Villain Profile: Cheetah

Sorry this one is a little later in the day. There was a family emergency yesterday that made it impossible to write at my usual time. Me and time management are still not on speaking terms. So, Cheetah.

Like with Lex, Supergirl, Batgirl, Mirror Master, Reverse-Flash, regular Flash, and so many other characters in comics, there is more than one Cheetah. For simplicities sake I will once again go with one of the more recent iterations of the character. In this particular case, the “modern” Cheetah is a woman named Barbara Ann Minerva, and is the third version of Cheetah to appear in comics. Let’s get to it.

Wait a sec, she doesn't have her claws out.
Calling BS on this, Cheetah's are the only
big cat that can't retract their claws. Fun Fact.

Dr. Minerva was a British archeologist studying ancient tribes in Africa. She was all but obsessed with finding a particular ancient tribe that used a female guardian that was imbued with the power of a cheetah. After several years of searching she uncovered the tribe, and their guardian, just before a band of marauders slaughtered the guardian, the tribe, and most of Barbara’s expedition party. Them’s the breaks when searching for ancient cultures. Thankfully for Barbara, the high priest of this tribe, Chuma, survived and with him so did the ritual necessary to make a new Cheetah. Barbara agreed to be the new Cheetah, partially because she was promised that immortality comes with the job. And for those who may question it, this is the modern take on immortality, meaning that you won’t die from old age, but fatal wounds are still fatal. She was given a combination of human blood and the berries from the sacred Urtzkartaga plant. A few mystical chants, and BAM, cat person. Though, apparently Chuma left out a very small but still vitally important detail about the whole immortal guardian position. Because we’re dealing with an ancient culture I’m a little shocked that the possibility didn’t occur to Dr. Minerva. But, the guardian is supposed to be a virgin. Minerva, was in fact, not. So things didn’t go 100% as planned. The transformation worked, but in her human form Barbara experience insane amounts of physical pain, and while in her Cheetah form she was filled with a berserker’s bloodlust. This is why you should consult your doctor before performing ancient superpower granting rituals.

Apparently she took a few notes from Joker and
Decided to keep savage beasts as pets.

The new Cheetah and Wonder Woman first cross paths for the simplest of reasons, Cheetah wanted WW’s stuff. Specifically that magic Lasso of Truth that Diana is always sporting. An archeologist with a weird obsession with collecting rare and magic stuff, who’d a thunk it? Well, anyway, Cheetah nearly gets her hands on the Lasso in the simplest of ways, she lied to Diana. In her human form she told the Amazon Princess that she had a Golden Girdle of Gaea, which she claimed was part of a matching set with the Lasso. Diana, in a rare moment of extreme naiveté, hands the Lasso over. Unfortunately for Barbara, that’s when the whole “of Truth” part of the Lasso kicked in. She spilled the beans about making the whole thing up and her plan to keep the Lasso forever. Wonder Woman takes the Lasso back. Since the subtle approach failed, Barbara morphs into her Cheetah form and tries to steal it by force. In the ensuing fight it became clear that Cat powers are pretty much equal to Greek God powers, but Cheetah was forced into retreat.

While getting the Lasso was Cheetah’s motivation for several years, as time passed Cheetah’s obsession shifted more and more to getting payback against Wonder Woman. You can only bruise an ego so many times before getting on someone’s $h!t list. That being said there are a couple of instances where they pull “an enemy of my enemy is my friend.” I never got that saying, since the hero usually teams up with their enemy to be the enemy’s enemy. It makes no sense. Whatever, Cheetah was kidnapped by the dictator of fake Balkan county 27a, Pan Balgravia. Said dictator had made a deal with a demon to find a powerful Metahuman woman to be the host for said demon’s demoness wife. Wonder Woman tries to save her enemy for…reasons, but Barbara chooses to jump into the dimensional vortex used to summon said demoness, to prevent it from crossing over. She’s later rescued by some Boston area mob boss, in an attempt to get some superpowered muscle, but double crosses said mob boss when Wonder Woman gets caught in the middle of Boston mobs turf war. Debt repaid, the two go back to fighting like Cats and Demi-Gods. Them’s the breaks with supervillains.

Dr. Minerva has the usual superpowers connected to her namesake. Razor sharp claws, enhanced senses, superhuman speed, and obsession with catching the little red dot created by a laser pointer. Okay, maybe not that last one. Her powers are connected to the Urzkartaga plant-god, whom can take her powers away as he sees fit. There’s actually a story arc where she loses her powers to a man named Sebastian Ballesteros that convinced Urz to make him the first male Cheetah. She gets her powers back after killing Ballesteros and sacrificing his blood to Urzhkartaga. Ancient Gods sure need a lot of ego stroking.

Not a lot of spots for a Cheetah, just saying.

Cheetah has appeared a few times in various DC series, always against her arch nemesis Wonder Woman. They tend to skip over the whole, Magic Lasso obsession and jump right into killing Wonder Woman because of bruised ego obsession.

Her first major appearance wasn’t 100% her, a Cheetah that was loosely based on her appeared in the Justice League TV series. In it, Cheetah used to be a respected geneticist that performed some last minute “prove my theories right” experiments on herself that turned her into a cat person. She joins Lex Luthor’s Injustice Gang in “Injustice for All” because Luthor promises a big pay day. She wants the money to fix herself. Batman, who was captured by the group, offers her help if she releases him. Cheetah hesitates, and even kisses Batman for…reasons, but apparently doesn’t go through with it. Luthor begins to suspect a traitor, sees the kiss for a security camera and has super powered zombie Solomon Grundy take care of Cheetah Of Mice and Men style. Imagine his embarrassment when it turns out it was the Ultra-Humanite that pulled the double cross. Somehow, Cheetah survives Grundy “tending the rabbits” and alter joins Gorilla Grodd’s Secret Society in Justice League Unlimited, but in a minor role.

We see Cheetah, briefly, in Superman/Batman: Public Enemies. In it, she’s one of over a dozen supervillains aiming to take out Superman and Batman in order to collect a sizeable bounty President Lex Luthor put out of Superman. Superman was accused of murdering Lex Luthor pardoned supervillain bodyguard, Metallo. She and a lot of bad guys get their butts kicked by the Super-Bat team up.

Not exactly Dr. Barbara Minerva, but pretty close on the
Wonder Woman hate.

Her first large, 100% Barbara role was in Justice League: Doom. She’s one of several villains hired by Vandal Savage to kill their respective superhero. She’s the one most vocal about not doing it, claiming she doesn’t need help. But, once Vandal reminds the good doctor of her numerous failed attempts and the large sum of money he’ll pay, she agrees. Cheetah lures Wonder Woman onto a boat and the two brawl. During the fight, WW is slashed by Cheetah’s claws. Normally this would be no big deal, it happens a lot when fighting a superpowered cat-person, but not this time. Cheetah’s claws were coated in a nano-bots, the tiny machines infected Diana’s blood and traveled to her brain. Once there, they took control of her audio and visual nerves and rewired them so that every person she saw would appear and sound like Cheetah. The plan was, given Wonder Woman’s warrior ways, she’d keep fighting the Cheetah’s she saw, without stopping or resting which would lead to one of three outcomes; 1. She’d have a heart attack, 2. Have an aneurysm, or 3. Shot to death by police. Cyborg is able to keep her busy long enough to prepare and administer an antidote. Cheetah joins Vandal Savage’s phase two plan, causing a global genocide since it was preferable to be one of the people in the global genocide. She’s beat by Wonder Woman when the League storms the Hall of Doom.

Cheetah is your pretty standard revenge villain. She’ll keep on fighting Wonder Woman until she’s either killed or succeeds. You can probably guess how often supervillains succeed in beating their superhero. Her Cheetah powers, while somewhat unique in the whole “powers on or off have their own awful side effects” are also pretty standard for a cat person. I’m not saying she’s a bad character, or that I particularly dislike her, it’s just that she’s kind of generic. Cheetah does earn points, though, for being one of the first characters to show Wonder Woman that there are women that are as "bad as men." Which I think does kind of help Diana move away from judging the entire male half of the human race as inherently bad and the entire female half of the human race as inherently good. She’s the Savage Feline Foe of Wonder Woman, the Cheetah. Next time, Deathstroke, the Terminator. 

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