One of the hidden delights of Archie’s Pep and Laugh comics in the early 1960s was finding a superhero story tucked away behind all the teenage antics.
Both titles had been headlined by superheroes when they began two decades before — Pep by the Shield, and Top Notch Laugh by the Black Hood. But although Archie Andrews had turned the tables on the costumed crusaders, for a couple of years the publisher restored something of the diverse anthology feel they’d had in the 1940s. So either the Fly, Fly Girl, or the Jaguar dropped in from their own titles each month for a short adventure.
For the record, the Jaguar had 16 backup feature appearances in Laugh and Pep, the Fly had 10, and Fly-Girl had 7. The issues are of some niche interest to collectors.
In Pep 157 (Sept. 1962), for example, the Jaguar fought one of those rando monsters that turned up with such frequency in the early Silver Age Archie superhero titles. At least they allowed artist John Rosenberger to show off his imaginative powers. Think about it. How would you draw a super-snail?
In The Monster’s Eye, the U.S. military seeds Hurricane Rita with experimental chemicals as it bears down on Florida. But on an island below, a small snail, the subject of another scientific experiment, is struck by lightning.
Irritated — as one might well be, having been subjected to the indignity of scientific experimentation and then electrified to boot — the snail swells to giant size and flies up into the heart of the hurricane.
The alarmed military sends out an SOS to the Jaguar, who confronts the creature but can’t manage it with his animal telepathy powers. Nor does the snail find the heat of the Jaguar’s nucleon-jet flying belt discouraging.
Reluctant to kill any creature, the Jaguar turns to Kree-Nal, the green-skinned seagoing Circe who was enamored of him. Her transformational eye beams return the snail to its natural state, and the Jaguar catches it in his hand so it won’t be destroyed.
The Jaguar, definitely the ladies’ man of the superhero set, could rely on any of several girlfriends to bail him out in a crisis — not just Kree-Nal, but Cat Girl and Jill Ross, who was his secretary in his Ralph Hardy identity. They even combined to form the Jaguar Rescue Team.
The Jaguar clearly had something. Women never threw themselves at the Fly.
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