Find Your Ancestors: The Avengers girl
The Cathy Gale role was originally written for a male. When the makers decided to recast the role for a female the studio was too cheap to commission rewrites so Honor Blackman was given the first eight scripts as they were written, dialogue and fight scenes included. Thus the "Avengers girl" was born.
BRIAN CLEMENS: I didn't do Diana a very good service. It made her an international star but I think I could have done more for her as far as the script was concerned. She was rather a stooge to Patrick Macnee's Steed.
JULIE NEWMAR: This is what I get from people when they talk to me about the original Catwoman and compare it to the latter ones. I think people prefer the more humorous one, the lighter one. People seem to complain that the recent ones are too dark in spirit. But that's what reflects what's going on... It was a heck of a lot more fun when Adam West and I did it.
BOB RINGWOOD: We had to justify the catsuit. Where did the Selina character get it? Black, shiny fetish clothing can very easily slip into the sleaze/porn world and this, after all, was a film for family viewing.
Q: How much information did you have on the Catwoman issues before drawing the covers?
ADAM HUGHES: Sometimes I'll get one of Will Pfeiffer's scripts, and sometimes I'll get a synopsis because Will is still writing the script. And then sometimes I'll say, "Can I draw Selina in a pool?" And they'll say, okay.
ALAN MARTIN: During the mid-eighties I was in a band with the then unknown Philip Bond. One of our favourite songs was a track we had written called 'Rocket Girl.' I was studying at Worthing at this time, which is where we met up with Jamie Hewlett. He and Philip hit it off straight away. I was a little put off by Jamie's habit of drawing huge penises on any paper that he came across.
Jamie had drawn a grotty looking girl brandishing an unfeasible firearm. One of our friends was working on a project to design a pair of headphones and was basing his design on the type used by World War II tank driver. His studio was littered with loads of photocopies of combat vehicles. I pinched one of the images and gave it to Jamie who then stuck it behind his grotty girl illustrations and then added a logo which read 'Tank Girl'.
DR: Where you surprised at how popular she became?
AM: It didn't really come as a shock to us.
STIEG LARSSON: I considered Pippi Longstocking. What would she be like today? What would she be like as an adult? What would you call a person like that, a sociopath? Hyperactive? Wrong. She simply sees society in a different light. I'll make her 25 years old and an outcast. She has no friends and is deficient in social skills. That was my original thought.