Dorothy Woolfolk
| Dorothy A. Woolfolk | |
|---|---|
| Born | Dorothy Roubicek October 1, 1913 New York City |
| Died | November 27, 2000 (aged 87) Newport News, Virginia |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Writer, Editor |
| Pseudonym(s) | Dorothy Manning |
|
Notable works
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Kryptonite |
Dorothy A. Woolfolk née Dorothy Roubicek (October 1, 1913 – November 27, 2000) was a pioneering woman in the American comic book industry, an editor at DC Comics during the 1940s period historians and fans call the Golden Age of Comic Books. The first female editor at DC, one of the two largest companies in the field, she is credited with helping to create the fictional metal Kryptonite in the Superman mythos.
Born Dorothy Roubicek, Woolfolk was a New York City high school graduate who never attended college but nonetheless won prizes on a 1950s television game show.
She served from 1942 to 1944 as an editor at All-American Publications, one of the three companies that would merge to form the present-day DC, then spent the next two years at Timely Comics, the 1940s predecessor to Marvel Comics, and in 1948 was an editor at EC Comics.
Woolfolk told the Florida newspaper Today in August 1993 that she had found Superman's invulnerability dull, and that DC's flagship hero might be more interesting with an Achilles' heel such as adverse reactions to a fragment of his home planet. This gave rise to the famous fictional metal kryptonite, which made its first appearance in the comics in the story "Superman Returns To Krypton!", credited to writer Bill Finger, in Superman #61 (Dec. 1949).
After raising children Donald and Donna, the latter of whom would become an author, Woolfolk briefly returned to comics in the 1970s, editing Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, Young Romance, and other DC superhero and romance titles from 1971 to 1974. Comics artist Alan Kupperberg, who worked with her at DC Comics in the 1970s, said in 2001,
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