The rise and fall of Millie the Model, Marvel Comics' most prolific female character of all time

Marvel Comics' most prolific female character is someone who beats the others by a mile, but is also someone many Marvel fans has never even heard of.

Millie.

Marvel Comics' Millie the Model was a groundbreaking series starring Millie Collins, a working girl trying to make it in the fashion industry. During it’s heyday, the comic was a top-seller, featuring some of the earliest work from various industry legends, and has the distinction of being the first Marvel Comic to feature a black woman as a regular supporting character. Despite all this, Millie has almost been forgotten.

How did one of Marvel’s biggest superstars fall from grace, and is there hope for a comeback? Let’s examine the colorful career of Millie the Model.

Marvel's Millie the Model: Sequins and superstardom

Millie Collins made her grand debut in Millie the Model #1 (1945) published by Timely Comics, the name Marvel went by at the time. The circumstances behind Millie’s creation have been lost to time, and as a result there are some contradictory accounts of her origins. For example, some websites and reference books credit Joe Devlin, but contemporary comic scholars have debunked that. In the coffee table book Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics author Les Daniels credits Stan Lee with creating Millie, while most contemporary historians believe it was cartoonist Ruth Atkinson, who wrote and drew the first issue.

The series followed Millie Collins, a young woman from the Midwest who moves to New York City with big dreams of becoming a model. She joins the Hanover Modeling Agency, operated by Larry Hanover (later renamed Howard). The agency’s in-house photographer Flicker Holbrook (later renamed Clicker) soon became Millie’s boyfriend, although some stories played with the idea of Mr. Hanover having a secret crush. The series followed Millie’s misadventures as each modeling assignment resulted in a string of comedic follies.

Millie the Model #4 (1947) introduced Chili Seven (later renamed Chili Storm), a character who would change the direction of the series. Chili was a red-headed model who served as Millie’s rival. The two of them enjoyed a friendly rivalry, as the mean spirited Chili would constantly try to one-up Millie. Most stories centered around their playful rivalry, which usually resulted in karma hitting Chili, and Millie coming out on top. Interestingly, Women of Marvel: Celebrating Seven Decades Handbook proposes the idea that Chili Storm might be a distant relative of Susan and Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four, but as of this writing nothing has been confirmed.

Ken Bald, one of the earliest writers and artists on the title, used his wife as a model for Millie. In 1947 Stan Lee self-published a pamphlet called Secrets Behind The Comics, which claimed that Timely Comics flew Ken Bald and his wife