So around here, we've got a local theater, and it was closed recently on a day it'd normally be doing shows "in remembrance of Madame Fatal." Curious, I googled the name and discovered it belonged to a Golden Age hero.
There were quite a few hits and I probably could have gone down any of them to find out more, but I figured asking you to elaborate on them (the first few hits seemed to disagree on which pronouns to use) would yield a more interesting response.
So, deets?
That pronoun issue is going to be a habitual one whenever you look this hero up. They were a rather private individual as far as mystery men go, were never called up to serve on many of the major teams, most of their exploits were locally reported at best. On top of the fact that whatever their gender related identity may have been in their own mind, it's possible they just didn't have the correct words to USE for the way they felt.
1940 was an awfully long time ago for the world's first crossdressing superhero.
(An artist's rendition of Madam Fatal. Since in person photographs of them are seemingly nonexistant)
Richard Stanton was a famous broadway actor, working on everything for that time period's most prominent musicals to the Shakespearean classics. Amassing a considerable fortune and cache across the country and living an openly lavish lifestyle with a young daughter that he adored. His name appearing in glowing praise from critics across the country and even the world.
One day though, Stanton's daughter was kidnapped. While that might not have been a staggering tragedy in itself considering Stanton's wealth no ransom demand ever came. Stanton became a wreck, draining his personal funds in order to try and track his daughter down. Eventually zeroing in on mobster Jack Carver after over nine years of searching. Now with little remaining resources and the case long since considered cold by the authorities, Stanton was like many in his era inspired by the mystery men who were becoming so omnipresent in his time. Needing a persona that would get him close to Carver to collect information and lacking in any overt physical advantages he latched onto his training as an actor.
Having been known to play well as an older woman during many of his comedic performances he adopted the identity of Madam Fatal, a red clad, seemingly dottering old woman accompanied by her parrot Hamlet. Only when they had covered every possible contingency did they strike, hollowing out Carver's headquarters in a ransacking that left them easy pickings for the police. Though Carver himself was only able to reveal that Stanton's daughter was still alive before being gunned down by responding police officers, leaving Stanton with precious few clues.
This is part of why their appearances are so random and hard to effectively chart. Stanton would spring up all around the country, even the world, looking for his daughter. Following thin lead after thin lead and hardly ever INTERACTING with their fellow mystery men much less sharing information. Perhaps borne out of Stanton's distrust of the law after over a decade of failing to locate his daughter. Meaning that no one knew who this strange old woman was for the entirety of the war.
You'll be happy to know that Stanton and their daughter were reunited in 1944 at which point Stanton pretty immediately drops off the map. We don't know where they lived, for how long, you might also note I never said his daughter's NAME. While her birth name is on record with her birth certificate no one with that name has ever been identified in the nearly 7 decades since by the few people who bothered to go looking for Stanton.
They passed away some years ago and were buried in a small ceremony attended only by some acting troupes who felt especially inspired by Stanton. Whatever revelation others had about Stanton in relation to their crossdressing are not public and probably never will be. One can only accept a story with a happy ending and not ask too many questions.
