In the late 1940s, Marvel’s Human Torch battled DC’s Wildcat.
Well, okay, not really, but it certainly looked like it.
In The Catman Murders (Captain America Comics 60, Jan. 1947), the Human Torch and Toro tackled a deadly villain whose costume virtually mirrored Wildcat’s. The Catman was being manipulated by an evil physician, as it turned out.
“He was a mentally ill patient with a cat complex,” the captured doctor explained. “I fostered it, made him think he turned into a cat. Even created that black cat outfit for him — bullet-proof, asbestos-lined to safeguard his life!”
“One of the most visually arresting superheroes of his time, the Torch and Toro delivered plenty of red-hot action and thrills, as the fiery friends confronted the Mad Violinist (and) the Madame,” noted the American Comic Book Chronicles.
Meanwhile, Wildcat would hang in there for another couple of years.
“Green Lantern, who’d already been shoved off the covers of his self-titled comic by Streak the Wonder Dog, lost his solo venue altogether when it was canceled with Green Lantern 38 (May-June 1949),” noted the Chronicle. “Wildcat was the next to fall, effective with Sensation Comics 91 (July 1949), his spot filled by leftover Streak adventures in the next three issues.”
Ironically, the Human Torch story in Captain America Comics 60 was drawn by an artist who would come to be primarily associated with DC Comics — Carmine Infantino. And in a further note of irony, on the newsstands at the same time was Sensation Comics 60, which featured Wildcat facing a Marvel — Marvello the Mind Reader.
While the Catman ended up dead, Marvello had been coerced by a gang into using his psychic talents for crime, so Wildcat gave him a chance to go straight.
In the last panel of this Irwin Hasen-penned tale, during his stage performance, a member of Marvello’s audience asks him who Wildcat really is. But whether he knows the secret or not, Marvello refuses to say.
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