I've already done one WONDER WOMAN entry, but just as deserving of coverage is one of the few other costumed heroines (not counting jungle girls) to have enjoyed a long success in a starring feature: THE BLACK CAT.
I didn't grow up reading these, and the source of their long-running appeal has always been a bit of a mystery to me. There's some cheesecake appeal, but a lot of other books offered more. The stories are enjoyably light and breezy; the art is pleasant but workmanlike, not even as good as 40s Infantino, much less Simon and Kirby.
It's possible that judo-training sessions like the one seen here had something to do with the Cat's long-lived popularity. Not that many superhero books, no matter what gender their protagonist was, featured these little "how-to" tips (which incidentally earned the book some of the Wrath of Wertham). Possibly Harvey Comics lucked onto a sales-making gimmick here that other publishers just didn't want to bother with, as most of them preferred to use heroines as back-up features in multi-character anthologies.)
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