Comic Book Cats, number 99: House of Secrets #60, penciled by Mort Meskin, inked by George Roussos and written by Arnold Drake, published by DC Comics in May 1963.
Mark Merlin, Sleuth of the Supernatural, was the creation of artist Mort Meskin. Introduced in House of Secrets #23, Mark Merlin was an ongoing feature in that series, lasting thru issue #73.
“Captive of the Cat Curse” sees Merlin discover a mystical charm that projects his consciousness into a black cat named Memakata. Merlin uses the cat, and his girlfriend Elsa’s resemblance to the Queen Cletoma, to thwart a Scooby Doo-esque plot to make a temple appear haunted… not that I can really blame the Egyptians for wanting to get their artifacts back, but there’s got to be better ways to do that than dressing up as ghosts.
For the remainder of his run in House of Secrets, Mark would regularly use the cat-shaped charm to jump into Memakata body in order to deal with a variety of enemies, both human and otherworldly.
Mort Meskin was a prolific artist in the Golden and Silver Ages who cited the Orson Welles film Citizen Kane as one of his major stylistic influences. Meskin was certainly adept at rendering atmospheric work, something demonstrated by the Mark Merlin stories. On a number of occasions he was paired with inker George Roussos, and their artistic collaborations were well-regarded.
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