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Wildcat (I). The Wildcat (I) was created by Hugh Wiley (Jim Sin, James Lee Wong) and appeared in thirty-two stories in Saturday Evening Post and Cosmopolitan from 1919 to 1934, beginning with “The Four Leaved Wildcat” (Saturday Evening Post, Mar. 8, 1919).

Vitus Marsden is a racist stereotype, a lazy “shuffling” African-American who speaks horrible English, calls himself “Wildcat,” cares nothing for work, and much prefers gambling as a way to earn his money to serious work. But when he is drafted into a construction brigade in the Army he finds a way to use his cleverness and laziness to help both himself and the Army and to hurt the Germans. He eventually wins the D.S.C. and the Croix de Guerre, although his ne’er-do-well ways often land him in trouble with officers.

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