Comic Book Cats, number two: Ghostly Tales #85, drawn by Steve Ditko and written by Joe Gill, published by Charlton Comics in April 1971, and Speedball #10, plotted & penciled by Steve Ditko, inked by Dan Day, scripted by Jo Duffy, lettered by Jack Morelli and colored by Tom Vincent, published by Marvel Comics in June 1989.
Steve Ditko drew a number of stories with cats throughout his lengthy career. Here is artwork from a couple of them.
The first page is from “The 9th Life,” one of the best stories that Joe Gill wrote for Charlton’s horror anthologies. Ditko did really good work illustrating Gill’s story.
Michael Holt rescues a stray black cat and takes it back to his apartment in the slums. Michael is depressed about the state of the modern-day world. The black cat is apparently a shape-shifting witch named Felicia, and she offers to transport Michael back to the past. Michael agrees but soon discovers the “good old days” were not so good, with tyranny and disease. Returning to the present day, Michael realizes that he needs to actively work to make the world he lives in a better place. He is reunited with Felicia, who joins him on his path of fighting for a better world.
The second page is from the last issue of the short-lived Speedball series. The laboratory accident that endowed Robbie Baldwin his kinetic energy powers also gave those same powers to Niels, a cat who belonged to one of the scientists at the lab. A subplot running through the Speedball series was Robbie’s repeatedly-unsuccessful efforts to capture Niels. Getting a hold of a normal feline who doesn’t want to be caught is difficult enough as it is; give a cat bouncing superpowers and the task becomes nigh-impossible!About Author
