PUSSYCAT

Pussycat is an agent of S.C.O.R.E.

That acronym stands for Secret Council Of Ruthless Extroverts. Now, why an organization out to defeat bad guys who are out to take over the world would decide the use of the word 'extroverts' was important enough to use in their title remains a mystery. Well, other than it helps make up the word 'SCORE' which for the men's adventure magazines in which the graphic adventures appears is a pretty important objective.

When we first meet this drop-dead gorgeous, extremely well-endowed alluring young woman, she is not yet an agent and is not looking to be one. She is a secretary at S.C.O.R.E. headquarters and doing everything she can think of to remain safe from the ogling eyes of male agents who seemed to have nothing better to do with their time than hang around the HQ she she works.

Her transformation from adminitrative assistant to a field agent comes when yet another female operative is uncovered and dispatched by the department's key opposition, L.U.S.T., and the powers that be fretted that they would never be able to vanquish their foes as L.U.S.T. knew the identities of all their secret agents. "If only we could find someone they'd never suspect! Someone totally innocent-looking."

And with that lament, all eyes went to the beautiful sexy but innocent looking Pussycat with her shoulder-length blonde hair and extremely form-fitting short skirt and tight blouse - okay, their eyes were already on her but now it was for yet another reason. "It would have to be a girl who doesn't seem like an agent. A girl who could take a man's mind off his job!"

"Pussycat", the Chief exclaims, "would you like to be engage in espionage?" She responds, "Engaged? That's even better than going steady!" During the requisite security check, he points out that "this job calls for someone too dumb to be frightened" at which time she worried that she could not give them her fingerprints because they were attached! And thus she was okayed for duty!

The bad guys we mentioned above that were the primary concern for S.C.O.R.E. is the Legion of Undesireable Sinister Types (thus the L.U.S.T.) which is not a bad name at all and would be used a few later by the good guys (well, gal) in another series. These fellows are all about the money and ways to make lots more but luckily for the good side, they are mostly all men and when going up against someone like Pussycat, other deadly sins start trumping greed.

Pussycat never really has to do anything spy-ish to get the job done; she just keeps being the wonderfully naive and sweet person she's always been and the bad guys (and the good guys as well) fall all over themselves to make her happy.

There are a ton of adventures for Pussycat to deal with over the few years her stories were recorded but only about the first fifth of them had the lovely lady working for S.C.O.R.E. Apparently L.U.S.T. gave in and Pussycat went on to other things. Most of those other things, we are told, had her being an investigative reporter. Luckily for the readers, that gave her ample opportunities to get into sticky situations where, gosh darn it, she keeps having those pesky wardrobe malfunctions!

If you start with the spy-fi concept and throw in gorgeous ladies with a tendency to lose vital pieces of apparel, well, you have the formula for grabbing my attention. Toss in "madcap" and you have sealed the deal.

This is true now and it was true back in 1965 when this series first started and it has been true in the 55+ years in between.

Unfortunately for my immature libido back then, I never saw this. I visited the newsstands almost daily so I would have like seen the titles of Male and Stag and later Men on the top row but I was 13 years old at the time and my gaze was directed to traditional comicbooks. But boy! I would have loved these!!

There is not a lot of real spying going on - okay, let me amend that to say spying on the enemy. Guys spying on Pussycat, oh yeah! Lots - and with awesome reason.

As for the quality of the stories and the coherence of the plotlines and the validity of the dialogue and the development of the characters - oh you are such a kidder!!!