Miss America

• Also known as

Joan Dale was a New York reporter who dreamed that the spirit of the Statue of Liberty spoke to her and bestowed upon her certain magic powers. Upon awaking, Joan discovered that these new powers were real, and soon she began using them in her guise as Miss America. It was later revealed that Joan had actually been abducted by the top-secret government agency, Project M, while she slept and that her powers were the result of one of their experiments. In Post-Crisis continuity, Joan and her husband Derek Trevor adopted Lyta Kosmatos (later Lyta Trevor a.k.a. Fury). More recently, Joan absorbed a massive amount of energy, boosting her powers greatly. To reflect this, she changed her codename to Miss Cosmos. She later returned as Miss America, explaining that her cosmic power upgrade proved to be temporary.