One mid-1950s Marvel superhero tends to get overlooked — Leopard Girl.
A cross between Sheena and Catwoman, Leopard Girl debuted in the first issue of Jungle Action, a title devoted to Tarzan types. Created by artist Al Hartley and writer Don Rico, she’s part of the seemingly endless parade of feline female characters.
“A surface description placed Leopard Girl in the genre founded by Fiction House’s Sheena, but she owed more to the same company’s Red Panther — a Tarzan-style tree swinger, but one with a skin-tight costume that made him more of a superhero,” observed comics historian Don Markstein. “Leopard Girl (no relation to Tiger Girl, Jaguar Man, the Black Panther or any other hero named after a jungle cat) was a tree swinger who wore a full-body cat suit just like Miss Fury’s form-fitting panther pelt, but with a different fur motif and no tail.
“She even maintained a secret identity. She was Gwen (last name not mentioned), a typist in the middle of the jungle, working for scientist and philosopher Hans Kreitzer (who apparently didn’t have a doctorate, at least in some stories), who chose to live there because he couldn’t concentrate on his work in the middle of civilization. Making all the story elements dovetail into a perfect circle, he was also there to study local folklore, and one of the legends he hoped to find out about was Leopard Girl, who was in the habit of swooping in out of nowhere and righting wrongs.”
“By emitting the ‘Cry of the Leopard,’ she could summon a pack of real leopards, which would make short work of the bad guys but never seemed hungry for Gwen herself.”
“Leopard Girl’s first story sets up a minimal backstory as a girl raised by a pack of leopards who ‘has keen eyes that can see evil where no one else can,’” noted comics historian Michael J. Vassallo. “I guess that’s sort of like a ‘spider sense’ for jungle evil.”
Her magical leopard costume also granted her enhanced agility and knowledge of the jungle. In her first outing, she frightened off con artists by appearing to be invulnerable to gunfire. In fact, she’d merely reloaded their handguns with blanks while they were sleeping.
Appearing in only six adventures, Leopard Girl also tackled a merciless “flame witch” and encountered ghostly jungle gods.
She debuted in 1954, a busy year for jungle heroes.
Comics titles available on the newsstands included Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, Cave Girl, Congo Bill, Jungle Comics, Jungle Jim, Jungle Tales, Kaanga Jungle King, Lorna the Jungle Girl, Ramar of the Jungle, Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli, Tarzan’s Jungle Annual, Terrors of the Jungle, Tor, Turok Son of Stone, Wild Boy of the Congo and Zoo Funnies with Nyoka the Jungle Girl.
Two Bomba the Jungle Boy movies (The Golden Idol and Killer Leopard) and two Jungle Jim films (Jungle Man-Eaters and Cannibal Attack) were released in 1954. Tarzan was absent from the screen that year, if only because producer Sol Lesser was in the process of switching Tarzan actors. Lex Barker had made his last Tarzan film (Tarzan and the She-Devil) in 1953 and Gordon Scott would take over the role in 1955 (Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle).
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