Publication date October 1968 Main character(s) Pussycat Publisher Magazine Management | Number of issues 1 | |
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Artist(s) Wally WoodBill WardJim MooneyAl Hartley Similar Little Annie Fanny, Sally Forth, The Adventures of Phoeb, Wonder Wart‑Hog, The Fabulous Furry Fre | ||
The Adventures of Pussycat was a one-shot comics magazine that reprinted the risqué, black-and-white feature "Pussycat" that ran throughout various men's adventure magazines published by Martin Goodman's Magazine Management Company in the 1960s. The feature's creative staff came largely from Magazine Management's sister company, Marvel Comics.
Contents
Men's magazine feature
A bawdy but non-pornographic, tongue-in-cheek secret agent comics feature, "Pussycat" was launched following the success of Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder's color comics feature "Little Annie Fanny", published in Playboy magazine from 1962 to the 1980s. Long-established comic-book artist Wally Wood — whose own similar 1968-1974 Sally Forth would run in armed services publications — created the 1965 premiere, in which Pussycat, a secretary for S.C.O.R.E. (Secret Council of Ruthless Extroverts) is recruited to fight the agency's archenemsis, L.U.S.T. Artist Jim Mooney retouched over Wood's work for the reprint in the 1968 stand-alone issue.
The feature premiered in Male Annual #3 (1965), and ran in at least Male Annual #4-5 (1966–1967), Stag Annual #3 (1966), and in issues of Men and Stag.
As Mooney recalled in 2000, "[I]n the early '70s, I did work for Goodman's men's magazines, a strip called 'Pussycat'. Stan [Lee] wrote the first one I did, and then his brother Larry [Lieber] wrote the ones that came later".
The later strips abandoned this "ditzy spy" format and turned her into a savvy investigative reporter, who continually managed to find herself in situations where her clothes were torn off, voluntarily removed, or otherwise caused to "be elsewhere" by various events and situations. Usually, this was played to her advantage, as she used the distractions to stop the nefarious plots of the bad guys and get her story.
Other talent from Goodman's Marvel Comics who contributed to the Pussycat series include writer Ernie Hart, and artists Al Hartley and Bill Everett. Contributing separately was the notable "good girl art" cartoonist Bill Ward.
Comics magazine
Eight five-page episodes were collected in a one-shot, black-and-white comics magazine cover-dated October 1968, and titled The Adventures of Pussycat on its trademarked cover logo and simply Pussycat in the copyright information in its postal indicia. The cover price of 35 cents matched that of the same publisher's black-and-white Marvel Comics magazine The Spectacular Spider-Man, released the same year but with an original, newly published story.
The one-shot has no ads except a back-cover advertisement for Jade East cologne. It also contains an unclothed but non-nude centerfold. In addition to seven reprinted stories, the comic included an original five-page Pussycat tale, "The Hidden Hippie Caper", by writer Larry Lieber and artist Jim Mooney.
Larry Graber is credited as the comic book's art director, and Lew Holloway as associate art director.
Episodes
This list is incomplete, and except for the first episode, the order is uncertain