Deborah Domaine Barbara Ann Minerva and Sebastian Ballesteros The Cheetah is a fictional character appearing in DC Comics publications and related media, most commonly as a major recurring adversary of the superhero Wonder Woman.

The Cheetah character has been adapted in various forms of media outside of comics, including animated series, films, and video games.

The third Cheetah is British archaeologist Barbara Minerva, the heiress to a vast fortune in her ancient family seat in Nottinghamshire.

Ambitious, selfish, and severely neurotic, Barbara develops a passion for archaeology that leads her to finance an expedition to find a tribe in Africa, which is said to be protected by a female guardian with the powers of a cheetah.

Barbara, with the aid of a tribal priest named Chuma, the caretaker of the ancient plant god Urzkartaga, agrees to become the tribe's new guardian after being told that she would gain immortality.

Her powers are conferred to her by ingesting a potion made from human blood and the berries and leaves of Urzkartaga, which gives her orange skin with black spots, a tail and claws, as well as superhuman senses and reflexes.

Although the scheme proceeds far enough for Minerva to hold the lasso, its magical power to make people tell the truth forces her to confess her true intentions.

Their initial battle ends with inconclusive results, as Diana's friend, Julia Kapatelis, shoots the Cheetah and forces her to retreat.

[13][14] The country's dictator, Baron von Nastraed, for unknown reasons, chooses to aid a demon named Drax by capturing a powerful metahuman woman.

Barbara double-crosses Julianna, choosing to aid Wonder Woman when she is caught up in a war between Sazia and rival mobster Paulie Longo.

For a brief period of time, Minerva loses her powers to businessman Sebastian Ballesteros, who convinces Urzkartaga that he could be a more effective Cheetah than she was.

At one point, the god punishes her for her failures by leaving one of Minerva's hands human looking and untransformed even while she is in her Cheetah form, though it appears to still be fully empowered as the rest of her body and equally as deadly.

They later join the latest Secret Society of Super Villains and seem to be engaged in a sexual relationship, though Zoom considers himself to still be married to his former wife.

She also gains control over three actual cheetahs and still possesses her super-speed, which is demonstrated by her ability to steal the golden lasso away from Donna Troy several times in battle.

She arranges to have her ally Doctor Psycho take the place of Sarge Steel as director of the Department of Metahuman Affairs which, in the middle of Genocide's onslaught, she targets for destruction.

Barbara Minerva (having used several aliases that happen to be the names of various incarnations of the character) is given a revised backstory: she is established as an ally of Wonder Woman's due to her knowledge of dangerous relics, and having previously grown up in an all-woman commune called "Amazonia".

[16] During the "Forever Evil" storyline, Cheetah's mysterious benefactor is revealed to be the Crime Syndicate to join the Secret Society of Super Villains.

[17] Psi shares a vision with Steve Trevor showing Cheetah in possession of Wonder Woman's lasso and hiding out in Central Park.

In defiance of her father, her passion for myth and legend remained and as an adult, she changed her surname to Minerva in honor of her late mother.

Minerva was able to take photos before the collapse and continued her investigation until she found herself at a dead end when she reached a seemingly deserted island in the Black Sea.

Seeking out proof of other deities, Minerva learns of Urzkartaga and obtains funding for an expedition to the fictional African nation of Bwunda from industrialist Veronica Cale.

Diana provides Minerva with a Wayne Enterprises GPS signaling device in case she needed help, which Doctor Cyber, a secret ally of Ares, remotely disabled.

[23] Blaming Diana for letting her be transformed into a beast consumed by bloodlust and cannibalistic urges, the Cheetah joined Cale's Godwatch group.

Wonder Woman and Trevor arrived and fought the Cheetah and Cale until Diana's blood opened a gateway to Ares' prison.

After several failed attempts to break Wonder Woman, the Sovereign left the amazon princess on the same island as Cheetah, hoping that the starved monster would accomplish what he could not.

She then agreed to assist Wonder Woman and her allies against the Sovereign, who noted that the relationship between the two archenemies is more complicated than that of Batman's with the Joker or Superman's with Lex Luthor.

Their basic attributes consist of enhanced strength and speed on par with Wonder Woman, as well as heightened senses of smell and hearing for hunts and night vision for stealth.

While the two more modern incarnations of Cheetah possess superhuman powers, the earlier versions of Priscilla Rich and Deborah Domaine do not.

Case in point: When the legendary Challenge of the Super Friends DC cartoon aired back in the day, WW’s counterpart on the Legion of Doom was Cheetah, confirming her archnemesis status".

That would be Cheetah,[77] Rachel Leishman of The Mary Sue wrote, "Minerva is a fun villain in general because she often connects with people like Lex Luthor or the Joker to come after our heroes, and while neither of them are in 1984, it could set up future connections between the Superman and Batman villains and Cheetah as DC’s interconnected movie universe finds its path forward.