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The Black Cat Created by Alfred Harvey and Al Gabriele

Artwork By LEE ELIAS

Game Design By STEVE MILLER

Editing By

L.L. HUNDAL & STEVE MILLER

CONTENT

Credits/Table of Contents/Legal Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii Black Cat Shows You How To Do Judo Tricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Black Cat Stars in “Surprise Appearance” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Black Cat Shows You How To Do Judo Tricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 OpenD6 Judo Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Black Cat Shows You How To Do Judo Tricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 ROLF!: Something About Judo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Open Game License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

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Black Cat Shows You How To Do Judo Tricks was published by NUELOW Games in July of 2013. Copyright ©2013 Steve Miller. All Rights Reserved. NUELOW Games and Film Fun Comics are trademarks of Steve Miller.

This is a work of fiction. All resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental. Questions and inquiries may be sent to stevemillermail@gmail.com.

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Foreword

One of the reasons the original Black Cat from Harvey Comics appeals to me is the straightforward, pure action-adventure nature of the series. Where many other of her 1941 Golden Age classmates invariably end up fighting this or that supernatural or superpowered menace—or was steeped in that sort of stuff from the beginning, like Wonder Woman—Black Cat stayed logical and internally consistent from beginning to end. Her swan song, in Black Cat #28, saw a little wavering in this consistency. An attempt was made to recast Black Cat as a female Batman, complete with a boy sidekick who was an orphaned circus performer, and she faced the most comic-booky villains of her career. The revamp attempt didn’t take, and Black Cat vanished from her own title in 1951, replaced by generic horror shorts. A revival and update attempt was made during the Bad Girl crazy of the 1990s, with a Hollywood stunt-player prompted by the ghost of Linda Turner to take up the mantle of Black Cat; this effort fared no better than the re-vamp in 1951. (NUELOW Games has done its own “re-vamp” of Black Cat, as seen in Film Fun Comics and ROLF!: Bat Meets Cat, but we’ve stayed absolutely loyal to the character’s well-planted realistic roots. The NUELOW Games Black Cat is more in the vein of the Phantom than Batman… the role is a family affair that’s been passed on from generation to generation since the 1600s.) Now when I say “realistic.” I mean that within an action-adventure context; Black Cat occasionally does things that would get her killed or severely maimed if real-world physics applied—such as launching herself from a crashing motorbike into a target who is on foot. But her methods and skill-levels remain consistent from issue to issue, and the way she is drawn, from her later Speed Comics appearances through the end, likewise. The air of realism that the consistency gave to the series can be credited to Jill Elgin, Joe Kubert, and, primarily, Lee Elias. Elias drew all Black Cat stories (and related shorts starring Linda Turner or Rick Horne), and starting with “Banker’s Holiday” in Black Cat #2, and he brought a touch to the series that made it even more grounded and realistic. In that story, on top of page 6, Black Cat performs a judo hold that would be recognizable to the initiated even if the caption didn’t tell us what it is. Increasingly, Elias would draw the series in such a way that Black Cat moved away from throwing punches and performing generic flying kicks like most superheroes, but was instead using judo moves with the sort of precision that was fitting for the black belt rank in juijitsu and judo that were attributed to her. For those who have practiced judo, it adds an additional level of fun to reading the comics, and for everyone else, it just makes it feel more real, because Black Cat has a set style about her. In an interview published in 1946, Lee Elias stated that all judo moves performed by the Black Cat were depicted accurately, and that he typically modeled them himself by using a mirror while sketching. And that brings us to “Black Cat Shows You How To Do Judo Tricks.” Starting with Black Cat #7, Elias drew an irregular series of one- or two-page “lessons” where the Black Cat showed readers how to perform judo (or, I suppose, more accurately juijitsu) “trick.” Whether conceived as a way for Elias to get mileage out of sketches and model sheets he’d drawn, or as a separate feature from scratch, will probably never be known, but they make for fun reading, and they help lend realism to the Black Cat stories, as the moves she “teaches” on the filler pages are the same ones she uses to subdue bad guys in the comics stories. About NUELOW Games’s Black Cat Shows You How To Do Judo Tricks When I first mentioned that I thought we should but together a book containing the best of Lee Elias’s Black Cat Shows You How To Do Judo Tricks, NUELOW Games’s editor (and ROLF! co-creator L.L. Hundal) thought it was a bad idea. “Some idiot is going to read it and break his little brother’s arms doing the throws,” she said. “And then we’re all going to get sued.”

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It’s entirely possible that she’s right. When the pages originally appeared—individually or in pairs in 1947 through 1950—it was disclaimed repeatedly that the “tricks” should be practiced with great caution, because of the risk of injuring your partner. And that disclaimer is true. Now, even though the cynic in me thinks that people in general have only gotten stupider since 1950—after all, we now have to be warned that coffee is hot—I also believe that readers of this book will be among the smartest there are, because many of you will be reading it because of the role-playing game rules included. Especially those of you who are here because of the material for ROLF!: The Rollplaying Game of Big Dumb Fighters. All of you know that you don’t really stab people with swords or shoot them with pistols, just because you read about characters doing it in a book, even if there are diagrams showing you how to stab someone. You are smart enough to know the difference between imagination and reality. Still, I don’t want to get myself, NUELOW Games, or Onebookshelf.com sued, so here’s something to read and take to heart:

That’s what “Black Cat” told the readers in 1947, but I will go a step further. Practicing judo and jiu-jitsu is not performing “tricks.” It’s a serious sport and martial art, and you can injure yourself and others if you don’t do it right. If reading Black Cat Shows You How To Do Judo Tricks inspires an interest in learning more about judo, please look into taking lessons from an instructor at a community center, reputable judo club or martial arts studio. Judo is a great sport, even if you’ll never be able to come close to Black Cat’s level of proficiency. Because she’s not real—she’s a comic book character. With that out of the way, I hope you enjoy the “lessons” by Black Cat and find the roleplaying game material useful at your gaming table. We love hearing feedback, so please leave a rating where you acquired this book, or drop me a line at the email listed in the indicia. Steve Miller, June 2013

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Black Cat Shows You How To Do Judo Tricks by Elias & Miller – 1

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– Black Cat Shows You How To Do Judo Tricks by Elias & Miller 2

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Black Cat Shows You How To Do Judo Tricks by Elias & Miller – 3

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– Black Cat Shows You How To Do Judo Tricks by Elias & Miller 4

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