I like both the Alex Ross version of Cheetah (with the cobbled together style costume reminiscent of Catwoman from Batman Returns) and I think it's Rebirth Cheetah (i.e. the anthropomorphic of Cheetah which features a more animalistic face and other features and isn't simply an extremely attractive woman with long, flowing hair covered in body paint).
It's hard to have a favourite between those two, but I'd probably side with Rebirth Cheetah because she's more obviously a physical threat to Wonder Woman than a human lady in a costume (although the Alex Ross Cheetah looks ferocious, savage and extremely threatening to me).
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I love the Perezian Cheetah and some of her later incarnations under McDuffie in Justice League and Simone in Wonder Woman.
She’s a tale of horror under Perez and I loved the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dynamic between Barbara Minerva and Cheetah in his creation. McDuffie and Simone incorporated her intelligence in her animalistic form, but nothing beats the juxtaposition of the malevolent, Machiavellian Barbara Minerva and the savage, deadly Cheetah.
The former should make Lex Luther and Diana shudder and the latter should make Superman and Wonder Woman wary.
I’m not one to make Barbara or Cheetah a weakling in mind or body, in either incarnation.
Perez and Rebirth look great to me. She is supposed to have the powers of a God, that allow her to trade blows with Diana. So yes, power is important but so is intelligence.
Has Cheetah ever lost her intelligent? Should she ever be able to transform back and forth?
I wouldn't say she only fights when she's backed into a corner. She relies on speed and sneak attacks. Her first fight with Wonder Woman in the Perez era involved the element of surprise and hit and run tactics, and she nearly won the fight if not for Julia's intervention. She later massacred an entire squad of Amazons.
I think she should steal that Seal of Apollo from Veronica and summon Circe, to strike a bargain and find some way of lessening her curse. It would allow her to become human for brief periods, but not break the curse completely.
I'm with Dr. Poison - I think the Alex Ross version looks scary AF.
I'm all for Cheetah and Circe interacting (as well as with other Wonder foes), but I'm always reticent with Cheetah getting help from Circe. I understand the impulse for that, but I tend to think it weakens Barbara Minerva when she and Circe should be as dangerous to each other as they are to Wonder Woman. Not that I think the "right" story couldn't be interesting...
I kind of like how she was handled in the backup stories to "The Witch and the Warrior" where Barbara did what she had to in order to get back the powers of the Cheetah after Ballesteros stole them in a bid to be the consort of Circe and end Wonder Woman. Barbara held her own in that despite Circe's manipulations of Ballesteros.
Yep. I think it diminishes the Cheetah's and Barbara Ann Minerva's role in the story if they are too dependant on others for their powers and downfall. It also puts too much focus on Circe as the Big Bad; there is already that impulse with The Witching Hour, when the mythological Circe was a much more ambigious or even benevolent figure if approached correctly.
There is a tendency with armchair worldbuilders to make everything interconnect and create elaborate story structures. But in practice they tend to make the story unwieldy and too complex to take in for a new reader.
Me too. I read her adventures long after becoming bored with Barbara Minerva, so I found her look and backstory refreshing. Of course she in no way should have been a threat to Wonder Woman, yet she somehow was. She's visually at the crossroads of Priscilla Rich and Barbara Ann and I like her mainly because she's a throwback to a simpler time when sexiness wasn't verboten and a supervillain could get away with wearing heels, a fuzzy tail and cat ears.
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Alex Ross Priscilla. There is something very creepy an unnerving about her stitched together Cheetah suit.