I am The Leopard

When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I created a superhero called the Leopard. His real name was the very super-hero alter ego sounding Jim Morgan. He came out of an group of imaginary characters my best friend and I created in our playtime growing up in Staten Island, NY. I had a brother and sister, but my friend was an only child. He was Jewish and I 'm not (of course I didn't know what that was at the time), and his mother was a school teacher and a lousy housekeeper.

We had his big house to ourselves and we would play with these little block that represented buildings and toy cars. We called it Bilmelytown because it sounded vaguely British. We thought anything British was cool. So my character, Jim Morgan, and his character and
brother, Rex Morgan were millionaires and Mayors of Blimelytown.

Of course, what the people of Blimeleytown didn't know was that these two were actually

The Cats: The Leopard and The Jaguar, two former archeologists who found an ancient Egyptian coin that gave them super powers when they recited the following words:

"Of All The Cats In The World,

Please Join,

Put Your Strength

Within This Coin"!

We did these characters for years. I drew pretty well, so we began creating our own comics featuring the characters which we wrote together and I drew. I went to an Art High School and my friend went to a different school and I dropped his character and the title "The Cats" and continued to make my own Leopard comics. When I look at them now he was a very obvious stand in for me. Even though on the surface he was battling super villains like The Jack O' Lantern, Spider-man style he was having personal problems with family, girlfriends and the like. It's obvious as I pore through them now he reflected my own pathetic life.

So now in adulthood, I embrace my alter-ego, The Leopard.