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".
List of female action heroes and villains
The following is a list of female action heroes villains who appear in action films, television shows, comic books, and video games and who are "thrust into a series of challenges requiring physical feats, extended fights, extensive stunts and frenetic chases." Elizabeth Abele suggests that "the key agency of female action protagonists is their ability to draw on the full range of masculine and feminine qualities in ever-evolving combinations."