The University of Kentucky Wildcat’s Superhero: SUPERCAT is Anything But

Cover to SuperCat #1

SuperCat #1 from Collegiate Collection Comics features the origin story of how Ken Purrkins, a student at UK is turned into SuperCat by a Lime-Stone Laser Device (or L.L.D) and how he must protect his mentor Professor Cotton from the evil Lord Hoot.

That synopsis is not from a sixth grade short story by Little Timmy in Mrs Clontz’s class, but the synopsis of an actual published comic book from 1989.

As one might be assuming, I really don’t have much positivity to give to this. I paid $1.00 for this book (50 cents off the cover price!) when I found it in a Peddler’s Mall, and would take it back if I could. This “Premier Collectors Edition” came bagged with a UK visor, and 4 “Kentucky’s Finest UK basketball cards from Collegiate Collection. (This book came with Jerry Hale, Charles Ishmael, Frank Ramsey, and Cliff Hagan)

A couple of highlights from this gem:

All the men featured in this book, except for Professor Cotton, have creepy porno mustaches
NO ONE thinks its weird that this guy randomly gets turned into a bipedal Wildcat, and after running “extensive tests” have only concluded that being subjected to the L.L.D. caused Perrkins’ metabolism to increase by 10 times. (which game him strength, etc)
SuperCat wears a mask!! (So that you don’t recognize him from all the other bipedal wildcats that are “six foot four inches of bulging muscles”)
The rest of SuperCat’s costume is just a blue Karate uniform.
They spell Harlan wrong! (They spell it Harlen. It’s a book based in Kentucky, get at least get the damn town names right!)

The art itself……well is probably about what you’d expect. The book ends in a cliffhanger, but also includes two backup stories. The first story features SuperCat helping out the UK Cheerleaders in a competition, and includes a cameo by the LSU Tiger cheerleaders, and the second story SuperCat helps a boy with a leg brace get to play basketball with a group of boys, and features the UK “Wheelcats” practicing at the Seaton Center.

I’ll admit, I grabbed this purely because it was related to the University of Kentucky Wildcats, and I’m guessing most people that grabbed it when it was originally published did too. There is an advertisement for future issues, and like I mentioned, the main story ends on a cliffhanger, but I have been unable to find any information on any additional issues of SuperCat being published. Honestly, I was barely able to find any mention of this book at all online.

I wish I could say something positive about this, but I can’t. The art is awful, the writing is awful, the cheap visor that came with the book doesn’t even fit my head. There is nothing positive I can pull from this, beyond the fact that it is UK related, and even then, this is like a pimple on the chiseled body that is UK collectables.