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".
Canadian comics
In August 1941, three unemployed artists, Adrian Dingle and André and René Kulbach, formed Hillborough Studios to publish their own work. They started with "Triumph-Adventure Comics", whose star was Canada's first female superhero, Nelvana of the Northern Lights, who appeared several months before Wonder Woman did in the US. Nelvana was inspired by tribal stories brought back from the Arctic Group of Seven painter Franz Johnston. The popular fur-miniskirted superheroine was a powerful Inuit mythological figure, daughter of a mortal woman and Koliak the Mighty, King of the Northern Lights. She had telepathic powers and was able to ride the Northern Lights at the speed of light, turn invisible, and melt metal.