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The Cat #1

Nov 1972
Linda Fite, Marie Severin

Story Name:

Beware the Claws of…the Cat!


Synopsis

The Cat #1 synopsis by Peter Silvestro
Rating: 4 stars

On a stormy night, the Cat climbs up the outside of a Chicago skyscraper, on a mission of vengeance. A lightning bolt dislodges her from a precarious perch; she fires her cable-claw which hooks onto a roof and with her foot-claws she climbs back up. She reaches the penthouse level and tries to force her way in through window which has steel plating behind the glass; she pushes and suddenly it falls in, dropping her to the floor where a thug seizes her. She kicks him in the chest and gets free but more thugs are on the way. She fights her way through them, ripping out a fuse box to turn the floor dark, giving her an advantage. A baddie is calling the boss on the phone and Cat seizes the guy, demanding he tell her what the boss is up to. And then gas spews from an outlet in the wall, putting her to sleep, where she dreams…

Flashback 1: College student Greer Grant had a cute meeting with Police Officer Bill Nelson when she spilled her loose change in front of him. They began dating and she soon learned that he wanted to protect her, so she learned to be helpless around him and anytime she tried to assert herself, he would quash her. They married and she dropped out of college; Bill discouraged any attempts she made to have a life of her own. Then one night, Bill was killed when he intervened in an armed robbery and she was left alone. Greer tries to find a job but she wasn’t really trained to don anything. And then she ran into Dr. Joanne Tumolo, her physics professor and Dr. Tumolo hired her as a lab assistant, which she enjoyed greatly, leading her to gain confidence and self-awareness….

The Cat is awakened and meets the Big Bad: Malcolm Donalbain, sportsman, entrepreneur who is planning to open a chain of health emporiums. The staff will be an army of women given powers identical to Grants by equipment based on Dr. Tumolo’s designs, women also under Donalbain’s mental control by will-nullifying collars. Disgusted, she shoves the thug holding her into Donalbain who has a severe phobia about being touched. He recoils and shouts for Zabo, his gigantic, mind-controlled henchman who hurls the offending thug across the room. Cat breaks her bonds and fight off Zabo who turns out to be stupid so she easily confounds him and escapes through an airshaft; at the top she rests in the shaft while leading the baddies to think she has fled so she ponders…

Flashback 2: Dr. Joanne Tumolo shows Greer a device she has invented to make it possible for any woman to fulfill her physical and mental potential. She ran out of funds and was desperate so she accepted Malcolm Donalbain’s offer to underwrite the project. Donalbain then pressured her into using his test subject, Shirlee Bryant. So the project continued, using the indifferent Shirlee by day and repeating the experiments by night with the enthusiastic Greer. And Greer becomes more intelligent, more empathetic, athletic, and skilled as the treatments progressed. But the experiments with Shirlee are a disaster so Dr. Tumolo goes to Donalbain’s penthouse to confront him and discovers an exact duplicate of her equipment. She also sees Shirlee dressed in a cat woman outfit as Donalbain put a mind-controlling collar on her, which immediately saps her will. She is then put through her paces, fighting henchmen and climbing to the top of a tower. Ordered to swing by her cat claw to the next tower, she loses her grip and falls to her death. Dr. Tumolo decides to go to the police, taking one of the cat costumes as evidence. She goes back to her lab and tells everything to Greer, who leaves to pack a bag to stay with Dr. Tumolo. But while she’s gone, Donalbain’s thugs, who spotted Tumolo at the penthouse, set off dynamite in her lab. When Greer returns, Dr. Tumolo warns her that the bad guys stole her notes and now they know about Greer before she dies. So Greer dons the cat costume which was undamaged in the safe, and went out on her mission of revenge….

And now Cat returns to the penthouse, overpowers some henchmen but when Donalbain tries to contact them, the lack of response tips him off that something is wrong. He and Zabo head to his lab where they find Cat sabotaging the equipment. She flips Zabo into a machine, electrocuting him as Donalbain shoots at her. The lighting shorts out, plunging the room into darkness. Cat taunts Donalbain, noting he has only one bullet left and se is coming closer so his phobia against being touched leads him to shoot himself. AS the place burns, Cat escapes over the rooftops, wondering, “Have I become a stronger woman -- only to become a poorer human being?"

 


 

Review / Commentaries


The Cat #1 Review by (October 1, 2024)

Review: A female hero to bring in more female readers? Makes perfect sense from a marketing standpoint. They already had MILLIE THE MODEL and related funny comics but now they were after something a bit more dramatic. And so, a woman superhero headlining her own book made her debut, the Cat. The character was an interesting one, a policeman’s widow undergoing a vaguely scientific process to increase her powers physically, mentally, and emotionally. 1972 was in the early days of the feminist movement and “a woman who could be as good as a man” was a strange concept, believe it or not. But Greer Nelson’s biggest challenge was overcoming the seeds of inferiority put into her head by her male chauvinist husband. And the character is a nice one, not a mouthpiece for a political agenda, or a paragon of virtue dealing out punishment to cartoonishly wicked men but a fairly realistic (within reason) woman facing her own problems and shortcomings of character—though increased “women’s intuition” does play into sexist stereotypes a bit too much. And the Severin/Wood art combination has an offbeat look, Vibrant, if a bit crowded on the page. Very nice launch; too bad the art team changes with each issue, ending with an all-male production. Linda Fite remains the writer for the entire (brief) series.   

Comments: First appearance/origin of the Cat, Greer Nelson. First appearance of Dr. Joanne Tumolo. Cat refers to John (Lennon) and Yoko (Ono), leaders of the contemporary peace movement. Also “Hints from Heloise,” a newspaper column containing housekeeping advice for women, running 1959 to the present. Her athletic abilities are compared to those of Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984), Olympic swimmer who was most famous for portraying Tarzan in twelve films in the 1930s and ‘40s. Zabo is revealed not to have died in MARVEL TEAM-UP #125, featuring Tigra, Greer Nelson’s future identity.

Seeking to publish more comics for female readers, Marvel decided that a female hero should have a female creative team so editorial assistant Linda Fite, having penned some back-up stories, was given her first assignment as a regular writer, with Roy Thomas as co-plotter. Marie Severin was given the task of illustrating the magazine, inked by Wallace Wood; reportedly Marie was upset that Wood made the character sexier than she had intended, no surprise for anyone familiar with Wood’s previous work, including SALLY FORTH (1968-1974, not the one by Greg Howard about a working woman). Two other titles debuted at the same time, NIGHT NURSE and SHANNA THE SHE DEVIL, lasting four and five issues respectively. Marvel did not give up and Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman, She-Hulk and others would come along with successful (more-or-less) solo comics. 



> The Cat comic book info and issue index

Elektra

Excelsioring your collection:
statue
Holy smokes, Batman!
(The Boy Wonder)

Marie Severin
Wallace Wood
Marie Severin
Marie Severin (Cover Penciler)
Wallace Wood (Cover Inker)
Marie Severin (Cover Colorist)
Additional Credits
Letterer: John Costanza.

Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Cat
Cat

(Greer Nelson)

Plus: Joanne Tumolo.