When the Avengers Teamed Up With…A Soap Opera Character?

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Today, we look at a team-up between the Avengers and a character from a soap opera!

Beth Ehlers joined the longest-running soap opera of the era, Guiding Light, in 1987, as the “bad girl” Harley Cooper. Ehlers was so good that Harley soon became one of the bigger supporting characters on the series. She was nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Young Actress in 1992 and 1993, at which point she left the series to move to California (like a lot of Proctor and Gamble’s soap operas, Guiding Light filmed in New York City). Guiding Light actually debuted as a radio program in 1937, so when they did a 60th anniversary in 1997, Ehlers returned for a return engagement and the fans were so happy that the show convinced her to return to the show. She ended up being nominated for two Daytime Emmys for Best Supporting Actress and then, finally, in 2006 for Best Lead Actress (the only actor to ever receive nominations for Young Actress, Supporting Actress and Lead Actress).

She was now “settled down” (quotes because no soap opera character is ever truly settled down) and a mom of a couple of young kids, but she was still a major character in the series (hence the Lead Actress nod).

In any event, in 2006, Storm and Black Panther got married. This is notable because Storm’s wedding dress was designed by Shawn Dudley, who was the costume designer on, you guessed it, Guiding Light!

This led to Marvel and Proctor and Gamble getting together and seeing if they could work together on some joint projects and the ultimate result of those talks was the episode “She’s a Marvel,” which aired as the show’s Halloween tie-in (the show had begun to do these episodes called “Inside the Light,” which would spotlight a single character rather than the standard soap opera approach of mixing a whole bunch of stories together. This worked well for one of those spotlight episodes).

Harley Cooper is working on some Halloween lights when some pranksters throw water on her and she is sort of kind of electrocuted. It gives her some sort of electrical powers and she decides to become a hero of her city, Springfield, as The Guiding Light!

Shawn Dudley-designed costume, of course.

Here’s the first third of the episode, right up until when she dons her costume…