Pizzazz (IDW)

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## Characteristics

### Born

♏ November 13th, 1991
Age 24

### Instruments

* Lead vocals
* Guitar

## Family

* Harvey Gabor (father)
* Unnamed mother
* Madmartigan (pet cat)

## Personal Status

### Affiliation

* The Misfits
* Misfits Music

## Portrayals

### Cartoon

* Patricia Alice Albrecht (speaking)
* Ellen Bernfeld (singing)

### Live Action

Kesha

***Pizzazz***, real name **Phyllis Gabor**, is one of the main antagonists of IDW Publishing's *Jem and The Holograms*. She is the front woman of her band The Misfits.

## History

### Early Life

Pizzazz was born Phyllis Gabor. As a child, Pizzazz was entered into beauty pageants, where she sang country songs exclusively, something she finds embarrassing enough to be a deep secret of hers.

Growing up, despite her family being materially rich and receiving every item she wanted, Pizzazz was emotionally neglected by her parents, who instead threw money at her instead of giving her their full attention or affection. This was to such an extreme that when her father Harvey Gabor and her mother were getting a divorce in Pizzazz's teenage years, neither of them showed up her custody hearing (*Our Songs Are Better, Part One*). She was raised to be culturally Jewish, but it isn't known if she was raised religiously (*Holiday Special*).

Around three years before meeting Jem and The Holograms, she scouted local musical talent, eventually hand-picking three musicians Stormer, Roxy, and Jetta to join her newly formed band: The Misfits, as well as picking up the groupie/roadie Clash (*Our Songs Are Better, Part One*).

At some point, she adopted a female pet Siamese cat she named Madmartigan.

### Rivalry with The Holograms

After a public appearance on Lin-Z's show, where The Misfits performed their latest song and promote the upcoming *The Misfits VS! Festival*, Pizzazz went back to the green room in order to look over the competition entries. She became annoyed with the poor-quality of all the entries, until she saw the last-minute Jem and The Holograms entry where the wildly popular video had grown to the point The Holograms were in the list of contest finalists. Pizzazz became jealous and swore to defeat them during the competition. She became so angry, she threw the reporter Rio (*Showtime, Part Two*) and her own bandmates out of the greenroom (*Rio Pacheco, Boy Reporter*) when they praised The Holograms's music video.

Her jealously continued to grow as she considered her own bandmate Stormer a traitor for having coffee with Kimber, and became enraged when she learned The Holograms were playing a "star-studded celebrity" charity event hosted by The Starlight Foundation to the point of smashing a guitar (*Showtime, Part Three*) and even screaming in rage when The Holograms were even mentioned (*Showtime, Part Four*).

Days later, Pizzazz learned the news that one of The Holograms, Aja, was injured when a lighting rig fell on her, she became furious that the accident gave the band even more publicity ahead of the competition (*Showtime, Part Four*).

On the day of the competition, Pizazz attempted to seek out Jem specifically, blatantly ignoring The Holograms and their manager Jerrica Benton. They were interrupted when Kimber accused Clash of orchestrating the accident that hurt Aja, and by extension Pizzazz and her band. Pizzazz became furious at the notion, and retaliated back when Kimber started a public food fight (*Showtime, Part Five*). Despite the accusation, Pizzazz still asked the board of 5x5 Records The Holograms not be disqualified from the competition because she wanted to beat them herself, however she was rejected (*Showtime, Part Six*).

At the competition, The Misfits played a full set to make up for fact that they only had two finalists to compete against, but ended up having their crowd drawn away by The Holograms performing outside the venue, much to Pizzazz's fury, and she declared war on The Holograms (*Showtime, Part Six*).

Due to their constant problems and trouble-making, Elise Harcourt foricably assigned them a new manager: Eric Raymond in an attempt to keep them under control. However Eric's goal of destroying The Holograms was something Pizzazz agreed to happily and welcomed him (*Viral!, Part Two*).

As a result, The Misfits decided to crash The Holograms's Halloween party. When she was attempting to find dirt on Jem, Pizzazz learned that The Holograms would be opening for the Misfits on their upcoming West Coast Tour and stormed out of the party, leaving her bandmates behind. As she drove, she received a call from her angry bandmates and went to answer it, which distracted her just long enough to flip off of a cliff to the side of the road and crash (*Viral!, Part Three*).

### Injury

The crash left Pizzazz with a fractured larynx (*Rio Pacheco, Boy Reporter*), and The Misfits were unable to convince Elise to reschedule their tour. She fell into a deep depression after she learned The Misfits found a temporary replacement vocalist in Blaze and left to go on tour without her (*Dark Jem, Part Two*).

Pizzazz kept to herself at home as she recovered, feeling very miserable and lonely, even attempted to call her father for comfort only to be ignored by him. She ultimately decided she had to do something about it, and caught up with the tour just in time to team up with The Holograms in order to stop Silica and return everyone to normal (*Dark Jem, Part Six*).

### Blacklisted

After the tour was cut short, Pizzazz with her band attempted to adjust to having a new member of the band, Blaze, after she took over as front woman again with difficulty. She rebuffed Eric when he suggested to remove Blaze from the band, and said they needed more time, which Eric noted Elise wasn't willing to give. An ultimatum was given: the band had 48 hours to either sound like they originally did, or figure out how to sound like a new and improved version (*Enter The Stingers, Part One*).

Later Pizzazz, upset that Elise kicked The Misfits from the studio when they needed time to practice, overheard Elise and Riot discussing The Stingers's terms for signing with 5x5 Records, which included dropping The Misfits from the label, something Elise agreed to (*Enter The Stingers, Part One*).

Pizzazz took the news personally and took it upon herself to sabotage Jem and The Holograms, the group she blamed for getting dropped since Jem was dating Riot at the time, and recruited her friend The Fox to infiltrate Jem and the Holograms as their new drummer and try to find some dirt on them when Shana was on her internship in Milan (*Enter The Stingers, Part Two*).

She took it a step further and actively attempted to sabotage The Holograms's performance at the 5x5's Masquerade Ball, but this resulted in a massive fire to which Pizzazz escaped with her band (*Enter The Stingers, Part Five*).

After 5x5 revealed how much trouble they'd had with The Misfits, no other label wanted to sign them. Despite Eric's best efforts, The Misfits had exactly two options at that point: agree to be on a reality television show, or perform on a cruise line. Pizzazz chose the reality show (*Our Songs Are Better, Part One*).

### The Misfits Get Real

As per the reality show's agreement, all of the other Misfits moved into Pizzazz's home temporarily, for the duration of the show. As expected, there were numerous conflicts in their daily lives, beginning immediately after everyone began moving in (*Our Songs Are Better, Part One*).

Stormer initially refused to sign the filming contracts, until she and Pizzazz discussed her misgivings. Pizzazz didn't understand what the problem was until Stormer explained further. Ultimately, they decided it would be Stormer's choice whether she wanted to go through with the reality show or not. With Pizzazz's support, Stormer signed the contracts (*Our Songs Are Better, Part Two*).

Blaze formed a secret side band and kept ducking out of band practice as soon as it ended in order to go practice with The Lunas, to the point where the Misfits noticed her strange behavior. She initially hadn't wanted to tell Pizzazz about the band out of fear for her getting angry, but realized that her dream was to be the lead in a band and that she might have to quit the Misfits in order to fulfill this dream. Pizzazz reassured her that being in more than one band was perfectly fine and that she didn't have to leave The Misfits (*Our Songs Are Better, Part Three*).

Pizzazz and Roxy butted heads over seemingly insignificant things such as where they'd moved Roxy's bagels (*Our Songs Are Better, Part Four*), the reason for which wasn't revealed until after Jetta confessed to the cameras that she wasn't really British. After Jetta shared her life story with The Misfits, they questioned why she decided to reveal her secret on the show when the producers hadn't suspected a thing. Roxy promptly told the band that it was to keep the cameras away from her, because the film crew had been dangerously close to discovering her illiteracy, something that only Jetta had known about until that moment (*Our Songs Are Better, Part Five*).

Once the series had finished filming, The Misfits were much closer. The show was a hit and the Misfits were launched back into the public eye with brand new music, produced by none other than their new label: **Misfits Music** (*Our Songs Are Better, Part Five*).

### A Parallel World

When Jem and The Holograms were approached by a Techrat from another universe and brought through a strange portal, The Misfits followed -- and found themselves in an alternate universe (*Infinite, Part One*). The alternate world was ruled by a company named JemCorp, much to Pizzazz's disgust, and instantly she with her band escaped beyond walls to find their alternate selves (*Infinite, Part Two*).

Pizzazz soon discovered from the alternate world's Kimber and Stormer that the alternate's world Pizzazz discovered the truth about Synergy and her holograms, and revealed it to the world out of revenge and jealousy in order to ruin the rival band. But this plan backfired and resulted in the government seizing Synergy's technology to use for their own gain. The alternate's world's Misfits were murdered for speaking out against the use of Synergy's holographic technology and promptly erased from history (*Infinite, Part Four*).

After the malicious people got their hands on the technology, JemCorp was formed to regulate access to hologram tech and soon began pushing Jem and the Holograms more and more into the public eye, elevating them to an almost god-like status. Pizzazz was made to swear she'd never reveal Synergy in her own world, much to her annoyance (*Infinite, Part Four*).

Later, The Misfits and the Holograms reunited back inside the city, and worked together to disrupt the Holograms' concert to show everyone the truth about JemCorp's manipulation (*Infinite, Part Five*).

## Cartoon Continuity

Pizzazz's IDW design has been updated from her cartoon incarnation. In the original cartoon, Pizzazz was voiced by Patricia Alice Albrecht and first appeared in the 1985 episode *The Beginning*.

Pizzazz was much more antagonistic in the cartoon, where she was obsessively determined to sabotage Jem and The Holograms. Many of her sabotage attempts ended in near disaster. This was toned down in the comic, although she was not above still attempting to sabotage their events (*Enter The Stingers, Part Five*). She's still determined to bring down Jem and The Holograms in the comic, but she also recognizes when it's time to agree to temporarily set aside that rivalry (*Dark Jem, Part Six*), (*Infinite, Part Five*).

Unlike the cartoon, The Misfits were already an established band well before the series began, with Jetta being apart of them from inception, as opposed to being added later to the already formed band (*Our Songs Are Better, Part One*).

## Personality

Pizzazz has a very rude and abrasive personality and becomes easily jealous - particularly when Jem is involved. She has trouble showing any sort of weakness, and appears to be a bit of a perfectionist. She has a terrible temper and often argues even with her own band, but she shows them she cares about them in her own way. She's fairly professional, always keeping the best interests of the band in mind and trying to promote a good image for the band.

## Appeared in

* *Showtime, Part Two*

* *Showtime, Part Three*

* *Showtime, Part Four*

* *Showtime, Part Five*

* *Showtime, Part Six*

* *Outrageous Annual (2015)*

* *Holiday Special*

* *Valentine Special*

* *Viral!, Part One*

* *Viral!, Part Two*

* *Viral!, Part Three*

* *Rio Pacheco, Boy Reporter*

* *Dark Jem, Part One*

* *Dark Jem, Part Two*

* *Dark Jem, Part Three*

* *Dark Jem, Part Four*

* *Dark Jem, Part Five*

* *Dark Jem, Part Six*

* *Ch-Ch-Changes, Part One*

* *Ch-Ch-Changes, Part Two*

* *Enter The Stingers, Part One*

* *Enter The Stingers, Part Two*
* *Enter The Stingers, Part Three*

* *Enter The Stingers, Part Four*

* *Enter The Stingers, Part Five*

* *Outrageous Annual (2017)*

* *Our Songs Are Better, Part One*

* *Our Songs Are Better, Part Two*

* *Our Songs Are Better, Part Three*

* *Our Songs Are Better, Part Four*

* *Our Songs Are Better, Part Five*

* *Infinite, Part One*

* *Infinite, Part Two*

* *Infinite, Part Three*

* *Infinite, Part Four*

* *Infinite, Part Five*

* *Infinite, Part Six*

* *Jem: Dimensions #1*

* *Jem: Dimensions #2*

* *Jem: Dimensions #3*

* *Jem: Dimensions #4*

## References

1. ↑ **Tumblr:** IDW Jem Character Birthdays
2. ↑ **IDW Publishing:** Pizzazz's Character Bio
3. ↑ **Tumblr:** IDW Jem Races & Ethnicities

## Navigation

 Main Series
Jem: Dimensions: 01 • 02 • 03 • 04