MYTHCOMICS: "THE STORY OF ROSETTA" (CAT-MAN COMICS #27, 1945)

The reasons behind the Catman's second origin in 1945-- particularly since the character would cease American publication in issue #32 the following year-- will surely never be known. The opening caption claims that "many readers" have asked the publishers to relate Catman's origin. This seems dubious, as Golden Age superhero stories rarely made continued references to any character's origins, and the superhero genre itself seems to have been losing some steam even before the conclusion of World War Two, about four or five months after CATMAN #27 was published. However, issue 27 was the first Catman story drawn by artist Bob Fujitani, who also worked on most of the Catman tales until the feature's cancellation. Fujitani may or may not have been the writer, but the revised origin suggests that someone wanted to rethink the established backstory, perhaps not because of reader-demand but just for the sake of putting his own stamp on the series. Thus, as I've done in other analyses, I'll speak of Fujitani as the sole author, even though there's no way to know if he was or not.

The prose in the introductory caption is certainly a little more lurid than it had been in the Quinlan-dominated issues:

"The smoldering instinct of the feline lies buried in the hearts of the Catman and the Kitten-- and the savage, snarling ways of soft, silent, sleek creatures are theirs by a strange inheritance."

What "smoldering instinct" is the author talking about? Well, previous issues were variable about depicting the age of Catman's ward Katie, a.k.a. "the Kitten." When introduced in 1941, she does look like a slightly pudgy twelve-year-old, but she gets a little older-looking at times, particularly when she's in costume. Fujitani's version of Kitten in the above splash looks to be at least sixteen, and in the comic proper she's tall enough that her head comes even with Catman's shoulder. Is the "smoldering instinct" sexual maturation? Well-- yes, no, and maybe.

Fujitani's origin dispenses with the notion that Catman was raised by a mother tiger, as explained here, and he doesn't even keep a tiger in the story, replacing her with a mother leopard. To be sure, Fujitani doesn't dispense with everything from the Quinlan years, for CATMAN COMICS had initiated a light quasi-continuity between the Catman feature, an accompanying feature called "The Deacon and Mickey," and yet another feature, "The Little Leaders," a kid-gang whose members included both Mickey and the Kitten. Both Mickey and the Deacon make appearances in Fujitani's story, though only as characters whom Catman and Kitten can talk to. 

It's while speaking to the Deacon that David Merryweather relates his brand-new origin:

There are several points of interest here. David is not a complete orphan, though later he says that he has "no father." His mother Antoinette is alive, however, and she's a famous animal trainer, employed by a traveling circus. David's rapport with the animals is so akin to her own that he can go into the leopards' cage and play with the offspring of mother leopard Zeealia, as if David were one of them. However, as in the Tarzan origin, two mothers is one too many. Antoinette is slain in the leopard-cage, and an onlooker initially blames Tamara, the now-grown offspring of Zeealia. However, it's soon evident that Antoinette was fatally shot, though she lives long enough to tell young David that she was killed "by the bullet of a man who hated me, because of my animal act." 

But while David relates all these past experiences to the Deacon, Katie and Mickey go to the visiting circus-- where "the sleek young girl" begins to become, well, *stimulated* when the leopards are brought into the big top.

Fujitani probably had a pretty good idea as to just how much he could suggest any sexual matters in the pages of a kids' comic, for Katie recovers her senses when she notices the name on the leopard-cage: "Tamara." Katie gives no indication that she knows anything about David's story, but she feels as if the leopard is trying to communicate with her. Around the same time, David gets a sort of psychic impulse, and he and the Deacon seek out the circus. On the drive there, David reveals another story, the story of how he first met Katie, as an abandoned infant left in Tamara's leopard cage.

So in this telling, Katie, not David, is the infant who becomes linked to a feline creature, albeit only for a very short time. The infant also wears a tag that denotes her name as "Rosetta," but in contemporary conversation with Deacon, David says that he only started calling her "Katie" after she began her crimefighting career. The name "Rosetta" is a diminutive for the Italian "Rosa," which of course means "rose." Was Fujitani thinking of "rosy matters" because the rose is also a metaphor for feminine sexuality? It's impossible to say, but that's as far as the "rose grows" in this story.

David assumes the identity of Catman and goes prowling through the circus-grounds, while the Deacon goes looking for Mickey and Katie. Catman then finds an unnamed man who seems hostile toward him, standing in front of Tamara's cage. The stranger gives the impression of being an attendant, but Catman is skeptical. Not only does he notice that the man doesn't come near the leopard, Catman feels "as if I know who you are." Then, just as Deacon, Mickey and Katie come running up, Tamara seizes and mauls the unnamed fellow.

Then in the final page, the still unnamed man confesses that he was both the slayer of Catman's mother Antoinette and the person who put little Katie in Tamara's cage. It's loosely implied that Tamara witnessed the man shoot her trainer, and that the cat has waited all these years to get a chance to kill the murderer. At the same time, the killer's motive-- that he believed that "all jungle animals should be free"-- doesn't explain why he should place an infant, stolen from an orphanage, inside Tamara's cage. Clearly, this Dickensian birth-fantasy combines many potential symbolic correlations. Is the unnamed killer a "bad father" to both David and Katie, killing David's mother and abandoning Katie to be "raised" by an animal? Is Tamara, who becomes maternal toward little Katie, a reborn version of Antoinette, and if so, does that mean that Antoinette is able to avenge herself? Or is Catman himself enacting the act of vengeance, since he has a deep rapport with Tamara? Meanwhile, Katie also shares a rapport with the leopard, even though she was only in the animal's company for a few minutes. Is Katie stimulated by the presence of leopards because she remembers that brief contact? Or is it because she and her "uncle" David share that "smoldering instinct of the feline?" I don't think David and Katie ever share anything else, but maybe Fujitani let them have that "instinct" in common because he couldn't let them do anything else?

This revised origin, in conclusion, may not resonate as one of the classic origins of Golden Age characters. Still, it is one of the richest in terms of mythicity.