Religion: indeterminate
Name: unnamed beaten wife
Classification:
supporting character
Publisher(s): 
First Appearance: Action Comics (vol. 1) #1 (June 1938): "Superman, Champion of the Oppressed!"
Creators: Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster
Number of Appearances: 1
Ally: Superman
Gender: female
In the very first Superman story ever published, Clark Kent is at his newspaper office when a tip is called in about a wife-beating at 211 Court Ave. Clark rushes to the address, but bursts through the door as Superman. He confronts a man beating his wife. The wife is already lying face down on the floor, meekly trying to shield her face with her arms.
The unnamed beaten wife appears in only one panel and has no lines. She is a "character" only in the barest sense of the word. But she has significance in being only the second person ever saved by Superman.
But did Superman really save this woman? He thrashed her husband somewhat by throwing the man against a wall. But after the wife beater failed in his attempt to kill Superman, he fainted out of fear and pain. Superman changed into Clark Kent and left as soon as a police captain arrived on the scene. Nobody has talked to the man about his actions. Nobody has talked to the woman about her situation. Even if Superman had talked to the wife beater or the woman he beat, would it have made a difference?
Siegel and Shuster doubtless included this brief depiction of a wife beater getting beaten in turn by Superman out of their own feelings of frustration and helplessness over the battered women the knew in their neighborhood or heard about on the news. As cathartic as it may have felt to give this fictional wife beater what was coming to him, even the young and somewhat naive Siegel and Shuster must have known that most battered women continuously return to their batterers or continue the pattern by enabling other violent men. Whether the situation with the woman from this initial Superman story will be different will forever be unknown.
Action Comics (vol. 1) #1 (June 1938): "Superman, Champion of the Oppressed!" (1-panel cameo)
Suggested links for further research about this character:
- https://www.comics.org/issue/293/
- http://comicbookdb.com/issue.php?ID=95
- https://www.comics.org/issue/470/