Late
at night, the Cat is on the rooftop of a Chicago hospital, sensing that Dr.
Joanne Tumolo has drawn her there. Suddenly, a trio of owl-masked baddies
descend onto the roof and attack her. She fights them, discovering there is a
helicopter waiting above them. A security guard arrives and Cat pushes him out
of the way of machine gun fire. As the police arrive, the Owl gives the order
to kill his own men to keep them out of the hands of the police and the trio of
owl-masked hoods are shot from the copter which then departs. The cops start
asking questions Cat doesn’t want to answer and she jump off the roof, using
her special claws to climb down to a lower floor. She follows her heightened
instincts to a particular window where she discovers that Dr. Tumolo is still
alive and in intensive care, her nephew consulting with the doctor and
expressing his wish to move her to another hospital. After they leave, Cat
enters and can sense the comatose woman telling her that the man is not her
nephew but a bad guy. Cat goes home to rest as Greer Nelson, reviewing the last
24 hours in the form of a four-page recap of issue #1….
The
next day, Greer goes to the hospital where she meets Arthur Tumolo, the bogus
nephew and Dr. Tumolo’s lawyer, Ben Richards. While Tumolo is out of the room,
Greer chats with Richards who tells her a) he has never heard of Arthur Tumolo,
b) Dr. Tumolo owns quite a lot of stock in a lucrative munitions firm, and c)
Greer is the beneficiary in the old lady’s will. Greer senses danger and heads
to the window to see an ambulance drive away and she knows Dr. Tumolo has been
kidnapped. She hops in her car and pursues them to a warehouse district where
she is captured by the Owl’s men. The Owl obligingly explains that he has a
device to drain the memories of intelligent people which can then be downloaded
into a device which will make Owl the smartest person in the world. Greer is
taken away and thumped on the head….
Greer
wakes up, changes into her Cat costume and picks the lock. She goes back to the
lab where she discovers the Owl reciting his business plan to the entire room
of people ignoring him while trying to do their jobs. As the smartest man in
the world, big business, government, the military, everyone will come to him to
consult on every imaginable issue. She searches the building for Dr. Tumolo,
using her heightened senses, only to discover her brain has been drained,
leaving her a mindless husk. She puts Dr. T in the ambulance to take her to the
hospital but the Owl discovers what she’s done and orders his men to capture
her. The thugs shoot out the tires and Cat careens to a stop where she
activates a fire alarm. The Owl glides down from the roof and they fight, Cat
being surprised at how powerful he is. The police arrive and Cat and the bad
guys all flee. Owl returns to the lab where he discovers Fake Arthur Tumolo
hooked up to the machine so he can gain all knowledge from his own invention.
He fires a pistol at Owl and hits the control panel, sending feedback into the
helmet, frying Tumolo’s brain. Cat heads to the rooftop where she sees the Owl
heading for his helicopter. There is a brief tussle and Owl falls from the
roof…and startles Cat by flying away….