Jerry Siegel created Superman, then moved on to give us… Tiger Girl! Why haven’t you heard of her? Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of Tiger Girl #1 awaits!
TIGER GIRL #1
Writer: Jerry Siegel
Penciler: Jack Sparling
Inker: Jack Sparling
Colorist: Uncredited
Letterer: Uncredited
Editor: Uncredited
Publisher: Dell Comics/Western Publishing
Cover Price: 15 Cents
Current Near-Mint Pricing: $60.00
Release Date: June 27, 1968
Previously in Tiger Girl: Jerome Siegel was barely 21 when he began selling stories to National Allied Publications, one of the companies that became DC Comics. A couple of years later, he and partner Joe Shuster created Superman, the foundation for modern comic books, then sold the rights to Detective Comics for $130 dollars. (That’s about $2400 dollars worth of purchasing power as of 2021.) By 1946, though, he was less happy, suing DC Comics for unpaid royalties and the character of Superboy, a character who seemed to be based on a Siegel story that the company never purchased. Over the course of his lifetime, there were several such suits, finally resulting in modern DC Comics paying him and Shuster annually in return for… not suing them anymore? In between, though, Jerry continued writing comics, creating The Spectre, The Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, Brainiac 5, Bouncing Boy, Triplicate Girl, Phantom Girl, Invisible Kid, Chameleon Boy, and more. He also created Funnyman for Magazine Enterprises, foreseeing the end of the superhero trend, revived Archie/MLJ Comics’ heroes in the ’60s and even worked for Marvel Comics for a bit.
He also created Lily Taylor, sometimes called a human tigress, but best known as… TIGER GIRL!
The streets of Ralston City are the sudden location for a crime wave, as a man in an animal skin attacks the diamond district. Ripping his way into the van, he declares himself The Growler, and snags a big bag of gems for himself. He is suddenly attacked by an agent of W.A.A.V. (the War Against Arch-Villainy), but overcomes him easily. That’s when Tiger Girl leaps down from the shadows to put the smackdown on the would-be felon.
She’s so good at her job, you can almost forget that the bearhug isn’t really thematic for her big cat motif. Of course, the man she saved is Ed Savage, an unrepentant chauvinist who thinks she should be in a kitchen somewhere. Tiger Girl hates him, yet finds him somehow very attractive in a 1968 retrograde kinda way. Speaking of ’68 retrograde, Jack Sparling (creator of Claire Voyant and artist of the original Secret Six and Eclipso at DC) delivers perfectly serviceable art throughout the issue. It’s never flashy, but his Tiger Girl is always dynamic and the center of attention.
She’s also pretty smart, figuring out a couple of throwaway clues immediately. After The Growler’s failure, his handlers send a new operative, The Wolf Hound, to track down our human tigress. The villain creates a trap involving the endangerment of a young girl to ensnare her and her tiger companion Kitten, but she saves the child and tracks him to his location, the local TV station where they fight like cats and dogs…
I’m not proud of that joke.
On a live feed coast-to-coast, Tiger Girl nearly falls prey to Wolf Hound’s trap, and he frees a handful of snarling tigers to kill her. Of course, every good hero knows to fight fire with fire, so… Enter the Kitten!
The story is just as competent as Sparling’s art, with Siegel adding a few defining touches (like our hero’s staunch feminist philosophy and her inexplicable crush on Savage) to make it stand out a bit. The last panel warns us to watch for the next issue, but anybody who took that to heart has been looking for something like fifty-three years. Tiger Girl #1 stands out as weird, one of the many one-shot heroes that popped up in the wake of the superhero surge that gave us ’66 Batman and an army of anomalous folk like Bee-Man, Super Green Beret and The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, making a solid but not particularly memorable comic book and 2.5 out of 5 stars overall. It is interesting to see her predate Ms. Marvel as the proto-feminist superhero by nearly a decade, though.
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TIGER GIRL #1
This issue is an oddity, as Gold Key's superhero content is relatively sparse, but Siegel and Sparling make a pretty okay, if somewhat forgettable issue with a fun protagonist.
Plus: Pet tiger!
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Writing5
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Art5
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Coloring5
Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture! And a nice red uniform.
1 Comment
Ever since I was eight I wanted to be the growler I would make a trip to fantasy island and become him and be a part of a gang and pull off that jewelry heist.I wanted that physique and those legs in those tights and that upper body which I would use to crush tigergirl with all my male strength it even was a turn on to have me thrown into that cannon in the truck where I would succumb to the agents of w.a.a.v.e.My fantasy the bad guys win