Gender in speculative fiction
The first known female superhero is writer-artist Fletcher Hanks's minor character Fantomah, an ageless, ancient Egyptian woman in the modern day who could transform into a skull-faced creature with superpowers to fight evil; she debuted in 1940 in Fiction Houses "Jungle Comics".
Portrayal of black people in comics
Very few Black female characters were present in superhero comics before the Civil Rights Movement. Afterwards, several notable Black female characters began to appear. One of the most notable Black female character in comics appeared in the Bronze Age of Comic Books. Storm (Ororo Munroe) of the X-Men is introduced as being worshiped as an African goddess, the Professor Xavier quickly reveals her to be a mutant who possesses the power to control the weather. Later we would find out that her parents had been killed when she was very young, and she grew up as a thief on the streets of Cairo. Storm would eventually succeed Cyclops as the Team Leader of the X-Men. In the 1980s, the new Captain Marvel, aka Monica Rambeau, had the power to become any form of energy on the electromagnetic scale. This Captain Marvel would join the Avengers in their battle against the Masters of Evil. In 1991, Captain Confederacy became one of the first female black superheroes to have her own series, published by Marvel's Epic Comics imprint.