Nightcat and Me—Tales From a Rooftop or Side Gig 2

Some comic fans with steel-trap memories will recall Jacqueline Tavarez. Many of those die-hards will recall this:

There’s this idea in the world of sales called “cross platform marketing.” You may know it; one set of audiences might like what is usually only sold to another.

The music world and the comic world seem like a natural match. Who among us don’t hum and sputter beat-box noises when we read our comics? It is a match and Ms. Tavarez’s management thinks so too.

The Special Projects fellow in 1990 was Bob Budiansky, pretty creative guy: penciler, writer and now a Senior Editor. He was tossed this hot potato and tried to mold it into cheesy fries! (I have come up with superior metaphors, but this time I’ll let that one be.)

I must reveal here and now that I never read the final product. I know, just out of sheer curiosity if nothing else—dialog by Stan Lee! I think I skimmed an office copy but the part where her dad turns up in one of those perfectly-insultingly stupid coincidences was what made me put the book down. In spite of that, I encourage everyone to go out and find one of these books.

In my mellow internet search, I found that always-interesting mag, BackIssue #95 has an interview with Ms. Tavarez and some of the principals from that project (celebrating Nightcat’s 25^th year… creeeeek…). I like BI and since Jackie and I shared an afternoon on a rooftop, I had to get my own copy!

Go get it! twomorrows.com And while you’re out there, yes you can listen to the single on YouTube! The promise of the internet writ large!

I have to rely on clues to figure out things. At this far removed point in time (2018) I can hardly recall anything. For example, I noted that there were at least 4 rolls of film shot that day.

Just one of those funny little coincidences… That prominent building to Jackie’s left is the McGraw-Hill Building! The first office of Timely Comics in the late 1930s.

Major techie-nerd digression here. Almost everybody these days has forgotten what a “roll” of film is. Used to be, cameras used plastic strips of film that were coated with light-sensitive material and placed in little, light-tight cartridges. Those were then carefully loaded and unloaded from those clunky cameras. Long strips of film were then chemically processed. The film I used, “Kodachrome,” was generally used by “professionals” in the fashion and print industry (I put those quotes around professional out of modesty—I know I’m not that good!). Interestingly, this “positive” type of film gave you a stamp-sized piece of film in a cardboard frame, that you could hold up to light and see a beautiful version of what you took pictures of. The colors are a faithful record of what you saw in front of the camera. Skin tones, bright colors even fluorescent colors could be captured. It was even very fine-grained film for super detail (“grain” is not quite right, the color dyes used in the final form of the process were molecular-sized clouds of color dye). Not that you’d notice that in these images! I shot them all “hand-held” a no-no in high end photography…

“Reversal,” “chrome,” “slide-film” and more rare, “positive film” are terms used to describe that sort of film. It was also beastly complicated to process but back in 1991, there were still plenty of places in NYC, still the publishing capital of the world.

[The recent death of Kodachrome is a sad sign of not just an era in color photography as well as the diminished vigor of Eastman Kodak — but a whole mystique of film. If you wanted the best chance at high resolution and faithful color rendition of whatever it was you were photographing, Kodachrome was the “it” film for generations. For example, Kodak had a ridiculous demonstration of the ability of film (often Kodachrome) to be enlarged. It was the Colorama display in Grand Central Terminal in NYC. An enormous, 20×60 foot image that was lit from behind—presaging today’s vast, modern outdoor LED displays of seemingly unlimited size (such as in Times Square or Tokyo). Tucked at one end of the Grand Concourse, every month it greeted and saluted farewell visitors from all over the continent from 1950 to 1990. I grew up around the corner from GCT and would purposely walk through the place to make sure to see what was new. Now… the Apple Store is in its place… sic transit gloria… ]

An-y-wa-yyyy… we were talking about Nightcat during a day shoot. I say I need “clues” because “Bring ‘em Back Alive” Budiansky never returned the balance of my slides of that day’s shoot. What I have are “discards.” Ones that I decided were bad or off a little, perhaps a poor composition or a lens flare that went too far. One trick of Kodachrome is that it needs a relatively “perfect” exposure that can be hard to achieve with outdoor light added with a flash unit. So one takes several shots, changing the amount of light for each shot.

The close inspection of Jackie’s rear quarter shows a little too much light. A bit “hot” as we say in the photo biz…

The ‘clue’ then was that I found several series of similar images but that had different frame numbers. I eventually arrived at a total of 4 rolls. All told, there were about 100 images but I only have 38 left. Even blurry, slightly soft or showing a matte box vignette… they’re still of Jackie!

This kid gave good face! I think having a gigantic headband ruined the fairly ideal proportions of her face. She was a “petite” model in her early career for a good reason. The giant back-scratcher weapon she carried was actually quite lethal and kept a certain photographer further away than his close-up lenses allowed… I came to learn that it was a certain young Mr. Jim Lee who designed that costume—apparently his first job with Marvel. Praise be to the people who made it—toiling in obscurity up to this day.

Don’t be fooled by the actinic blue sky! This was a 35-story rooftop in January. We were cold. Jackie was a trooper and put up with all my tedious re-shoots. A real sport. I have zoomed in— out of professional concern to be sure; there was a lot of skin to check – to see if goose bumps are in evidence. I can report: none!

I always get a pang when I see the World Trade Center in one of my images. One of those things we took for granted. This was 1991 before the 93 bombing and 9/11. Also, we are above the edge of Times Square, before they instituted that odd open-space mall walkway thingie or installed gigantic, building filling LED displays. Well ‘odd’ to me, dodging angry cab drivers and insane ordinary drivers through the world’s most difficult intersection was every New York kid’s entertainment. (Never mind 42^nd Street in those days… )

Thanks to the internet, one can read that this now-one-shot magazine did not sell well. The creative team was probably as good as these things could get. Jim Salicrup alone – one of Marvel’s unsung creative geniuses – was one of the more thoughtful “idea men” of that time. He was credited along with (Editor Mike Rockwits’) Assistant Editor Barry Dutter, as the character and plot creators. If you ever get a chance to see/find/turn up a copy of Dutter’s solo publishing effort, GAG! magazine, you should do yourself a favor and read it.

Any True Fan of Stan Lee’s work need only get this book to complete the woof and warp of that man’s career. It would not be the first time Stan wrote a female character’s dialog! Legendary Good- and Bad-Girl Artist—in this case, Penciler, Denys Cowan did that good-looking girl proud and Inkers’ Inker Jimmy Palmiotti finished the look. Comrades Janice Chiang and Greg Wright lettered/colored.

The story… well… I should not be the one to spoil anyone’s fun. Twists and turns galore—all about a young Latina singer trying to make it in the big city. With super-powers.

As for me… well, how many of us get to hang out on a rooftop with a living, breathing super-heroine?