The Scarlet Spectre
Virginia North
Virginia North’s upbringing in The Fens was summed up perfectly by Oscar Wilde: she lived in the gutter but was always looking up at the stars. Growing up poor and fatherless during the Great Depression, she had a lot of trouble and hardship in her life to look up—and away—from.
When she did, she saw more than the heavens. In the Freedom City of the 1940s, a person could often catch a glimpse of figures racing against the night sky and wonder if it was The Centurion, Dr. Tomorrow, or the Freedom Eagle rushing to the rescue. Soon, these costumed heroes became more than just a diversion for her. The focus of her life was to be one of them.
By the time she turned 19, Virginia earned, begged, and borrowed enough money to costume and equip herself. Soon after, she ventured forth as the Scarlet Spectre for the first time. Her aim was to battle crime whenever it reared its ugly head in the Fens, which was a lot. Still, Virginia did her best to protect the neighborhood where she’d lived her whole young life.
Sometimes, her revealing costume and a swift kick to a thug’s sensitive area was all it took to save an innocent bystander. Other times, tougher solutions were called for, and she shot the bad guys with her late father’s .45 or ran them down with a car. When all else failed and circumstances left her badly out-matched (which was a lot of the time), she ran away, vowing to fight again another day.
None of those methods were especially clever, but they got the job done. At the very least, it let her accomplish things as well as she could, alone and lacking any real superhuman abilities. She continued her quixotic crusade until 1955, when she made her fateful decision to testify against The Liberty League at the HUAC hearings.
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