In New Orleans at Mardi Gras time, Tigra runs over rooftops
searching for the missing Dr. Joanne Tumolo; suddenly Tigra spies her where she
wasn’t a moment before. Joanne gives Tigra a message for the others: “Tabur has
the ray” and to tell them goodbye. She then vanishes instantly….
Dr. Richard Dannemiller, a Cat Person who passes for
human, drives his Rolls through the streets, narrowly missing a child, on his
way to deliver a briefcase to Dr. Tumolo. He arrives at the rendezvous to find
the mansion deserted; he is then trapped and killed by the renegade Cat Person
Tabur who makes off with the briefcase….
Tigra
arrives at the secret underground lair of the Cat People. She tells them about
the message sent by Dr. Tumolo the previous night; everyone is shocked. The
leader Faelar tells her that Dr. Tumolo is dead, that every Cat Person has the
ability to project an image to a loved one, but using that power is invariably
fatal. Tigra is shaken, recalling how Joanne had been her closest friend
throughout her superhero career. Faelar explains that the renegade Tabur lived
with the High Evolutionary’s New Men in Wundagore. When they rebelled against
their creator, Tabur turned coward and deserted the cause so he was left
stranded when Mount Wundagore was launched into space. This caused him to go
mad and swear vengeance on the world….
But
now Tabur has stolen Dr. Leon’s ray which was designed to turn Greer human
again (which she claims she doesn’t want) and modified it to reverse evolution,
turning mammals into their proto-forms. And the Cat People watch on TV as Tabur
leads an army of semi-prehistoric animals on a rampage, intending to wipe out
the human race, zapping them with the ray to turn them into ape-people. The Cat
People race to the scene (apparently it isn’t far away) and do battle with the
wild beasts. Tigra attacks Tabur as he rides a mammoth; he knocks her off and
fires the ray gun, turning her Cat allies into saber-toothed tigers—but the
baddie’s plan backfires as they still side with Tigra and now have the power to
defeat the monsters. The transformed Cat People herd the beasts away from the
humans. Tigra and baddie grapple and she gets her hands on the ray gun and
blasts him, transforming him into a little pussycat. The Cat People are
victorious but Tigra will miss her old friend….