Publisher Marvel Comics Notable members Flavius
Helene
Tigra | Place of origin Earth | |
First appearance Giant-Size Creatures vol. 1, #1 (July 1974) Created by Tony Isabella and Don Perlin | ||
The Cat People are a fictional species of humanoids in Marvel Comics.
Contents
Publication history
Dr. Joanne Tumulo, later revealed to be a member of the Cat People race, first appeared in Claws of the Cat #1-4 (November 1972-June 1973), and was created by Linda Fite and Roy Thomas (co-writers), and Marie Severin (artist).
The Cat People race first appeared in Giant-Size Creatures Vol. 1 #1 (July 1974), and was created by Tony Isabella and Don Perlin. The race subsequently appeared and was further detailed in Adventures into Fear #22 (June 1974), Marvel Two-In-One #19 (September 1976), Marvel Premiere #42 (June 1978), What If #35 (October 1982), West Coast Avengers Volume 2 #6-7 (March-April 1986), #15-16 (December 1986-January 1987), Fantastic Four #314 (May 1988), Avengers Spotlight #38 (November 1990), Dr. Strange III #27/2 (March 1991), and Tigra #1-4 (May-August 2002).
The Cat People received an entry in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Update '89 #1.
Fictional history
The first Cat People were created from ordinary house cats by a medieval sorcerer named Ebrok. Though the Cat People were initially welcomed into Ebrok's community as warriors and domestic servants, their fierce nature as well as their rapid breeding rate soon started to become uncontrollable, and the Cat People were banished to another dimension by Ebrok's fellow sorcerers. The sorcerers also installed a magick ensuring that Ebrok's original cats-into-cat-people spell would never work again.
Part of the banishment required that one Cat Person, to be known as The Balkathar, could be summoned by any Earthly sorcerer from time to time to perform a task.
Ebrok had trained his original two creations, Flavius and Helene, in both the scientific and mystical arts. Upon learning of the sorcerers' plans, they secretly crafted an amulet that temporarily gave themselves the appearance of normal humans, and thus had evaded banishment. This delighted Ebrok, who had begun to regard the pair as his children. Together, they worked to develop solutions that would allow the Cat People to return from their other-dimensional banishment and live peacefully among the human population. The cats' natural curiosity made them into gifted researchers and they made many scientific and magical discoveries along the way.
The band of sorcerers who had banished the Cat-People ultimately discovered the pair, and killed Ebrok on the spot. In a fit of rage, Flavius hurled a glass vial at the sorcerers, releasing one of the pair's most terrible experiments: the Black Death, which would ultimately kill untold millions of Europeans. The pair fled in fear, shame, and horror.
Flavius and Helene continued their work while in exile, determined to ultimately re-establish a population of Cat People. They were unable to reverse the Cat People's banishment or disarm the magic that prevented Ebrok's original Cat-Person spell from functioning. But with memory of past banishment and continued persecution fresh on their minds, they developed a spell that could turn a human woman into one of their race, with strength and abilities far surpassing those of any Cat Person. Very little is known about the first Tigra, except that she accepted her duties as the Cat People's defender with great relish and ferocity.
Ultimately, Flavius and Helene discovered the means of controlling their species' violence and reproductive rate. As earthly sorcerers, they summoned the Balkathar. He and the Tigra mated, founding a new population of Cat People.
In modern times, there are two populations of Cat People: a large colony descended from the Cat People who were banished during Medieval times, who still live in an immense netherworldly cavern and ally themselves with local demons from time to time, and those descended from the Tigra and the Balkathar's pairing. These earthly Cat People continued to live secretly among the humans for many centuries, masquerading as normal men and women with an evolution of the same amulet that Flavius and Helene had used to escape banishment.
Most of the earthly population of Cat-People were destroyed when they came out of hiding and banded together to successfully defend Humanity from a modern mutated villain, who called himself Tabur. An unknown number of Cat People survive, in numbers so small and in secrecy so complete as to effectively suggest the extinction of the race.
As for the Tigra spell, it was unused for centuries until the Cat People employed it to save the life of superpowered hero The Cat (Greer Grant), who at the time was being mentored by one of their own. The Tigra legend is a very powerful one, however, and when this modern Tigra later traveled to the netherworldly dimension to confront the banished colony of Cat People, they chose to lay down their weapons rather than fight her, immediately acknowledging her status as their greatest warrior.