January 1962: Everybody Wants to Be a Cat

Archie Comics’ Cat Girl may well have been a wink at DC’s Catwoman, the popular 1940s villainess who nevertheless hadn’t appeared in six years (since The Jungle Cat-Queen in Detective Comics 211, Sept. 1954).

No successful concept is ever abandoned in superhero comics. It’s always recycled — if not by the original publisher, then by another.

Introduced in The Adventures of the Fly 9 (Nov. 1960), Lydia Fellin was  “…the Sphinx, the original model for the countless ancient statues.”

The superhuman feline immortal clashed with the superhero when she freed big cats from their imprisonment in a zoo. She kept returning, eventually making a dozen appearances in Archie Comics.

Super-strong and armed with claws, Cat Girl was indestructible and could become invisible, fly, teleport, telepathically communicate with cats and gaze into the future.

After a couple of encounters with the Fly, she concentrated her attentions on the Jaguar, Archie Comics’ other superhero of the early 1960s, and promptly fell in love with him.

Seemingly inadvertently, the Jaguar turned out to be quite the lady-killer. Super women, alien women and ordinary women were forever becoming infatuated with him. The Adventures of the Jaguar threatened to become “Catfight Comics.”

Cat Girl rescued the Jaguar from aliens, wooed him with love potions and helped him out by breaking up a ring of cat burglars (who all wore cat masks, naturally).

Cat Girl also joined the all-female “Jaguar Rescue Team.” “In sponsoring this assemblage, the Jaguar may have created every superguy’s worst nightmare: a team made up entirely of ex-girlfriends,” Jon Morris quipped.

Cat Girl would eventually lose most of her supernatural powers through exposure to radiation, retaining only her telepathic control over cats.

In fact, one Cat Girl wasn’t enough for Archie Comics. They had to have two. 

The second was a sultry character in a black leotard meant to complement Archie’s movie monster parodies, and clearly a nod at the two RKO Cat People films made during the 1940s.