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.

Good Ol' Charlie Brown

Of all characters in literature, one I have always felt the most personally connected to is Charlie Brown. There was always something in his persona that I related to, from childhood all the way to my early 20's - and still do, in away. when I see his image, I can feel myself quietly nodding in recognition.

In his voluminous biography on Charles M. Schulz, Schulz and Peanuts, David Michaelis describes Charlie Brown as not an alter ego of Schulz, but Schulz himself. Most of the Peanuts characters were in fact manifestations of people whom the cartoonist knew, funneled through his brilliant minds' - eye,  like the Little Red Haired Girl, the one that got away, and Snoopy, based on an actual childhood pet. 

But as accurately as he rendered these relationships, Charlie Brown was the most realistic of all. the eternal optimist, always bracing for failure. Like his creator eventually would, you knew somehow, some way he'd succeed. He would kick that football, he would eventually untangle that kite from the tree.  

That's why he was the kind of guy you called by his full name.  So you wouldn't forget it.

JACK "KING" KIRBY!

The only person The Leopard can think of whose name should always be written in caps is the brilliant cartoonist JACK "KING" KIRBY,  creator and co-creator of some of the greatest characters ever conceived.  From his drawing board, the soft spoken Kirby dreamt up massive worlds of gods and monsters with such intense proliferation that they literally burst from the comic book pages. Captain America, Fantastic Four, Spider-man, The X-Men, The Hulk, Iron Man, Black Panther, Thor, The Avengers, Kamandi, Mr. Miracle - the list is truly endless. 

There would be no Marvel Comics without Jack.  Unlike his extroverted one-time colleague Stan Lee, Kirby at first never sought recognition. He saw himself as a working stiff doing his job. But as the characters he had a hand in creating grew more and more popular and others were becoming millionaires as a result, Kirby finally began to more fully appreciate his own phenomenal gifts.
Alas, too late.

But those in the know are aware of the true genius behind all those incredible characters: KING KIRBY.

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.