Patsy Walker, a.k.a. Cat

Published in cooperation with The Electric Company television show, Spidey Super Stories followed a separate continuity from the rest of Marvel Comics. We see this difference in an issue that revealed a unique origin for the Cat (#53). Here, we learn that Patsy Walker had agreed to participate in a scientific experiment that exposed her to a special ray under laboratory conditions. Gaining superhuman strength as a result, Patsy became the costumed crimefighter Cat (with no ties to the character Tigra).

During her guest appearances in Spidey Super Stories, Cat demonstrated overall athleticism as opposed to super strength … even when facing the villain Meteor Man, who had gained superhuman strength from exposure to a meteor (#53).

Spidey Super Stories. Vol. 1. No. 53. July 1981. "The Meteor Man." Steven Grant (writer), Winslow Mortimer (penciler), Esposito & Villamonte (inkers), Raymond Holloway (letterer), George Roussos (colorist), Anita Malnig / Caroline Barnes (editors), Jim Shooter / Jim Salicrup (Marvel consultants), Bob Budiansky (art director).

Within Marvel Comics' standard continuity, Spider-Man and Nighthawk battled Meteor Man in Marvel Team-Up #33 (May 1975). The villain called himself Looter when he later appeared in Defenders #63-64.

The Pretender-Defenders

Frog-Man may have been the only hero ever to get turned down by the Defenders. The problem was he showed up too late.

While Beast was on the lecture circuit, discussing the ins and outs of superheroics (Defenders #131), he and teammates Iceman and Angel faced the barely-super crook named Walrus.

The teenage hero known as Frog-Man joined the experienced trio during the fight and asked to become a Defender. For a time, that was about all it took to join. But the group's membership had largely solidified in #125, and the three New Defenders rejected the struggling young hero without even consulting the rest of the team.

At the end of the battle, Frog-Man's father (the reformed villain known as Leap-Frog) showed up to scold him for taking the frog-suit without permission.

Here's the kicker (which was not acknowledged in that issue): Leap-Frog was one of the numerous criminals who once pretended to be Defenders, hoping that their claims to heroism would protect them from arrest while committing crimes.

Several of the villainous Defenders for a Day had fought the Defenders before: Libra and Sagittarius (of the Zodiac), Plantman, Porcupine, and the Blob (fully recovered after he and other members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants reverted to infancy in Defenders #16).

Other villains posing as Defenders that day were Batroc the Leaper, Beetle, Boomerang, Electro, Joe the Gorilla, Looter, Melter, Pecos, Shocker, Toad, and Whirlwind (#63-64), until a group of real Defenders stopped them.

The scene of supervillains comes from Defenders #63. The above image of Frog-Man first appeared in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.