Read more about Nightcat at: Wikipedia

Official Site: Marvel

Nightcat is a fictional multimedia character created by comic book company Marvel Comics in partnership with record label LeFrak-Moelis Records (LMR). The character was a fictionalised version of LMR artist Jacqueline "Jackie" Tavares, who functioned as the model for the comic character.

Marvel Comics had previously explored the possibility of creating a cross-promotional comic character-pop singer hybrid before, working with Casablanca Records on Dazzler. However, the musical component of the character had never been realised, and Dazzler had remained a comic-only property. In 1991 LeFrak-Moelis was a subsidiary of RCA Records, and had achieved chart success with Stevie B and Jaya, and were approached by talent manager Don Kessler to sign his latest discovery, Jacqueline Tavares. Born in the Dominican Republic before moving to America at a young age, Tavares had studied acting growing up in Queens before modelling with an agency called Judith Models. The exposure there led to her being signed by agent Charles Stein of Black Cat Entertainment, and she had been attempting to break into acting when she met Kessler. Through a chance encounter with Marvel publisher Stan Lee, Kessler had developed the idea for the Nightcat project.

The project was consolidated into a holding company called Night Cat Entertainment, with Lee on the advisory board and Tavares receiving a 10% share. With Stein putting up a reported $1m and LMR providing $500,000, organising the comic side of the operation fell to Bob Budiansky, Marvel's Head of Special Projects. In turn Budiansky assigned writing duties to Jim Salicrup, a veteran Marvel staffer who had experience with licensed titles such as The Transformers and The A-Team. Salicrup brought onboard protégé Barry Dutter to help write the project, and the pair devised most of the character and storyline over a business lunch with Budiansky; Dutter recalled the trio "decided to make it as much like Die Hard as possible.". At the time Lee was rarely working on comics, instead living on the West Coast to promote Marvel media projects; while he was officially credited as writing the script for the character's debut appearance and acted the role of writer/co-creator in media appearances, Dutter recalled his actual involvement in the comic as being minimal.

In line with Marvel's attempts to add recognisable names to the project Jim Lee was tasked with designing the character - something mentioned prominently in an article promoting the series in promotional title Marvel Age, which also saw the character 'duet' alongside Fred Hembeck in a humor strip. Similar reasoning saw Joe Jusko contribute a painted cover, which was used on both the comic and the album.

No Regular Play Records Available

No Fantasy Draft Records Available