Tag Archives: Costumed hero

The Best of Cat Girl

The Treasury of British Comics from Rebellion continue to release a wide variety of books, which are always a treat to receive. This latest addition is a book of stories from the Cat Girl series that first appeared in the Sally comic. We are given a lot here, with four adventures from that comic, a story from the Sally 1971 Annual and the newest Cat Girl story that appeared in the Tammy & Jinty 2020 special, as well as an article on artist Giorgio Giorgetti.

While Cat Girl first appeared in 1969 in Sally until its end in 1971 and then only appeared for a short time in Tammy when Sally comic merged with it, the character obviously made a lasting impression. More recent revivals saw a version of the character in The Vigilant: Legacy comic and as mentioned, the Tammy & Jinty special where her daughter takes up the mantle.  John Freeman over two years ago made a case for a collection on his website here: downthetubes.net and it seems Rebellion publishers have taken note and released a collection.

Characters dressing as cats to fight crime were common in these comics, Diana had The Laughing Cats – twins who dressed as cats and used their agile ballet skills to help them investigate crime  and Bunty had Catch the Cat! – where a girl, Marie, dons a cat costume in order to secretly fight against the Nazis with the French Resistance. Certainly there is an appeal to these costumed crime fighters and an agile cat seems a perfect choice to represent them. Unlike the aforementioned series, in Cat Girl –  Cathy Carter doesn’t have a natural agility or gymnastic abilities, all her powers come directly from the suit, and we see instances when she has it off  and she can’t even manage a handstand! The mysterious suit doesn’t get much of an explanation, she finds it in the attic a present sent from Africa by an associate of her private detective father and we never delve further into it in this collection. After she tries it on she finds she acts more cat-like, with enhanced senses, agility and quickness. She uses it to help her absent-minded father on his cases in secret. While Cathy is trying to help catch criminals (often been led by the nefarious Eagle) and there are tricky situations she find herself in, it is also light-hearted in tone, with humourous expressions done by Giorgetti. The stories are fast paced and fun, episodes generally ending on cliffhanger to keep you turning the pages!

The stories covered in this collection showcase Cathy’s first appearance where she discovers the suit and helps her father foil a robbery orchestrated by the Eagle. The next story the Eagle is back and this time he has his sights on a train. After that  Cathy infiltrates a theatre to try and recover stolen jewels, next sees her completely change locations as she helps take down a blackmailing gang in South America. Lastly  an adventure at the circus as she tries to find out who has a vendetta against one of the trapeze artists. While these are all the classic adventures of Cathy the book’s opening story is actually  Cat Girl Returns from the Tammy & Jinty special, where we see a grown up Cathy now a police officer and her daughter Claire discovering the cat suits powers when she uses it for a costume part and helps foil a kidnapping. It’s a fun continuation for the story.

 

Other than the story an appeal of this collection will be the art of Georgio Giorgetti, which is gorgeous to look at. It is very expressive and he captures all Cathy’s acrobatics and cat-like tendencies perfectly.  Included in the back of this collection is article about the artist, this first appeared in the Tammy & Jinty special but it is fitting to add it here too. While I did get the paperback version (which has a cover done by Elkys Nova, who also drew the new story following Cathy’s daughter Claire), the Treasury of British Comics shop does have a lovely hardback addition with Giorgetti’s design. With a growing catalogue of books it will be difficult to afford all the wonderful collections that are available, but this one was a definite must for me and I have not been disappointed.

Rebellion Specials 2020 – Part 3: Tammy & Jinty

As this site is about girls comics clearly Tammy & Jinty special is one I’ve been eagerly awaiting. I was pleased with last year’s issue and this year takes a different approach but is still a joy to read.

This  year there are just 2 new complete stories and  1 reprint of the first episode of Ping-Pong Paula (compared to last year’s 9 short stories). This approach certainly has the advantage of giving the stories more time to breathe, although I was little disappointed not to see some returns from last year like Justice of Justine or Bella of the Bar. Personal preference would maybe have split the difference and have 3-4 new stories, so could still have longer stories but bit more variety. Still the stories here are a great read and I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing more retro strips occasionally too. Starting off we have Boarding School (by Rachael Smith and Yishan Li) where a girl, Tabatha and her brother, Richard are the only students at a mysterious boarding school with 4 governesses. While they all fawn over Richard, Tabatha is pretty much ignored, because of this while exploring she meets a girl from outside the school and after talking with her, Tabatha begins to question the motives of the governesses and what are they hiding. I won’t give too much away, but this was an intriguing mystery story, with strong sibling bond and a good villain.

In Cat Girl Returns (by Ramzee and Elkys Nova) we meet the original Cat Girl, Cathy, all grown up and still tracking down bad guys though now as police officer, not as a costumed hero. Meanwhile her daughter Claire is trying to find a costume for a party and comes across her mother’s old cat girl outfit. While at the party Claire begins to notice some strange things, like she now has enhanced senses, and when a social media star gets taken by some criminal she is on hand to help. I like that we get to see Cathy work her case and how it connects to Claire’s heroics. While I’ve liked Rebellions update on characters, it was very fun to see continuation of the Cat Girl story rather than a straightforward reboot. DCT digital Spellbound reprint (which unfortunately was only available for short period before being pulled) had a similar idea where after reprint of  I Don’t want to Be a Witch” there was a short story focusing on Celia’s daughter. It is nice to see these legacy characters as we get a new updated character but also get to see what the older character grew up to become. It probably wouldn’t work for every story but it fits Cat Girl just right.

The other story we get is the first episode of Ping-Pong Paula,this comes after an interview with Alison Fitt (nee Christie) and is fitting example of her work. I wonder if the story is set for a reprint, which would be another reason to print the first episode here to entice readers in, I would be happy to see a volume of this. The other feature we get is a piece on Giorgio Giorgetti, I had not realised he’d died young, so it was nice to read his son’s memories of his fathers work.

An excellent addition to Rebellion’s specials collection and I must also mention a gorgeous cover by Marguerite Sauvage.