Pussycat (comics)

Pussycat is a fictional comic book character who originally appeared in black-and-white strips printed in men's magazines published by Magazine Management Company between 1965 and 1972. During this period Martin Goodman was publisher for both Magazine Management and Marvel Comics; as a result in 1968 a magazine format compilation of Pussycat's adventures was published as a one-off title, The Adventures of Pussycat.

The stories revolved around innuendo and other risqué humour, though they featured only very brief nudity. Due to the relationship between Magazine Management and Marvel, the stories featured contributions from several creators known for their work on the latter's range of all-ages comics — including Stan Lee, Jim Mooney, Al Hartley, Larry Lieber and Ernie Hart — as well as EC Comics legend Wally Wood and "good girl art" cartoonist Bill Ward.

Creation
Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder had launched Little Annie Fanny in Playboy magazine in 1962, and the strip's success led to a spate of imitators in rival men's magazines. the original creators of Pussycat and the exact appearances of the feature have yet to be definitively identified due to incomplete record-keeping and inconsistent attribution, though the first episode was drawn by Wally Wood. Wood himself would later create his own nudie cutie-style comic, Sally Forth, in 1968. Jim 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".

While Pussycat eschewed outright nudity it followed much of the Little Annie Fanny template, also centring on a kind, buxom and oblivious blonde who ends up undressed in front of gawping males but usually ends up successfully completing her objective despite - or even because of - her complete lack of awareness of the situation around her. However, unlike Annie's everywoman tour of American culture, Pussycat's adventures were linked to another fad of the period, the spy genre. Her employers S.C.O.R.E. and their enemies L.U.S.T. were reminiscent of U.N.C.L.E. and T.H.R.U.S.H. from the smash-hit TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E..

Publication history
After debuting in Male Annual #3 in 1965, Pussycat's exploits appeared in many of Goodman's other men's magazines, including Stag and Men. In 1968 nine Pussycat strips were packaged in a Marvel one-shot called The Adventures of Pussycat, following the same magazine-black-and-white format as that recently used for Spectacular Spider-Man. As a magazine, the title was not covered by the Comics Code Authority, a loophole that was being successfully exploited by Warren Publishing and would later be more extensively explored by Marvel in a mid-1970s spate of horror titles. Eight of the strips in The Adventures of Pussycat had previously been printed in Goodman's magazine; the ninth was a new story by Lieber and Mooney. It also included a centerfold by Bill Everett, featuring a nude but tastefully obscured Pussycat. The title was intended to be a quarterly to periodically compile the ongoing men's magazine strips, but only a single issue was published.

While original material ended in 1972 the strips continued to be reprinted as filler in other Goodman titles under the Humorama banner.

Plot
Pussycat is a secretary for S.C.O.R.E. (Secret Council of Ruthless Extroverts), and is recruited to fight the agency's archenemies, L.U.S.T. (Legion of Unsuitable Sinister Types). Despite her lack of experience, intelligence, and situational awareness, Pussycat is usually successful in her missions due to her figure and frequent wardrobe malfunctions distracting the enemy. She later changed careers to become an investigative reporter, with identical results.

Reception
The unlikely combination of Marvel Comics and a bawdy strip has led to periodic rediscovery of Pussycat by comics fans. In 1989 Amazing Heroes writer Steven Paul Thompson penned a three-page article on the character, describing it as "a fascinating footnote to Marvel history" and noting it as a relic of a time when men's magazines largely focused on lurid text fiction and "two or three T&A pictorials", rather than the explicit material in more modern men's magazines. Thompson noted Little Annie Fanny's influence on Pussycat, while also noting its lineage from Bill Ward's Torchy and Milton Caniff's Male Call. He also that the stories depended as much on sight gags as titillation, and felt the style was closer to Marvel's all-ages comedy series Not Brand Echh.

In 2005, Marvel cartoonist and fan Fred Hembeck covered the strip in his column for IGN, recalling his attempts to find a copy of the obscure Adventures of Pussycat, and he felt the title was dated but light-hearted, calling for Marvel to print Essential Pussycat. The article caught the attention of writer-artist Mark Evanier, who speculated Hembeck would find a way to "put her in the Avengers".