Jenny And The Cat Club

Esther Averill’s stories about Jenny Linsky and The Cat Club was an early obsession of mine!

   The introduction to the series started innocently enough… Like most kids growing up in the 70's,one of the first books I read was THE FIRE CAT, Esther Averill’s contribution to the “I-Can-Read-Book” series. This story featured one of the major supporting members of Jenny’s cat Club environment: Pickles the Cat, and you can even see Jenny with her brothers sitting in a fire truck with Pickles at the Fire Station!

  Then I also read JENNY’S BIRTHDAY BOOK, another easy to read story, this time finally featuring Jenny Linsky herself!! This was more like a picture book than a storybook proper, but I loved it nonetheless! My interest in the Jenny series was properly rooted! I moved on to the books that were a bit wordier, books like JENNY GOES TO SEA and JENNY’S MOONLIGHT ADVENTURE! I particularly liked the latter, because it was a "Halloween" story, and Esther Averill's style of illustrations perfectly suited the holiday.

  I remember they had just released THE CAT CLUB, JENNY’S FIRST PARTY, WHEN JENNY LOST HER SCARF, JENNY’S ADOPTED BROTHERS and HOW THE BROTHERS JOINED THE CAT CLUB in a collection called JENNY AND THE CAT CLUB, and this was like MY FAVORITE BOOK! I was fascinated to read about how Jenny joined the Cat Club and how she aquired her two brothers Edward and Checkers! I was able to buy this wonderful book at out school book fair, and it was a HAPPY DAY for me! I'd take this book to school with me EVERY DAY to re-read during recess, I loved it so much.!

I also discovered THE HOTEL CAT, which was a longer, in-depth story about the Cat Club! Having read only the shorter stories of Esther Averill, i was thrilled to read a real chapter book featuring the Cat Club! In this story various members of the Cat Club have to stay at a nearby hotel because of a burst furnace, where they meet a new cat who acts as bellhop to the feline residents of the hotel. I remember constantly borrowing the book from my elementary school library,desperately wishing I could KEEP the book! Actually, that went for ALL the Jenny books I could only borrow, and I was SO grateful that I owned a paperback copy of JENNY AND THE CAT CLUB!

Well, as I got older, the desire never fully went away, and so with the advent of EBAY, I began the long, hard, arduous task of collecting all things Jenny Linsky, and it was a challenge indeed. Besides being out of print, most of these books were very, very old…some editions like JENNY’S MOONLIGHT ADVENTURE  and The SCHOOL FOR CATS came out in the 1940’s! You can bet I spent a pretty penny on some of the titles here. But it was all worth it, and it’s not all nostalgia either…the stories are STILL so good to read, and there were several of them that I'd never even got a chance to read in my childhood!

One of them was the story "The School For Cats". This was the first appearance of Pickles the Cat who would later be re-invented for the 1960 Fire Cat Book. It was a shock to see his portrayal in this early stage of developement!

 In this story he is a bully cat at the school Jenny attends, until she gets through to him and they become friends.

  A running thread throughout the Jenny stories is this strong friendship the two have with each other, and it was nice to read the actual story where the two first met.

Another title I'd always seen listed in the Jenny books but never got my hands on as a child was CAPTAINS OF THE CITY STREETS. When I finally got it, I was blown away. CAPTAINS is an EXTREMELY well written book. A sort of prequel to The Jenny Linsky books, this story tells of the creation of the neighborhood Cat Club as seen through the eyes of the Club’s two tough street cats Sinbad and The Duke. You get to meet all the major characters for the very first time, and get to read about how each member joined. As most Jenny books circled around her and her brothers, It was fascinating to read a story that fleshed out the other characters as well as showing their interaction with each other! A VERY interesting read!

It’s a shame that the Esther Averill books aren’t better known among children nowadays. I AM happy to report that some of the titles were recently re-released, so at least kids out there have a chance to read them without shelling out $80 for a copy! Beautifully redesigned as a set, I think about eight of Jenny's titles are now available again! I hope this helps the Jenny books get back into school libraries for future generations of kids to enjoy!

In this day and age, we really need more stories like the Jenny Series!

Jenny Linsky Cat Club Titles

The Cat Club (1944)

The School For Cats  (1947)

Jenny’s First Party (1948)

Jenny’s Moonlight Adventure (1949)

When Jenny Lost Her Scarf (1951)

Jenny’s Adopted Brothers (1952)

How The Brothers Joined The Cat Club (1953)

Jenny’s Birthday Book  (1954)

Jenny Goes To Sea (1957)

Jenny’s Bedside Book (1959)

The Fire Cat (1960)

The Hotel Cat (1969)

Captains Of The City Streets (1972)

Jenny and The Cat Club (1973)

Super-Vixens: Dream Girl

So imagine there's this super-heroine whose powers are precognition. Then say that the futuristic visions come to this girl in her dreams. That would naturally set up a character whose comic scenes would ultimately be spent in her bed, wouldn't it? So you'd figure that a character like this couldn't work, because the writers would have to work her bedroom into each issue, as well as outfit the girl with her very own bed in headquarters, right?

Yet that's exactly what happened to beautiful Nura Nal, the clairvoyant young girl from the planet Naltor who became the resident precognitive of DC's Legion Of Super-Heroes. Yes, she spends most of her crime-fighting in bed. And yes, they've been known to feature Nura's bedroom in many issues. In fact, although she does have a body-suit for fighting action, her usual Legion outfit (designed by that master of gal costumes Dave Cockrum) consists of what amounts to more or less a suped-up negligee!

Obviously Nura's called Dream Girl because her powers are the ability to dream the future, but on a more practical note, she could just as easily be called Dream Girl because of her general HOTNESS! The very first time I read an issue of the Legion (it was issue #203) and saw her alerting her fellow members of an imminent attack in that nightie-costume, my mind went..."Whoa....Dream Girl!"

In later issues, she was "toughened up" a bit, and was more prone to butt-kicking than sleeping, but she still retained her gorgeous looks (not to mention that mole on her cheek shaped like a star), thus ensuring her legacy as the dreamiest Legionnaire no matter what her modus operandi!

First Appearance: Adventure Comics #317

Favorite Artists: Dave Cockrum, Mike Grell, Dan Jurgens

Super-Vixens: Wonder Girl

I’ve always kind of had a thing for Wonder Girl ever since seeing her in the old 25¢ “Teen Titans” comics with her in that famous red jumpsuit of hers. Back then I didn’t know too much about her, but something about her made me think (for a long time in my childhood) that she was Italian! I remember asking my friend Jas (who was a DC collector) what her “alter-ego’ name was, and he replied “Ummm… Donna Troy”.

Donna Troy! To this day it still sounds like hearing the name of that cute girl in your 5th grade class for the first time!

The Titans would get a lot more famous in the 80’s when they revamped the title with new characters, and while I did enjoy that run quite a bit, in the end, it was the 1970’s stories that I remembered and wanted, and I spent a pretty penny acquiring those back issues!

First Appearance: Hard To pinpoint.

You see, the Donna Troy Wonder Girl character was created by mistake. Some writer was creating a team comprised of DC hero sidekicks, and looking at a current issue of Wonder Woman, saw a “wonder girl”, and cast her in the group that was to become TEEN TITANS. What he didn’t realize was that the “wonder girl” in the WW comic was none other than Wonder Woman herself at a younger age, teamed up with her “older self" in one of those wacky early DC parallels.

In Teen Titans #22 they sought to establish the girl in the Titans strip as an individual character not to be confused with the "Young Wonder Woman", and gave her the name of DONNA TROY.

They created an origin for her as well (it was revealed that she was an orphaned girl rescued by Wonder Woman, adopted by the Amazons and given the same powers as Wonder Woman.) To celebrate giving her a proper origin, they went even further to separate her from the Wonder Woman strip by discarding the Wonder Woman-ish tights she had been wearing and giving her the red jumpsuit costume (wonderfully rendered by NICK CARDY) that I will always consider THE Wonder-Girl outfit!

Favorite Artists:

•Nick Cardy, the master! Teen Titans #22-43 (sporadically)

and

•George Perez, the only guy who properly drew Donna in a Bikini! (New Teen Titans run)

Super-Vixens: Storm

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Miss Ororo Monroe, one of my favorite characters ever, as I’ve blogged about on other forums incessantly. Smart, Sexy and Exotic, she also sports my favorite Super Heroine costume ever!

Originally created by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, Ororo blossomed into the gorgeous Goddess she would be known for when writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne took over the strip starting from Uncanny X-Men #108.

This seminal issue run would feature Ororo at her most fetching; strong and powerful in her element, but also young and naïve about life in the city and living with her fellow X-Men in domestic settings.

Ororo always looked great and was always an interesting character during Dave Cockrum’s reign, but it wasn’t until John Byrne came around that I was totally taken for a loop with Storm.

Under Byrne’s penciling, she became one of the hottest commodities comics had, with a tight curvy figure, billowy snowy white hair, and lush, exotic eyes. It was fascinating to watch her in costume OR in street clothing, both of which John Byrne had a fair for drawing. It became the main focus of these early issues to see what Storm would reveal to us next! Under Byrne’s eye, Ororo became HOT, HOT, HOT!

Someone at work once pointed out to me that it seemed to him that in almost EVERY issue of the Byrne/Claremont X-Men run, Ororo would be either

1) scantily clad 2)undressing or 3) nude.

Looking back over the run, I find this statement to be pretty accurate! He also added, “Not that I blame them…if it was up to ME, I’d have her in the same state of semi-undress, too!

First Appearance: Giant Size X-Men #1, Illustrator: Dave Cockrum

Favorite Artists:

•Dave Cockrum, Uncanny X-Men , epsecially the Juggernaut arc, which also featured Ororo's origin. (#101-103)

•John Byrne in Uncanny X-Men #108-141, Iron Fist #15, etc…. Personally, no one will ever match John Byrne’s rendition of Ororo! And BTW, expect to see Mr. Byrne listed here a LOT under "favorite Artists" for any particular heroine!