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.

Spider-dad

Years ago when my second cub turned 5, The Leopard arranged to have an actor friend surprise him at his birthday party in a New Jersey fast food place as his favorite superhero, Spider-man. Unfortunately, I got the call an hour before show time he couldn’t make it. So not wanting to disappoint, I put on the suit, and unceremoniously drove into the Burger King parking lot in an ill-fitting costume. I’ll never forget striding across the lot, entering the restaurant and the look on my little boy’s eyes,while doing my best Spider-man crawl-walk. I couldn’t talk of course because he’d guess it was his dear old dad. And maybe he guessed anyway. But it didn’t matter. Driving home in my 2001 Honda Civic, under the Spidey mask, I was smiling.

Black and White Comics

The first article the Leopard ever published was for a comic book fanzine called Amazing Heroes.  Back in 1989, comics were still not mainstream - it was before the Spider-ma n movies, before the Summer blockbusters adapted from comics like The Avengers. It was still a world of kids and fanboys. We actually read the things and talked about the stories, the artists, the writers. 
 I was trying to break in to the comic business at the time as a cartoonist, and still read superhero stuff.   I loved comics –especially as a child, but one thing that always bothered me was how they depicted minorities, particularly African Americans.

The portrayals were usually stereotypical and often offensive. Superheroes almost by definition were were square-jawed,  uber-muscled white men. There was almost no portrayal of them as anything else, except the odd sidekick.

So I wrote an article about how I felt they were depicted in comics. I even drew the Editorial illustration.

It may have been among the first of its kind.

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.