I am Curious Yellow...

The Leopard had an experience like this: I grew up in a pretty diverse neighborhood at the time in Stapleton, Staten Island. My friends were pretty mixed – Latin, Asian & white. We were the only black family, though.

One of my little friends had a large above ground pool in his backyard. I’d barely noticed it until a bunch of us kids were piddling around one hot summer day and someone said, “Jimmy’s pool is up!” Before I knew it, most of the kids had scattered to run home to get their trunks and towels. We were all so excited for some reason. I remember running home to tell my younger sister. When I got there, she was home watching TV and I remember how she beamed behind me as I asked my mom if we could join the gang.

We dressed as quickly as we could and ran in bare feet around the block to Jimmy’s house. As we got closer, we could hear some of the other neighborhood kids already there, splashing and laughing.

As we approached, leaning against the front gate to Jimmy’s house was his 7 year old sister, mouth stained red from a cherry lollipop stuck her mouth. As we started to pass her, she said, “You can’t go in the pool”. My sister and I looked at each other. “Why?”

“Because you’re colored.”

We were completely perplexed. We both ran back crying and told my mother. She grabbed both our wrists and dragged us back to Jimmy’s house. Jimmy’s younger sister was still standing in the yard in her yellow bathing suit.

“Let me speak to your mother! My mom said. Go get her.” When Jimmy mother’s came down, my mother told her in no uncertain terms she had no intention of allowing her kids to play with us anymore. Furthermore, she said, she had no need “For them to associate with people like you.” She said this forcefully without raising her voice or using profanity (she's a church-going woman).

Jimmy’s mother was nonplussed and apologized profusely, saying she never said anything of the kind to her daughter (I now think it was her father or one of  Jimmy’s older brothers). When we got home, she forbid us to play with them.

Whenever I saw Jimmy from then on, I would just stare at a distance, not sure how I felt.

Farrah Fawcett Majors And The Fallacy Of The Nipple

Back in High School, when The Leopard was but a cub, I often found myself obsessing. I have a collector’s heart, and whenever I’d obsess, I’d collect. It was simply a way of trying to grasp my need.

Like practically every other American male at the time, I had a huge crush on that vision of all that was right in the world, the utterly exquisite Farrah Fawcett–Majors (yes, that’s how I knew her at the time; she was married to The Six Million Dollar Man himself, Lee Majors).

With those huge, impossibly white teeth - - those bright, ice-blue eyes, and that famous swept back hair—I couldn’t imagine anyone more beautiful.

I wasn’t a fan of her television show, Charlie’s Angels. I was too impatient for its campy tedium. Actually, the first time I laid eyes on her was in the silly science fiction film, Logan’s Run. After that, I started collecting every magazine article, cheap paperback bio, and newspaper clipping I could find– no matter how obscure.

Finally, I remember spotting one day at my local mall that iconic Farrah poster everyone knows. The revelatory and iconic image – featuring the youthful starlet leaning back in a blood red bathing suit, her head at an odd angle, displaying those glittering pearly whites, --and most importantly, the imprint of her perky young breasts, drove me completely insane – but at the time I was too young to understand exactly why.

In no time I also bought a neatly ironed on T-shirt at a local Spencer Gifts that I wore proudly. Over time,  I matured and my obsession subsided. My view of beauty expanded well beyond skinny, sun-baked blondes, but she’ll forever be my first bonafide celebrity crush.

My Batman

As a preface to a review the Leopard will be posting soon on the Dark Knight movie, here's a a little background on my personal relationship with the character.

I love Batman. The first drawings I ever did were of him. One of the fondest memories I have are when I was about 8 or 9 years old taking the Staten Island Ferry with my father. In the ferry station, they would have these enormous newsstands, and there was always a Superman or Batman comic book or two. I'd always pick Batman, of course. For some reason his image always appealed to me. I related to him somehow. Maybe it was his outsider status. I just thought there was just something beautiful about him.

Although I haven't really read many new issues in years because of the massive glut of material that's produced, but I've gotten my kids into him, and I'll sometimes drop by comic stores to see what's been done with the character. It's one of the few constants of my life.

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.