How Señorita Rio and Sanjak Became Comics' Most Iconic Women Spies

Comic book artist Lily Renée died in New York in 2022 at 101, leaving behind a wartime portfolio that included the South American spy Señorita Rio and a place in the Will Eisner Hall of Fame.

Her career, recounted in the new anthology Women in Comics by Susan Kirtley, Ph.D., and Nhora Lucia Serrano (Black Dog & Leventhal), traces a forgotten arc in American comics history: the women who spied across the page during World War II, and the women who drew them.

Who was Señorita Rio?

Rita Farrar, a Hollywood actress and stuntperson, was a rising star when word arrived that her fiancé, naval officer Bill, had died in the attack on Pearl Harbor. She did not retreat from the camera. At the premiere of her film Lady Dance No More, she faked her own death and slipped into South America under a new identity: Señorita Rio, the "Queen of the Spies."

The character debuted in Fight Comics #19 in June 1942, written by Joe Hawkins and drawn by Nick Viscardi (also known as Nick "Cardy") for publisher Fiction House. She wielded marksmanship, fencing, and what her creators called a "keen intellect." She fought Axis forces through 1950.

Her appeal fused patriotism with vengeance — a template that shaped women spies in comics for decades. She also rejected suitors. In Fight Comics #20, an Argentinian guide proposed. She declined: "my life now is vengeance."

How did Lily Renée become comics' secret weapon?

Renée was born in Austria in 1921. She fled on the Kindertransport, settling in Leeds while she waited for her parents to escape. At sixteen, she reunited with her parents in the United States and found work as a comics artist, replacing the men drafted into service. She drew Señorita Rio episodes from 1944 to 1947.

To conceal her gender, she signed her work "L. Renée." Fan mail arrived addressed to Mr. Renée for years.

Renée shared her character's hatred of fascism. She later recalled drawing the series as escape: "it's sort of a fantasy. Señorita Rio got clothes that I couldn't have . . . She had a leopard coat and she wore these high-end shoes and all this and had adventures and was very daring and sexy and glamorous."

She continued in comics for decades, entered the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2007, and died in 2022 at 101. Cartoonist Trina Robbins later published a comics-format biography, Lily Renée Escape Artist: From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer. AC Comics revived the character as Rita Rio in 1994.

Why was Sanjak comics' first lesbian character?

The other landmark spy in mid-century American comics worked for no nation. Sanjak first appeared on February 12, 1939, in Milton Caniff's daily strip Terry and the Pirates, which ran from 1934 to 1973.

She kidnapped the heroine April Kane, hijacked a plane full of treasure, and vanished to a secret island. She returned in later storylines, posing as a military pilot to steal Allied war plans for the Axis. Her plane was shot down in January 1944.

She is widely credited as the first lesbian character in American comics. Caniff "coded" the identity through visual cues of the 1930s:

• A name obliquely referring to a Greek island near Lesbos
• Tailored masculine suits modeled on the Parisian lesbian bar Le Monocle
• A monocle she used to hypnotize her victims
• The style popularized by Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness

Caniff addressed the encoding directly: "In those days the word 'lesbian' simply wouldn't have been understood by half your audience, and the other half would have resented it."

Sanjak flirted openly with April, calling her "the charmeeng A-preel" in a French accent. She flew aircraft, impersonated "Madame Sud" and "Captain Midi," and outwitted her pursuers for five years.

What made readers love a villain?

Sanjak functioned as a chaotic agent rather than a patriot, femme fatale, or avenger. She worked for herself, and she had a great time doing it.

Readers noticed. A March 1939 letter to Caniff raved: "I have just discovered your character 'Sanjak' . . . She's the most colorful personality I have met in a comic strip in a long time. Please let us have much more Sanjak in the future."

A reader signing as "Lucille" that same year went further. Her letter, "dared" into print by the newspaper, read: "Dear April, If I were you, I would go for Sanjak and forget Terry. You know Sanjak is fine. I wish she were a real person. I could go for her myself."

The two characters — one a disguised patriot, the other an unapologetic outlaw — sketch a wartime comics industry in which women spies, drawn by women, could rewrite what heroism looked like on the page.