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Doll Girl’s Atomic-Age Debut in Doll Man #37, at Auction
Amidst a real-life backdrop of atomic weapons testing and transmuting thorium into Uranium-233, Doll Girl undergoes a transformation of her own.
Article Summary
- Doll Girl debuts in Doll Man #37 as Martha Roberts gains a lasting shrinking power and rescues Doll Man herself.
- Ross Andru’s cover promises peril, but William Woolfolk’s story makes Doll Girl the key hero in a thorium theft thriller.
- The tale ties Doll Girl to 1951 atomic-age anxieties, Nevada testing grounds, and comics’ fascination with nuclear science.
- Doll Girl’s origin builds on Feature Comics #77, while Doll Man #37 remains a noteworthy Quality key.
Doll Girl’s debut cover, credited to Ross Andru, gives a very different impression of her first adventure than the story inside. Bound next to an Atomic Heat Unit while the Skull looms in the background, she seems to be waiting for Doll Man to save her. But the story of Doll Man #37 (Quality, December 1951) casts Martha Roberts herself as the rescuer, giving her a new superhero identity in a tale about stolen thorium and atomic secrets. The Nevada testing grounds, named as the focus of this adventure, had begun operating earlier that year. But this wasn’t the first time Martha had shrunk to join her fiancé. The stage had been set for this moment years earlier.
Doll Girl’s Atomic-Age Debut
The opening story of this issue begins aboard a train carrying specially treated thorium destined for the atomic testing grounds in Nevada. Darrel Dane and his fiancée, Martha Roberts, are traveling with the shipment, and Darrel is silently worried about the thorium, as his thought bubble explains that “it’s a specially treated quantity of the metal which will yield tremendous amounts of fissionable product.” This refers to the fact that thorium can be bombarded with neutrons to produce Uranium-233.
But Martha has a different kind of transformation on her mind during the trip. She is interested in ways that she can be more useful to Darrel as she reads a book about willpower. This is a reference to the gradual evolution in how Darrel invoked his Doll Man powers. Through his first few adventures in Feature Comics, Darrel had to ingest or inject a drug to transform. This was quickly dropped, and for some time, the transformation happened either off-panel or without explanation. By 1944, it was said that the transformation could be triggered by sheer willpower, and shortly after, references to the original drug were dropped, with blurbs explaining Doll Man’s powers as a consequence of his exceptional willpower alone. This paved the way for Martha to develop her own abilities drug-free.
Martha’s own history completes the picture. In Feature Comics#77, cover-dated April 1944, Darrel wishes for a partner, and at the same instant, Martha wishes she could help him. By this time, Darrel’s transformations had been established as being triggered by his willpower. In what is presented as some kind of cosmic fate, their combined willpower shrinks her down to Doll Man’s size, and she calls herself Midge. By the end of the story, this was presented as a one-time event that may or may not ever happen again.
It eventually did. In the Doll Man #37 story, the Skull steals the thorium and the formula needed for its use, and Martha’s efforts to raise her mental game become important when Doll Man and their dog Elmo fall into the villain’s hands. Ultimately, Martha develops enough willpower to trigger the transformation to doll size, just as Darrel does. She becomes Doll Girl and is able to save Doll Man and Elmo from the Skull’s machinations.
The setting of this story was inspired by prior real-life events in 1951. According to the official history of the Nevada National Security Site, presidential authorization for the testing grounds came on December 18, 1950, and the first test followed on January 27, 1951. The facility was called the Nevada Proving Grounds. We have an unusually precise timeline for the production of this story thanks to writer William Woolfolk‘s work records. Researcher Martin O’Hearn’s transcription of Woolfolk’s records places the script for this story as being completed in May 1951. That puts the completion of this script less than four months after Nevada’s first atomic test.
The CGC census lists 52 Universal copies of this issue, with three at 6.5 and six higher. A 1950s First appearance and origin key with some fantastic atom-age history attached, there’s a Doll Man #37 (Quality, 1951) CGC FN+ 6.5 Off-white pages copy up for auction at the 2026 September 24-26 Comic Books Signature Auction #7469.
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