Save the Cheetah! Endangered Character Alert

Keeping comics classic but updating them for today’s folk is no mean feat. Some concepts we turn a blind eye to, and overlook their obvious silliness. A lot of my peers were upset by the loss of Superman’s “over-undies”, but I wasn’t really. I like nostalgia as much as the next guy, but I am fully aware that with new readers, especially the young’ns, the notion of an over-the-top flashy, archaic wrestling suit with a cape isn’t really a draw. What bothers me is when creators don’t even try to modernize a concept because they cop to it’s silliness when it can be overcome with creativity. Costumes have to be rethreaded, but updating concepts is a different animal. One character that multiple creators have had a lot of trouble with is Wonder Woman, not to mention her environment, cast, and ideology. I often see that solutions are pretty simple, really, if dismissal of the outdated is replaced with objectivity. I’m NOT a comics writer by any stretch, and I don’t have all the answers. I buy my books with the understanding that the weight of that burden should be shouldered by paid professionals. So, I’m going to address an issue I have with the treatment of a vital cast member: The Cheetah.

Right out of the gate, I’m gonna say it. I love the Cheetah. I also HATE that Barbara Minerva.

Let me start with that first disclaimer. The Cheetah is, or at least is supposed to be, Wonder Woman’s number one arch-enemy. How do I know? Simple. Aside from Giganta, Dr. Psycho, and Dr. Poison, she survived the “paradise through bondage” start up era of WW. In Challenge of the Super-Friends, Superman runs at Luthor, Green Lantern at Sinestro, The Flash at Captain Cold, and Diana at The Cheetah (the glaring omission is Batman at the Joker, who wasn’t in the Legion of Doom, to which I say- WTF??). On the Secret Origins of The Super-Villains oversized classic, there it is again, this time with Mr. J. in his appropriate place. In so much other media, there she is. Yes, that’s my standard. According to DC, the aim is for 45 year olds, and I’m nearly there, so it’s valid. A large part of my contempt here is about laziness when it comes to classic properties, and the myopic views of the parenting comic company, which in this case is DC Comics.

“My” Cheetah was Priscilla Rich, a debutante turned psycho. A jealous, spoiled American princess with a split personality who had a hard-on for our girl. She was pretty much a terrorist, who started making chaos at social events where the Amazon was present. She proved to be a menace to her, though her power set was never really addressed and seemed kinda flimsy coming up against a being who could lift a car, and had an arsenal of magic and tech-based weapons (this WAS the bygone era, remember). She was always batting back and forth between ‘Prissy’ and her catty alter-ego, and was a prime candidate for the toga-clad therapists at Transformation Island. She ended up in the rogues clan known as “Villainy, Inc”- real clever there, Dr. Moulton. She went away during the dreadful romance era of the title, and came back in the early Silver Age, this time a straight up criminal terrorist. Then, she vanished again until ’77, where the book was now based in the 1940’s, due to the influence of the Lynda Carter series, and was pretty much a better written version of the germ character.

Around ’80, Priscilla kicked the bucket, and her environmentalist niece, Debbie Domaine was brainwashed by Kobra into the new incarnation. Debbie, too, was pals with Di and it just never came up that Prissy was her kin (she even said “I’m going to visit my Aunt Priscilla” to her, and the titular character never thought to say “surname, please?”).

Debbie became a spotted eco-terrorist, and popped up next in the JLA-JSA summer crossover (one of my favorite things about the season yearly) as a card-carrying member of The Secret Society of Supervillains.

Then once more Deb was in the WW book, in the god-awful “Wonder Etta” issue, then it was over, except for some cameos in Crisis on Infinite Earths, wherein Debbie and Priscilla were wiped out, maybe forever. In between all this, Priscilla was on the aforementioned cartoon series, and much later made a comeback on the Brave and the Bold ‘toon, where thru a mystic device that’s actually a nod to Ms. Minerva, pretty much hands Superman his ass. There was also a version of the Cheetah on “Justice League Unlimited”, with an un-named scientist alter ego who looked like a hybrid of Priss and Babs.

When Alex Ross did the amazing “Justice” mini-series he revamped Priscilla’s powers to be derived from the goddess Hecate, and she gutted a live cheetah, and skinned it’s hide to wear, and showed just how scary she could be. She nearly kills Themiscyra’s favorite daughter with poison-tipped claws turning her back into Amazon beach-clay.

Barbara Minerva was introduced as The Cheetah shortly after the Crisis. Right off the bat, I ask “why?”. No other major character was revamped intrinsically, they were just updated. Priscilla got the total axe. Minerva is an archeologist who kills a cheetah that is the avatar of the god “Urtzkartaga”, and is worshipped by a lone African tribe. Strangely, the clan she just pissed off gives her a magic plant that helps her channel their god, and go all were-cat.

Then as a parting gift, they give her a ‘little person” name of Chuma to be her attache.

Upon finding out about Diana, she decides she wants her magic lasso, and lures the heroine into her confidence to snag her rope. She accidentally touches the thing and is compelled to blab that she’s there to steal it. WW walks away sore, so Dr. M decides to cheetah-out and kill her to get the prize, and a new nemesis is born. They wind up crossing paths throughout the Perez run, and she gets her ass soundly kicked on a trip to Egypt, then drops off the scene for a while. Along the route, Circe (arguably the most overplayed would-be usurper to the arch nemesis crown), makes it so that the lady can just lap up a drop of blood when she wants to get catty rather than dancing nekkid in front of a houseplant. When we see her next, she’s in a posse of mercenary bad girls, hired to bump off the princess. She winds up being a turncoat, and secretly sets her free when she gets captured. For the rest of the William Messner-Loebs run, she’s shown the same way.

In the John Byrne run, where (bless his lil’ Canuck heart) he tries to get the title back to it’s roots as a super-hero book and away from all the sword ‘n’ sorcery, Diana literally goes to Hell to get Barb’s soul back from the demon Neron, who she sold it to. Phil Jiminez, in his  run has her the victim of Sebastian Bellastros, a ruthless tycoon who steals Barbara’s mojo and becomes the new Cheetah. I personally was glad Phil nixed him before his run was over.

Barbara gets her cat-stuff back, and he’s gone, thankfully. Also, in Phil’s run, he has Hyppolyta, who is now the ‘40s WW, established to have fought Priscilla (who’s wearing the Cheetah garb, yet is only called by her given name). She’s referenced in a single panel, bringing her into the canon. A while later, Perez’s cat-lady is up to no good again, and gets a reboot from Alan Heinberg, who gives her back some of the old school Cheetah charm (once again Circe does all the magic), as a sassy human in a swank costume, no longer lame with a cane as she’d been before, and able to go catty on her own whim. The real upshot here is that it’s drawn by the Dodsons.

Then Alan, who can’t keep his commitment as usual, abandons ship without fleshing her out and the next time we see her, she’s a Tigra rip-off once more. Next up, the generally ingenious Greg Rucka puts her in a Flash crossover teamed up with Prof. Zoom, where she’s trying to get in on some Speed Force business. Priscilla Rich is back, as a frail faded movie star who BM rips to pieces in her bed, ‘coz Zoom gives her the notion she needs to be the only Cheetah, making it necessary to bump off an 80 year old, so no one else will get confused. Face-palm. From there, we see BM with the Injustice League, posed in an unholy trinity of leadership sandwiched between Luthor and the Joker. Her failings shine bright in this company. Put by a criminal scientist billionaire mastermind, and the creme de la creme of psychopaths, a fast lady with cat-fur is just the token gal.

We see her for a while always in the company of the other baddies, usually ‘the Society’. Gail Simone makes her the boss of the group, and WW shows up and tears the group and it’s headquarters to the ground. Next comes the New 52, where bad decisions are made on a minute-to-minute basis. In Justice League, here she comes again. This time, she’s a con-artist who buddied up to Diana just to screw her over. She’s established to have gone by the aliases of Barbara M. and Debbie D. both. They wind up in the jungle, where in a pretty boring story other folks, including Superman, get a turn at being Cheetah. Grrr! Now, she’s all up in the Society again.

So, what’s my beef with Barbara? Other than the needless replacement of Priscilla as the heavy, I think she is born out of pure laziness. Yes, I’m smack-talking Perez. I know he’s the venerated champion of Modern Age Wonder Woman, but he was not perfect, I hate to tell you. I don’t think he wanted to be bothered with trying to make Priscilla a modern day character, so he scrapped her and made someone new. Next, I think a Dr. Moreau-style catperson is just not that interesting as a foil for Diana. Yeah, she’s got professional pedigree, but it usually got lost in the shuffle when she travelled from book to book, and writer to writer. There’s only so much threat an unscrupulous collector of antiquities can do anyway. Her motivation for hating her enemy is kind of hollow in the long run. “I want your toy” was the impetus, and that’s not been referenced for ages. Give her a ball of yarn and make her scat, I say.

“But, Todd, Priscilla was just a spoiled rich chick in a rug. How can that be any better?”

Fair question. First, lets do a sidebar. Grant Morrison took THE stupidest era of Superman, the 1950s, and made it one of the crown jewels of DC history, but expanding the concepts in ways no one was genius enough to consider before. He did a Bizarro story that could make a grown man cry. He took all that over the top Super-science and spun gold. He took the hokey zoo of the Fortress and put out an amazing sci-fi experience, and he took the cliched “Lois gets super-powers” stunt and used it to propel the Lois and Clark relationship to an all time high. Silly, in the hands of the right alchemist, becomes the sublime. Same logic here. You take what you’ve got and work with it, and inject it with creativity. So, her given name is dumb? Make her self-aware along with everybody else. It’s one of those funny things that just happens sometime. There’s a young millionaire girl named “Prissy Rich” and the public thanks it’s funny and cute. Done. Despite what Diane Nelson, Dan DiDio, and Geoff Johns may have you believe, fun is allowed in comic books, that’s the whole point. The powers set? Well, if it could happen for Barbara, it could happen for her too. Pulling this out of my own personal ass, how about her dad killing the wild-cat, and the tribe cursing him through his daughter? That seems a hell of a lot more sensible than rewarding some lady-asshole for killing your diety to me. Couple that with the fact that Rich herself is already a perfect yang to Di’s yin. Prissy is a spoiled American princess, I mention again. She hates women, is jealous and narcissistic, and sees Wonder Woman as a threat to her own status. Take a woman like that and Cat-God her up, and I’d say she’s hyper qualified for the job. Need more motivation? OK, marinate in this: what if Diana’s mission, which was ORIGINALLY to come to America to save humanity from itself and propel us to a better, advanced culture was countered by a pissed off jungle god who wanted to rase the earth, wipe it clean of humanity, then give it over to the jungle, with his/herself in control. What if that same marriage of human and the profane-divine had an ass-load of capital to back up the mission?

“But, what about that dumb costume?”

Check these out: They’re designed by Scott Kowalchuk and Dennis Culver, in their awesome supervillainshowdown.com design competition (do yourself a favor and check them out-and the other stuff, full-sized at the site). Bliss. Turns the look on it’s ear and makes the whole thing more logical. The look is disturbing. It denotes the need to conceal her identity, makes her seem really spooky, and is undeniably savage and psychotic. What we get here is a number one foe who can actually be a recurring, threatening presence with her ID a mystery, her vast resources, and the tenacity and savage wisdom of a feral and primordial god. See how easy that was??

I’m tired of the baby being thrown out with the bath water when it comes to re-vamping inconvenient characters. It’s been proven not to be necessary. I’m not a comics writer, I don’t play one on TV, and look what I just did. It might not be bullet-proof, but at least I TRIED, for Hera’s sake. Stop the cycle of lameness, and keep legends as they should be kept. It’s hardly un-doable, especially when it’s your JOB to be creative, and it can lead to years of fun. Unleash the beast, DC!!

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