated to a young would-be ballerina by Jimmy Selva, founder of the prestigious ballet slipper manufacturer (and, judging by this thing, one-time comic book publisher) Selva & Sons, after he left employment at rival Capezio. Selva was the first to patent ballet shoe designs.


A couple other interesting facts about Mr. S.:

Four years later, in 1929, a 27-year old Selva was sent to jail for six months after paying another Capezio employee to steal lists of the names of Capezio’s customers. This same employee, a shipping clerk by the name of Samuel Felson, also reportedly altered the products Capezio was sending out, "...occasionally lodging tacks in ballet slippers." — "Noisy Feet: The Forgotten Click of American Toe-Tap, 1925-1935" by Sarah Helen Williams, University of New Mexico thesis, 2012

As we all know, Anna Pavlova was born in 1881 on today, February 12...


NOW CUT THAT OUT, COMIC

Ahem. What the comic means is Anna was born on February 12, which was January 31 under the Old Style of calendar dates, before the change of the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, adopted by forward-thinking countries in the 17th and 18th centuries (such as the obviously better-than-anyone-else United States, which started the Gregorian calendar around 1751). Russia didn't switch to the Gregalendar until 1918, and I choose to put that upon that deep thinker and popular philsopher upon whom I base all my political views, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known to the world as John Lennon.

And the 1882 date is clearly just Selva & Co. making another one of their silly mistakes.

Anyway, if we know one thing about Anna Pavola, it's that she was a friend to all animals.


Later in her life, when considering her superheroic identity, a butterfly fluttered into her drawing room window and she vowed "Yes, Father...I shall become The Butterfly Miraculous."

We now go to an entirely different comic book for more about Anna Pavlova, for a very good reason: I only had the first three pages of that comic book as scans.

Wonder Woman, shown here giving a guided tour of Paradise Island to the redaers of her comic-type magazine, acclaims Anna Pavlova as one of the greats in the Amazon Hall of Fame. Looks like the Amazons have her birth year down wrong, too.


from "The Girl Who Saved Paradise Island!" in Wonder Woman (1942 series) #36 DC/National, July 1949), script by William Marston (as Charles Moulton), pencils and inks by Harry Peter
As this comic book was published in 1949, it doesn't include any modern representative of great Amazons, but they do update it periodically for modern times. Last time I was on Themyscira they'd just added this pair of historiclaly important Amazons:


What, you may ask me, does Wonder Woman know about Anna Palova? (And that's a very good question.) Well, for one thing, here's yet another differing opinion on which year she was born. More important, Wonder Woman believes Anna Pavlova was an immense kaiju, going en pointe in the Gulf of Mexico until the toe of her size 5 Selvashoe drags across the Florida peninsula like the Xindi weapon prototype cutting through Trip Tucker's hometown.


from "Wonder Women of History: Anna Pavlova" in Sensation Comics (1942 series) #85 (DC/National, January 1949), pencils and inks by Paul Reinman
Anyway, if we know one thing about Anna Pavola, it's that she was a friend to all animals. Thus thge great ballerina inspired the title of Brat Pack superstar Ally Sheedy's first children's book.


Say, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Well, first you go down Seventh Avenue and turn left at 57th Street...oh, you meant this.


The "famed creator of ballet" portrayed here is Mikhail Fokine, choreographer of "The Dying Swan," but he's a whole 'nother wing of the Amazon Hall of Fame.



Anna Pavlova then became the first-ever ballerina in the history of the art to perform entire ballets from inside of her car.


So endeth out birthday salute to grand ballerina Anna Pavlova, whose story was...wait, it was all a story by Wonder Woman? She wrote and drew that entire comic book herself? Sheesh, Diana, during all the time you spent doing that, Cheetah ate an entire orphanage.


Happy birthday, Anna Pavlova!