| Señorita Rio, The Queen of Spies | |
|---|---|
 | |
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Real Name |
Rita Farrar/Consuela Maria Ascencion De Las Vegas |
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First Appearance |
Fight Comics #19 (June 1942) |
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Original Publisher |
Fiction House |
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Created by |
Nick Cardy (as N. Viscardi) |
Origin[]
Rita Farrar was, at one point, a rising Hollywood actress and a former movie stunt girl. When her fiance, Bill, was killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, she decided to become a secret agent in hopes of saving other American soldiers from a similar fate. She faked her own suicide in Rio de Janeiro while attending the premiere of her new film Lady Dance No More. Taking the code name Señorita Rio, she soon became "The Queen of Spies," battling Axis agents throughout South America.
Señorita Rio was a skilled dancer, singer and actor. She could mimic voices very convincingly. She was said to be of "fighting stock" and was extremely athletic, capable of performing amazing feats almost effortlessly (anything from diving off the side of an ocean liner to catching someone while swinging on a trapeze). She was an expert fighter, skilled in jiu-jitsu and fencing. She was proficient with firearms, including heavy machine guns, and a good enough marksman to shoot a man's gun out of his hand. She usually concealed a handgun on her person, as well as tools for escape. Presumably, she was fluent in both English and Portuguese and possibly Spanish and German as well.
Public Domain Appearances[]
- Fight Comics #19-68, 70-71
Notes[]
- The word "Señorita" is Spanish and not Portuguese, her skill in fencing also refers to Hispanic characters like Zorro.
- She may have been inspired by Carmem Miranda, an actress born in Portugal, but raised in Brazil and who became an actress and singer in Hollywood.
- In The Affair of the Liquid Gold (Fight Comics #65), a bandit reads his biography: Consuela Maria Ascencion De Las Vegas, alias Señorita Rio, formerly of the Brazilian stage. In 1940 her husband, Luris De Las Vegas, was killed. by local Fascists, and she abandoned her stage career and went to work as a government agent." This was never mentioned again.