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These are the main characters in the webcomic Panthera.

Beware: There are SPOILERS ahead.


Jason Quinn/Leo

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cast-jasonleo_9445.png

Seventeen years old, Jason was the first to transform at the hands of Ari. In addition to being a scholastic whiz, Jason is the "leader" of Panthera.


  • Battle Couple: Together with Tigris. Not anymore as of chapter seven, though.
  • Knight Templar Big Brother: Poor Pardus.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Direct result of the above and dragging his little sister into Panthera only to find out they won't live past the age of thirty.
  • My Sister Is Off-Limits: Although he was originally oblivious to Pardus and Onca liking each other until Kira pointed it out to him. More recently, though...
    Jason: If you do ANYTHING to her, in any way, shape or form, I will quite litterally #%$&!$# EAT YOU. And you have NO idea just how DEEP I could BURY what'd be left of your sorry carcass. UNDERSTOOD?
  • Say My Name: Used for drama when Leo starts doubting everything he thought he knew about himself and his position in the team after North Korea.
  • Transformation Conventions: He's the leader of the group and transforms into a lion, traditionally regarded as the king of beasts.

Kira Hwang/Tigris

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cast-kiratigris_7460.png
Kira: What are you doing here, anyway?
Jason: Uh, looking for you, actually. I just followed the burning mayhem.

Kira was the second to join Panthera. She's seventeen years old and has been described as "Bridgedale's athletic goddess", a member of the soccer, hockey and lacrosse teams since her freshman year. Put simply, Kira is in Panthera for the action.


  • Battle Couple: Half of one with Jason, until they mutually decided to break up in chapter seven.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: To Taylor over Jason for most of the first story arc. She only manages to calm down and warm up to the poor girl in the last five pages or so.
  • Deadpan Snarker: She has her moments in the second story arc.
  • Elemental Personalities: The critical, easily angered Tigris bears fire as her element.
  • It's Personal: Lampshaded and parodied. When Leo points out all the flaws with North Korea's shiny new Tiger Mecha, Tigris does not take it well.
    Tigris: (Internal monologue) "Okay, so they not only made their death tank a Tiger, they made it suck. As a tiger myself, that's kind of personal."
  • Playing with Fire: To the point where Jason has accused her of having "raging pyromania".
  • Poor Communication Kills: A literal Cat Fight ensues between her and Onca when Onca tries to explain that they've been fighting for the wrong side all along and that Ari is actually Oosterhuis.
  • Required Secondary Powers: Tigris seems to have hers, considering she noted that napalm "tickled a bit".
  • Scars are Forever: In 8.10, due to her carelessness, Tigris gets half of her face blown off. While Pardus is there to heal her before she dies, she still gets scarred.
  • "Shut Up" Kiss: She tries this to Jason when he's having an identity crisis in chapter seven. Subverted when Jason gently pushes her away.
  • Sink or Swim Mentor: To Taylor, albeit very heavy on the "Sink"-bit.
  • Tsundere: Very strongly type A, only opening up to Jason in the beginning.

Fletcher Emerson/Pardus

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cast-fletcherpardus_3684.png
"That's the "right behind you" look, isn't it. Man, I hate that look.

While Tigris is in it for the action, Fletcher is in it because being a leopard with control over air is seriously awesome. While he's capable of being sober, he's usually playful and light-hearted, always joking around (Fletcher is the first and foremost contributor to the cat-pun jar).


  • Trust Password: Pardus is the subject of one. When Leo had to verify a message from him via Onca to Tigris and Pardus, Leo told her that Pardus dyes his fur.

Taylor Quinn/Onca

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cast-tayloronca_4511.png
"Everything seems to happen so fast lately, and I'm so confused — I don't wanna ruin this team more than I already have —"

Jason's younger sister and the team's final recruit on Jason's reccomendation. While she's by no means a warrior, she still has a strong sense of justice and she's pretty smart.


  • Poor Communication Kills: A result of My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels, Onca couldn't explain at all to Tigris why she was trying to tell them Ari is Oosterhuis. Tigris responded violently.
  • Premature Empowerment: When Taylor is asked to join the Adventuring Club, she agrees... and then they knocked her out and injected with gene-altering treatments to turn her into a were-jaguar with elemental powers. It's only after that that she hears what the Adventuring Club really is.

Richard Reynder/Aristotle

Click to see Ari 

Aged 39, Richard Reynder is the eccentric science teacher at Bridgedale High and in charge of the Adventuring Club. He is also a brilliant scientist and the man behind Panthera, aiming to take down the evil Ovid Pharmaceutical corporation.


  • Driven to Suicide: When Unica stops being his brainwashed pawn, he turns his gun on himself. Unica stops him.
  • Glory Hound: A big part of the reason for his initial attacks on OVID is that he will be the one to cure cancer, not anyone else.
  • Insane Troll Logic: He believes the best way to handle being accused of lying to, endangering, and manipulating four individuals he granted super-powers, without telling them the side-effects, dangers or consequences first, is to smugly admit he's been openly lying, and then demand their trust, only to go flying into a rage when they refuse to give it to him.
  • Kick the Dog: When he sees Unica have an emotional crisis over accidentally killing an unarmed civilian, he doesn't say one word of consolation, or sympathy. Instead he brings a gun, and openly condemns her for desisting in attacking the teens he betrayed
  • Moral Myopia: Once the main cast encounters the F.B.I. and they hear OVID's side of the story, he happily and smugly comes forward and shamelessly admits that he's been manipulating and outright lying to the main characters for years, not to mention grievously shorten their lifespans, and calls them "useful failures." This does not in any way stop him from coming to the conclusion that 'they're ungrateful bastards who are betraying him because they refuse to believe in him, after he betrayed their trust and because he "gave them power," by essentially making them all giant tumors as a side-effect making them were-felines.
  • Never Hurt an Innocent: After his first on-screen defeat, and his supposedly losing his superpowers, he's openly sworn to "never harm an innocent." Of course, he's got a really narrow definition of innocent, and blew up a high-school after deliberately trapping the janitor inside, by poisoning him with a powerful neurotoxin. He's also openly declared that anyone who opposes him, regardless of the reason, is no innocent.
  • Playing with Syringes: Ovid and the F.B.I. finds his lab, and what they find inside is... not pretty, to say the least. We also learn that Ari sent Ovid pictures of his victims, claiming they belonged to Panthera.
  • The Reveal: Ari is Oosterhuis. Moreover, he suffers from a massive case of A God Am I and he's got powers stronger than Panthera when they're on their own.
  • Tautological Templar: And HOW! Regardless of what name he decides to give himself, he's completely convinced that he's an invariably good person because his stated end goal curing cancer is good and noble. Therefore, no matter what he does, from grabbing people off the street and experimenting on them, to their deaths, or conning teenagers into letting themselves be turned into were-felines with super-powers, at the possilbe cost of the majority of their lifespan, and becoming his disposable unwitting pawns to engage in grand theft, assault, and terrorism, and then betraying them when they've outlived their usefulness to him, he continues to believe wholeheartedly that he's done nothing wrong, and he tells himself, and anyone he recruits from that point on, that said teenagers betrayed him because they dared to defend themselves.
  • With Us or Against Us: He views anyone who doesn't bow down and serve his agenda, if not him personally, without hesitation or reservation, as either an enemy, or a traitor, even if the reason they turned on him is because he exploited, abused, or outright turned on them first, and they're merely defending themselves.

Unica

A were-snow leopard, and the newest recruit for Oostherius.
  • Forgotten Friend, New Foe: To Onca. Despite the fact that she's the one who cut off contact, and rebuffed, ignored or withdrew from any and all attempts from the latter to communicate, she continues to play the "you abandoned me" card to the latter. Onca eventually gets sick of it.
  • Heel Realization: She finally realizes that while she may not know what's right or wrong anymore, Ootherius's agenda clearly isn't. Ootherius responds by pointing a gun at her.
  • Hulk Speak: Due to her different vocal system, being a snow leopard, she can't vocalize "growl" well.
  • Madness Mantra: As a direct result of her Villainous Breakdown.
    "Shut Up! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"
  • Moral Myopia: She knowingly works for a Consummate Liar, yet berates the main characters and accuses them of lying if they don't answer her questions in a way she wants to hear.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Starting with a Big "NO!". She finally snaps out of her homicidal rage after she realizes she struck down Andre who stumbled on the scene and was trying to talk her down.
  • The Needs of the Many: Combined with Just Think of the Potential!. She tries to rationalize that performing horrific experiments on "disposable" people, against their will, is perfectly justified because the end goal might save vastly many more lives.
  • Never My Fault: All her acts of villainy and Blind Obedience to Oostherhuis? It's all Panthera's fault! AND THEY MUST PAY!
  • Shock and Awe: As befits an Aether based were-feline, her powers often center around electricity.
  • Tautological Templar: She's convinced herself that Duolius, aka Ootherius is a good man, so everything he does, or tells her to do is good and noble without exception, and anyone who gets in the way, regardless of reason must be struck down.
  • Teleportation with Drawbacks: Her Aether powers allow her to perform small, line-of-sight teleports.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Once Onca's pierced her Blind Obedience, and she can no longer rationalize her villainy, she goes completely out of control. To lethal consequences for a nearby civilian that happens on the scene and tries to talk her down.

Dr. Sarah Pavilion

One of the Ovid scientists/F.B.I. agents who recruit Panthera to go after Ootherius.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She acts like a kindly mother-figure to Panthera. She's really a manipulative bitch.
  • Broken Pedestal: The second in the series. When she is caught and killed selling the Panthera team to Ari, by stealing classified data.
  • Character Death: She gets shot to death trying to steal classified data, after she pulls a gun and shot at the guards who tried to detain her.
  • Double Agent: She's the one who recruited Panthera in the Ovid lab attacked by Aristotle, on behalf of Ovid and the F.B.I.. In reality, she's been leading the teens on to help Aristotle in his mad agenda.
  • Motherly Scientist: Subverted. While in front of Panthera, she acts kind and nurturing, like a good mother. In reality, she's just exploting them. Even without being allied to Aristotle.
  • The Spook: Her motives for helping Aristotle are never truly made clear.

Andre

The leader of the school's newspaper club, the first to figure out something's up with the "camping" club, and Martina's closest friend.
  • Character Death: Being hit by Unica's lightning kills him.
  • Kick the Morality Pet: On the receiving end. Unica's stray blast hits him, and it causes Unica to stop her rampage, in shock and horror.
  • One Degree of Separation: He's even closer to Martina than Taylor Quin was.
  • Sacrificial Lamb: His death serves to show Unica just what kind of "man" she's been serving.
  • School Newspaper Newshound: He runs the school's newspaper club, and as a direct result decides to investigate the abnormalities of the "Camping Club."
  • Talking the Monster to Death: Defied. He rushes out onto the battlefield to try to talk Unica down. He gets hit by her stray lightning.
  • Too Dumb to Live: He jumps in the middle of a fight between super-powered were-felines without protection of any kind. The end result is wholy predictable.

Other Antagonists

Jenga

A colonel in the DPRK, aka, the North Korean military.
  • Berserk Button: Exploited. Tigris briefly assuming her human form reminds her of the North Korean family that defected to the U.S., to avoid starving to death. She considers them "traitors" for doing so, and flies into a rage that negates what little I.Q. she has.
  • Did Not Think This Through: Of all the numerous problems with her pet mecha, all of which make it utterly unsustainable, the most obvious is that it lacks windshield wipers, making it completely unusable in any inclement weather.
  • Fake Defector: She lures Panthera to North Korea by impersonating a South Korean agent in need of rescue, through sending a false distress signal to the U.S..
  • Smug Snake: She is so convinced that her home country of North Korea is vastly superior to the rest of the world, and being a loyal citizen makes her a vastly superior soldier to any other soldier in the world, that she immediately thinks the Panthera are frozen in fear upon seeing her pet mecha without understanding a word they are saying. What they were really doing was pointing out everything wrong with the vehicle and the concept behind it. Further, when Panthera broke out of the lab to have more fighting room, she immediately thought that they were fleeing in terror, and gave chase without any thought.
  • Suicidal Overconfidence: She is so utterly convinced that her pet mecha is "invincible" that she doesn't take any defensive or preventative measures. As impractical as the mecha was, a more cautious pilot could still have used it effectively in many controlled situations, and would have been far more likely to kill Panthera and emerge unscathed. The only real difficulty Panthera had fighting her was the fear of starting a radiation leak.

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