Jim Salicrup

Nightcat was Marvel Comics' attempt to recreate what they'd done with Dazzler, by pairing a comic book character with a real-life musician. While Dazzler succeeded as a comic despite the failure of cross-marketing, Nightcat never caught on. In this story plotted and scripted by Jim Salicrup, Barry Dutter, and Stan Lee with pencils by Denys Cowan and inks by Jimmy Palmiotti, Jaqueline Tavarez follows her mother's dreams to become a singer. When she stumbles across a drug deal, businesswoman Amanda Gideon instructs Dr. Ecstasy (who's working on making designer drugs) experiment on her. His injection gives Tavarez cat abilities, turning her into a superhero. Tragedy strikes, however, when her father, an undercover police officer, dies trying to save Tavarez. She works to bring down Gideon's drug empire and balance her singing career as the Nightcat. Though this comic appeared in 1991, a lot of it feels like something from the mid-1980s, both in characterizations and wardrobes. Unlike Dazzler, who existed in the Marvel universe and interacted with the X-Men, Nightcat is part of our world, where superheroes only exist in comic books and the Hulk is a television show. This graphic novel one-shot was dated as soon as it hit stands and, without any connection to other Marvel books, it relied entirely on the sales of Nightcat records to survive. Though this belongs among the oddities of comic book history, it does have a fun Stan Lee cameo where, in a great metatextual scene, Stan offers to make Nightcat into Marvel's next big hero.… (more)

This volume contains the first six issues of the wonderful Transformer run with Marvel comics. Unfortunately for the comic as a whole, the series starts very weakly. The first four issues (and there were not supposed to be more until sales went through the roof) are rather childish and mundane. The characters and premise are great, of course, but it lacks something.

When Bob Budiansky takes over the writing in issue 5, the comic takes off. These last two issues in the volume could not be better. The story is engrossing, the characters must more real, and the conflict intense. It is in issue 5 that the comic really begins to become a classic. The general mediocrity of the first four issues forces me to rate the book as average, but it is well worth the read for the next two issues and as an introduction into the series.… (more)