Here’s a puzzler…Who has the most disproportionate head on this cover? – Adventures of the Jaguar #12

I didn’t even know that there was such a character as Jaguar, though I was aware that the Archie line of comics had its own superheroes. For those of you equally ignorant of our feline-themed hero, he’s a fella named Ralph Hardy who, when he puts on a magic belt, becomes super-strong, can fly, and can communicate with the animal kingdom. All handy talents in a pinch.

There are two Jaguar stories in this issue (the first is split into two parts), and both are scripted by Robert Bernstein with art from John Rosenberger. The first one (“The Girl who Knew too Much” and “The Jaguar versus the Mind Monster”) meanders a bit before it gets to the deformed freak on the cover. We open with Hardy — a Tony Stark-ish looking gent — working in his lab with his assistant Jill Ross, who secretly knows his identity. He soon has to make an exit to help combat a local blaze, and his absence gives Miss Ross a chance to fantasize about her boss:

I don’t want to sound callous, but perhaps the best way to deal with a fire in a stockyard would be to bring a giant bucket of BBQ sauce. Just saying.

Jaguar uses his amped up animal powers to put things right. I like a lot of the art in this book, and the action in this scene is a good showcase — it has a very clean style that gives each panel room to breathe:

The problems are quickly solved and Jaggy returns to his lab, only to learn that Jill knows his secret:

Fret not, dear readers, because at the outset of the next chapter Hardy uses his experimental “memory ray” to make her forget all about his identity. The bad news comes later, when a low-rent thief breaks into the lab and accidentally triggers the ray, becoming the ultra-smart troll from the cover:

The thief quickly uses his new mental gifts for evil, stealing enough to secure his future (forget the Roth IRAs), and then he wants Hardy to turn him back into a regular guy. It’s hard to get dates looking like that, I suppose, even with hypnosis and oodles of money:

Hardy quickly belts the thief when he returns to normal and the day is saved. Some super-genius that clown was.

The second tale, “The Giant Jaguar Greeting Cards,” is short and sweet. Some — you guessed it — giant greeting cards with Jaguar on them are unveiled:

It turns out that they’re all part of a plot by vengeful aliens to kill Jaguar, and they apparently do their job when he shows up and gets squashed in between them. Then he shows up alive and well and explains how he got wise to the aliens’ ruse and tricked them:

There’s something so spectacularly uncalled for in that “unhappy New Year” message — it’s overkill that made me laugh out loud when I saw it. It’s a final “screw you” to these aliens — I guess it was either that or have him take a leak on their spaceship.

While the stories here were nothing terribly original, I very much liked the art. As I said above, it had a cleanliness to it that I appreciated, and it gave a spacious feel to the entire effort. It’s enough to make me forgive Jaguar’s outsized head on the cover (I mean, just look at that huge melon), and more importantly the art’s sufficient to make me want to come back to the Jaguar-universe (Jaguariverse?) for more.

As an aside, Jaguar reminds me of a movie that was mocked with great fanfare on the classic show Mystery Science Theater 3000 (I’m a big fan). In one episode they riffed on a flick called Puma Man, and this Puma Man guy also got his powers from a South American belt. The belt and the big cat moniker don’t amount to a huge similarity, but bringing it up allows me to post this: