Cat Claw

Cat Claw

So this might sound familiar. A meek, shy student is bitten by an escaped lab animal and is given strange powers as a result; radiation is involved. Once these strange new powers have revealed themselves to her, she decides to become a superhero. Wait, “she“? Yes, because this is Bane Kerac’s Cat Claw, not Lee/Ditko’s Spider-Man. Not that the similarities in their origins are coincidence; Kerac was inspired by Spider-Man when he created Cat Claw for a Yugoslavian comics zine in the mid-eighties. Where they differ is that Carol Connor was much more likely than Peter Parker to lose her already skimpy costume.

Popular enough in her home country to get a television special dedicated to her and her creator in 1991, Cat Claw was also exported to various other European countries including Holland, as well as reprinted in a nine issue series by Aircel/Malibu comics in the US. To be honest, her adventures, or at least the ones I’ve read, are all pulpy nonsense, but Kerac has a sense of humour and that makes up for a lot. The mini movie from that tv special, excerpted below, meanwhile is very eighties, but does get across the spirit of the comics well.