Barton Stone, The Cat-Man, was created by Tarpé Mills, pseudonym for June Mills one of the first of the major female comic strip creators, best known for her heroine Miss Fury. The Cat-Man only appeared in two stories in issues 5 and 8 of Amazing Man Comics in 1939. In the first story he’s just been released from twenty years in prison for a crime that for a change in comics he in fact did commit, however he committed the robbery with three other man who went free while he took the fall, on getting out he finds that those three other men have become wealthy and prominent, and while they say they will give him his cut, he is having none of it and swears vengeance against them because they let his wife die in poverty while he was in stir.
He does this by disappearing and then returning a year later disguised as an old lady who uses a cat with poisoned claws to kill the three who got away.
In his second story the original Cat-Man helps a woman who has had a fortune stolen from her by a gang of thugs. He helps her by once again putting on the old lady get-up and putting poison on his cat’s claws. He also beats the crap out of a few of them just to show he’s not a one trick pony… however the cat does get into the fight and does most of the real damage and by the end of the story the woman has her money back, and all the thugs are dead.
This however is the last adventure of comic’s second cross-dressing crime smasher after Madame Fatal, and the only one who also happened to be a serial killer.
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