Characters / Wild C.A.T.s (WildStorm)

aka: Voodoo

Founding Members

Spartan

Yohn Kohl

Kherubim Cybernetic Team Leader

Species: Kherubim

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #1 (August, 1992)

Spartan was born Yohn Kohl, a flesh and blood Kherubim and member of the Pantheon class on Khera. Yohn was trained as a warrior from birth. He was so respected as a war lord and warrior that to honor him the Kherubim created the Spartan Guards, using his likeness as the template.

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• Artificial Human: He's a bio-synthetic android.
• Body Backup Drive: Spartan can do this, thanks to being an android.
• Genius Bruiser: Each Spartan has a "brain" more powerful than any other computer (on Earth or otherwise), and is programmed to be able to use any technology it comes across. His body is controlled by a highly advanced silicon-based neurotronic brain. High speed CPU processors functioning at literally the speed of light, extensive files and combat data. They can also download data on his foes to best determine their weaknesses and defeat them.
• Honest Corporate Executive: After he inherits HALO under the name Jack Marlowe, Spartan tries to use its resources to make a better world.
• Primary-Color Champion: John Colt was the first costumed adventurer of the Wildstorm Universe, and wore the primary colors associated with the Cape archetype. AS Spartan, he may not be as well-known to the superhero community, but still is the field leader of the Wildcats.
• Sue Donym: Yohn Kohl disguises himself as John Colt.
• Super-Strength: Spartan possesses massive superhuman strength capable of benching 60 tons with no difficulty and nearly 70 tons with due effort. After a series of upgrades his strength level increased by staggering amounts, initially through receiving a new kheran model body he proved capable of pumping 80 tons with minimal effort then 115 tons with exertion.
• Technopathy: Spartan could wirelessly connect with any computer system and bend it to his will. He could even link up to telephone lines and answer phone calls or radio transmissions via Wi-Fi in his networking. After the "World's End" event, Spartan's interfacing ability was largely diminished. Now he could only make contact with telephone and radio transmissions and control the few remaining Spartan guards which survived Armageddon.

Zealot

Lady Zannah of Khera

Fierce Kherubim Warrior

Species: Kherubim

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #1 (August, 1992)

Zealot is a deadly Kherubim warrior and super-hero in the Wildstorm Universe. She is a long-living High Lord of Khera with superhuman physique and a mastery of hand-to-hand weapons. Stranded on Earth for centuries after a battle with the Daemonites, she would go on to join the super-hero team WildC.A.T.s.

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• Action Mom: She's the mother of Kenesha (Savant), and it's implied that Winter of Stormwatch is her and John Colt's son.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: The Coda inspired the myth of the Amazons.
• Healing Factor: She can regenerate damaged or destroyed bodily tissue with far greater speed and efficiency than an ordinary human. She can regenerate from anything, even injured tissue, brain cells (nerves), missing limbs and organs. Gunshot and stab wounds, cuts, and broken bones can perfectly heal in a few minutes.
• Lady of Black Magic: For one hundred years, Zealot was in service of the weaver of souls Tapestry. During that time, Tapestry attempted to subvert Zealot into her own image. In that time Zealot became a powerful enchantress with skills and powers nearly on the scale of her teacher; along with the potential to be among the most powerful magic users on the planet.
• Multi-Melee Master: Her skills with weapons mainly focus on the use of bladed weapons such as the Coda Clef blade and the katana blade; as well as the one and two handed sword. She is also an expert marksman, though not on the scale of Grifter. She is skilled in the use of throwing objects, such as daggers and the bladed weapons connected to the back of her armored costume.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Former Majestrix of the Coda, and the best fighter among them.
• This Means War Paint: Zealot always wears warpaint in combat, in the shape of a spot on the forehead and three lines on each cheek.
• Warrior vs. Sorcerer: Her Arch-Enemy is the Evil Sorceress Tapestry.
• Wonder Woman Wannabe: A Darker and Edgier take on this trope; she is a superpowered swordswoman from an all-female warrior sect, who is a tough soldier who shows no hesitation about dicing her enemies.
• World's Best Warrior: With weapons that are older then some civilizations and a status that placed her as the head of an order of warrior women. Zealot has literally been described as one of, if not the deadliest assassin on the planet. Her fighting abilities are unmatched among the coda, with and without a blade. And she can hold her own against virtually anyone, including those physically better then her, in one on one and even group combat.

Grifter/Deadeye

Cole Cash

Luck? Never heard of it.

Species: Human

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #1 (August, 1992)

Cole Cash was a former soldier in US Special Forces who later joined Team 7, a notorious black ops unit, fighting alongside such luminaries as Deathblow and Backlash. Later, he joined the WildC.A.T.s, alongside ex-girlfriend Zealot.

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• Adaptational Dye-Job: In The Wild Storm reboot, Grifter now is redhead instead blonde as most of his appearances.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: Of Gambit, being the Lovable Rogue of the group and also having a Badass Longcoat.
  • Some parallels can also be drawn with Deadpool - the color scheme of his mask (red with black trimmings around the eyeholes), his fighting style mixing gunplay and martial arts, Healing Factor (albeit significantly weaker one), and the fact he pretty much is Wildstorm's Merc with a Mouth.
• Badass Longcoat: His green longcoat is one of the iconic clothes he has during his story, mostly in WildStorm era.
  • In the Hood: His longcoat in The Wild Storm receives a hood update as seen in that version's pic.
• Badass Boast: Like any good action hero, Grifter's had a few of those.
  • When he's fighting the Quiet Men, after they kidnapped his love interest Zealot, stabbed and beat him and were about to deal out the finishing blow.
    Grifter: @#%& you. It's not over. I'll come back from hell if I have to.
• Badass Normal: He's one in The Wild Storm, having no powers but his marksman skills untouched (or at least until now).
• Boxed Crook: A young Cole Cash was the getaway driver for a heist crew, until he turned on the crew when they turned violent. An FBI agent (either because he saw something in Cole or because of his mobster stepfather's connections, Depending on the Writer) gave him a choice: work for I.O. as a covert operative or go to jail.
• Breakout Character: Ended up getting his solo series and is often used for Wolverine Publicity.
• Cain and Abel: Grifter and his brother Max A.K.A. Condition Red fall into this from time to time, particularly due to Cole being The Un-Favorite.
  [Grifter and Condition Red level their guns at each other]
  Grifter: Y'know, we could go get a drink and talk. Want to?
  Condition Red: No. [Both lower their weapons] But I guess it beats killing each other. Barely.
• Chained Heat: Grifter finds himself fighting a monster (actually a robot), when two cops try to intervene. The monster kills one of the cops, and Grifter saves the other one. The monster knocks them out, and Grifter and the cop, Molly Ingram, wake up tied up to opposite ends of a cross while some kind of cult ceremony takes place. Grifter manages to break the cross, and the two of them start fighting the cultists... except their arms are still tied together to two broken chunks of wood.
  Molly Ingram: We never practiced this at the police academy!
  Grifter: It's not a "practice makes perfect" sort of lifestyle.
• Child Soldier: One of the recurring bad guys from Steven Grant's run, Odyssey, a former colonel in the Army who's an expert on brainwashing, kidnaps a busload of schoolchildren with the intention of training them into perfect soldiers.
• Civvie Spandex: At first, Grifter's costume was mostly made up of regular street clothing, including a green trenchcoat, slacks and either a black t-shirt or a black turtleneck, plus his mask, gloves and hi-tech bandolier. Later on, Grifter takes this even further, and either just wears regular street clothes or a black t-shirt, combat pants, combat boots and a bulletproof vest.
• Cold Sniper: During Team 7 and in various missions of the WildCATs, Grifter takes this place in the team.
• Con Man: Having this fame in WildStorm continuity, but literally being one during New 52.
• Cool Mask: His famous red mask with white eyes and black marks over them... made with a piece of fabric.
  • Though the mask is apparently bulletproof and can also serve as an air filter in a pinch.
• Crossover: Being the famous character he was in WildStorm, Grifter received various crossovers not just in WildStorm itself (like his team-up with Midnighter):
  • With the Wild C.A.T.s (WildStorm): he made team with the X-Men, Spawn and the Justice League of America, and fought against the Aliens and... the Justice League again.
  • Alone as Grifter: he teamed up with Shi, Badrock, The Mask and in DC Comics, he was part of The Resistance in Flashpoint and fought against Green Arrow in his New 52 solo series.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: When Grifter fights former Stormwatch member Cannon, the fight's initially going Cannon's way. Except turns out Grifter's been briefed on Cannon's powers, and knows all he has to go is wait until Cannon energy charge runs out. Grifter then proceeds to pummel him into unconsciousness in seconds.
• Cut the Safety Rope: In a flashback, Cole confronts his former mentor Arp, who had gone rogue, in the alps. Cole has Arp, who's dangling off the lip of a mountain by some safety rope, in his sights. Arp, instead of shooting Cole when he has the chance, shoots his own safety rope, and falls to his apparent death.
• Deadpan Snarker: Oh yeah. Grifter snarks at both his allies and his enemies, and he never seems to run out of quips.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • In the Wildstorm continuity, Grifter was exposed to an experimental drug called Gen Factor, which activated latent psionic abilities, but often drove those exposed to it insane, often to the point of suicide.
  • At least one issue (the one-off written by Grant Morrison) states that Grifter's smoking habit is basically one drawn-out suicide attempt. He even threatens to sue the Surgeon General for failing to deliver on his warnings. Of course, since he's undercover as essentially a washed-out version of himself at the time it's debatable how genuine that is.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Grifter is prone to doing this. After he leaves the team (and seemingly loses his chance at getting back together with Zealot) during the Wildstorm Rising event, the first thing Cole does is hole up in a hotel room with a bottle of cheap whiskey.
• Expansion Pack Past: Grifter has suffered a bit from this. Initially he was just supposed to have been a covert operative who hooked up with Zealot and became her partner-in-crime all the way back in '72. But then creators started adding wrinkles to everything, like his time as a member of Team 7 in the 1970s or his time held prisoner by a South American military junta. While Brandon Choi and Michael Ryan's Gen 12 mini-series does a good job of explaining how most of these pieces fit together, some things, like Cole's time working for the C.I.A., or the period of time when he left Zealot and took off on his own, haven't been addressed.
• Expy: Interestingly enough, it's an Aversion, despite his similar appearance to Red Hood, the two couldn't be any more different.
• Fights Like a Normal: Despite having psionic powers, Grifter usually depends on his own marksmanship skills and his training with the Coda to fight against Daemonites and other enemies and menaces, using his powers only in extreme cases.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Grifter once had both of his legs shattered. Thankfully for him, his healing factor meant that he eventually regained the use of his legs.
• Guns Akimbo: In pretty much all his post-Team 7 appearances, Grifter dual wields handguns.
• Gunslinger: Mostly of the Gun Fu variety, but he can bust out Improbable Aiming Skills if the need arises and/or circumstances permit.
• Heartbroken Badass: Grifter had it rough in the aftermath of ''Fire from Heaven''. Not only did his best friend, Michael Cray, sacrifice himself to stop the Big Bad, his teammate Spartan regained memories of his life as Wildstorm's first superhero John Colt - who who was a part of Jacob Marlowe/Emp's Kheran expedition and had a fling with Grifter's flame Zealot. At one point Grifter catches the two kissing passionately. "That's when the mask comes in useful," indeed.
• High-Altitude Interrogation: Cole has used this technique from time to time, such as when dangled a Department P.S.I. agent from a hospital window by his tie to get information on where Lynch (who was comatose at the time) was moved to, or during a brief scene from James Robinson's WildCATs run when he interrogates a Daemonite by hanging him upside down from the top of a building, Batman-style.
• I Know You're Watching Me: During Cole's first trip to I.O. headquarters, he makes a hidden camera watching him, and stares right at it. This is made all the more impressive by the fact that he was just a teenager with no training back then. I.O. Director Miles Craven even comments on Cole's amazing "perceptual awareness".
• Improvised Weapon: In Point Blank #2, Cole is fighting an IO agent, and resorts to shoving the agent's head into a toilet, which proves quite effective.
• Just Following Orders: When Cole and Lynch have an argument over Slayton's role in their fateful mission in Leningrad, Cole makes it clear he doesn't buy this excuse.
  Lynch: I paid for Leningrad. We all paid. You can't blame Slayton.
  Cole: If you say he was just following orders, I swear I'll—!
• Latex Perfection: Cole uses one of these to pose as Agent Brockmeyer when Commander Thomas Morgan interviews him in Gen 12.
• Meaningful Name: Not at first, granted, but eventually writers evidently cottoned onto the actual meaning of his name and Grifter started outwitting his enemies almost as much as outshooting them; it's also pretty much assumed that every time he's shown playing cards (which happens more often that one might think) he's probably cheating.
• Midfight Weapon Exchange: Grifter and his brother, Condition Red, end up swapping weapons while fighting Little Johnny Dollars' forces, so that Grifter uses one of his own V.A.D.s and one of Condition Red's guns, and vice versa.
• Mr. Vice Guy: sarcastic, standoffish, foulmouthed, not averse to a bit of petty crime on the side, occasionally a bigot, chain-smoker and a bit of a drunk. Still unambiguously on the side of the good guys.
• Noodle Incident: The Leningrad incident, first referenced in The Kindred mini-series, although that incident is eventually depicted in the pages of Team 7: Dead Reckoning.
  • When Grifter encounters an arms dealer in Grifter volume 2 #12, he mentions the last time they met was in Pamplona and had something to do with the Running of the Bulls.
• Odd Friendship: With Midnighter, who sometimes made a Teeth-Clenched Teamwork with Grifter to finish an enemy in common, as in their mini-series Grifter/Midnighter.
• Older Than They Look: In Sleeper, Holden Carver (who looks to be about the same age as Grifter) narrates that he'd heard stories about what a badass Cole Cash was since he was a little kid. He also mentions that Cash's been a special operative since the seventies. It varies from artist to artist, but Grifter looks to be in his early to mid-thirties at most. This is confirmed in Team 7, when one of the secondary effects of being affected by the Gen Active is his Healing Factor that makes him grow slower than the rest (probably having more than 50s when he joined WildCATs).
• Only in It for the Money: Grifter encounters more than a few of these types of mercenary. Whereas Grifter tends to be more principled and follow a code (most of the time, anyway), mercs like Tanager, Charlatan or Cole's old training officer Arp will pretty much work for anyone and do anything for the right price.
• Outfit Decoy: Grifter tosses one of Odyssey's men, wearing his mask, trenchcoat and gloves, in front of his comrades. The soldier gets riddled with bullets, and Grifter proceeds to pop up and gun the others down.
• The Paralyzer: Grifter's V.A.D.s have a non-lethal setting (that is, when they're portrayed as firing lasers and not bullets).
• Pillow Pistol: When Max comes back as a zombie and breaks into Cole's apartment in the middle of the night, Cole reaches under his pillow for a semi-automatic pistol.
• Psychic Block Defense: As a result of Zealot teaching Cole how to remove (as well as recover when necessary) his Psychic Powers, his mind is almost impossible (according to Tao) to break into. Emphasis on almost, though, seeing as Tao did eventually find a way in. Later on, Lynch gives Cole all-new, even more powerful psychic blocks, to the point where Cole is now immune to Peter Grimm's powers (which can even cut through Holden Carver's defenses, and are basically more powerful than even Tao's).
• Psychic Powers: The experiment he was part of gives him psionic powers, being one of the most powerful characters of WildStorm universe. However, he can lose control of it and be Driven to Suicide, so he prefers not to use it (unless in extreme cases) resorting to Fight Like a Normal.
  • The origin of his powers: in WildStorm (Team 7) he was part of a false mission in which all his team became guinea pigs for an experiment to create metahumans basing on radiation (called as the "Gen Factor"). This was changed with his reboot in New 52 with the Daemonites abduction got them as a side effect, discovered in the last numbers of his solo series.
• Ray Gun: Grifter's V.A.D.s.
• Remember the New Guy?: Cole and his friend Michael Cray witness their former Team 7 comrade Stephen Callahan and his family being ambushed by I.O. forces. When Callahan's wife Rachel is shot dead, Cole shouts out her name... even though they didn't have a single scene together, and she hadn't even been with Callahan for long.
• Unwitting Pawn: Everything Grifter does in Point Blank just furthers Tao's agenda; and, to add insult to injury, he's left with no memories of the whole thing at the end.
• Wall of Weapons: Cole has one of these in The Wild Storm.
  • The OG Grifter once found himself in the armory of the Authority's Carrier. Saying he was giddy with happiness would be selling it waaay short:
    Grifter: The choice isn't the only thing that's hard.
• Why Am I Ticking?: Mobster Little Johnny Dollar hatches up a slightly convoluted scheme to kill Condition Red by having him assigned to protect a woman who's set to take the witness stand against Little Johnny Dollar... except it turns out that the woman was working for Little Johnny Dollar all along; she's got terminal cancer and is in debt to him, and the mobster agreed not to go after her daughter if she let him place an explosive device inside her stomach so she could kill Condition Red for him.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Exposure to Gen Factor can give you psionic powers, but it might also make you insane.
• Wolverine Publicity: This is seen often in the first incarnation of WildStorm in which Grifter was one of the most known characters of this brand and was put into every issue they could do.
• Wolverine Wannabe: Grifter takes after Wolverine minus the claws, but otherwise possesses many traits including: he was a former military in Team 7 and part of the unwilling experiment of radiation to becoming a Human Weapon. Like most of his partners of the Team 7, he rebelled against their bosses and deserted to get a career as a superhero by his own, joining to the WildCATs. He has an advanced Healing Factor, in one time he was the "Betty" in the Love Triangle between the amazon Zealot and The Hero Spartan, and has the Wolverine Publicity for the WildStorm publisher.
• Would Hit a Girl: In Grifter's own words, "I don't like decking women— but what can I say? I get a little politically incorrect when my life is on the line."
• You Fight Like a Cow: Grifter loves doing this, even when he's sparring with someone.
  Cole: (fighting his old hand-to-hand instructor's new students) I remember when your flunkies showed talent. Things get so slow you have to recruit out of drunk tanks now?

Lord Emp

Jacob Marlowe

Species: Kherubim

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #1 (August, 1992)

Emp is one of several Kherubim that were stranded on Earth over a millenia ago. After losing and later regaining his memory, he started the WildC.A.T.S to fight Daemonites.

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• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: In volume 3 Lord Emp was becoming a High Kherubian Lord and wanted his arch-nemesis Kenyan to kill him as part of the ascension process. His body had become child-sized and shriveled but he didn't care because he was about to transcend mortal concerns.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Emp was Napoleon at some point.
• Crimefighting with Cash: Marlowe has used the money and resources of HALO to make things easier for his team, even more in the cartoon than the comics.
• Large and in Charge: Inverted - as Jacob Marlowe, Emp is the multi-millionaire financier as well as the team leader. He's also shown to be rather far below average height. (Four feet tall wouldn't be far off, though with scales being what they are in comics, it's sometimes hard to say.)
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: Lord Emp needs to ditch his corporeal body in order to complete his ascension into an Energy Being, but the rules dictate that he can't do it himself. Because the process of ascending releases enough energy to incinerate the killer, Emp tries to trick his long-time nemesis Kenyan into killing him, thereby killing two birds with one stone. However, it turns out Kenyan is apparently so obsessively attached to their ongoing rivalry that, unable to accept the situation, he kills himself instead, so Emp moves on to plan B, getting the Nigh Invulnerable Spartan to do the deed instead.

Warblade

Reno Bryce

Metamorphing Crossbreed Warrior

Species: Kherubim/Human hybrid

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #1 (August, 1992)

Reno Bryce, a green-haired freelance artist whose parents were killed by Daemonites. Lord Emp discovered him and revealed Bryce had half-Kherubim heritage, inviting him to join their team. His heritage gives him the ability to reshape his molecular structure, turning any part of his body into steel at will.

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• Absurdly Sharp Blade: His claws or any other bladed form he gives his hands.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Reno is an earth-born descendant of a member of the Kheran Shapers' Guild.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: He can change his hands into many shapes. He mostly turns them into claws and blades, but gets more creative after training on Khera.

Void

Adrianna Tereshkova

The Living Metallized Super-Entity

Species: Kherubim/Human Hybrid

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #1 (August, 1992)

Originally the Russian cosmonaut Adrianna Tereshkova, she gained powers when she was bonded to one of Omnia's Orbs of Power. Tereshkova is granted teleportation and precognition by the Void entity, allowing her to transport her team and predict their battles. Having predicted the need for them, she formed the WildC.A.T.s by reawakening Lord Emp.

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• Chrome Champion: Her only non-shiny part is her face.
• Famous-Named Foreigner: Void's real name is Adrianna Tereshkova, just like Valentina Tereshkova, who was a cosmonaut (and the first woman to be sent to space) just like Adrianna before becoming Void.
• Legacy Character: Similar to the case of The Spectre, this is a legacy where the powerful entity remains but its human hosts change. After Adrianna gets separated from Void, the entity merges with Spartan, and after leaving him, with Nikola Hanssen.
• Mission Control: Void's role is to find about threats and send the C.A.T.s against them.
• Teleporters and Transporters: Void can teleport herself and others when needed.

Voodoo

Priscilla Kitaen

Powerful crossbreed with the Sight

Species: Daemonite-Kherubim-Human hybrid

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #1 (January 1992)

"Look, Voodoo is just my stage name. It doesn't mean anything"

Priscilla Kitaen was a half-human/half-Kherubim hybrid who used to work as an exotic dancer in New Orleans before being rescued from the Daemonites by the Wild Covert Action Team, whose ranks she joined under her stage name, Voodoo. As a result of her alien heritage, she possessed a unique ability known as "The Sight", which allowed her to perceive a being possessed by a Daemonite and exorcise it from its host body. She was therefore important to both sides in the war. Upon joining the WildC.A.T.s she developed more significant and powerful psychic abilities as well as animalistic powers.

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• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: She is not actually a practitioner of Voudoun. Her stage name was merely an attempt to play up her exotic heritage.
• The Big Easy: She lived in New Orleans as a stripper.
• Expy: In her original incarnation, she was basically a palette and race-swapped version of Jean Grey.
• Fantastic Racism: When the team relocated to Khera, Voodoo was forced to live in a ghetto because of her mixed heritage.
• Half-Breed Angst: Voodoo is part-Daemonite. The knowledge that one of her ancestors belonged to an Always Chaotic Evil race causes her no shortage of grief, especially when the other WildC.A.Ts find out and shun her.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Despite being a former stripper, she is one of the nicer Wildcats.
• Human Alien Discovery: Voodoo was an exotic dancer saved by the Wild C.A.T.s who has the "gift" of knowing who was possessed by a Daemonite and who is not, also splitting the alien from the host. After joining the team and put in a coma by a bullet, she and his friends discovered the truth: she was a descendant of Daemonites with Kherubin roots.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: She somehow gained the ability to sprout claws from her fingertips at one point. Another story had her develop magnetic abilities.
• Robosexual: Voodoo when it comes to her relationship with Spartan/Jack Marlowe. She's a half-breed stripper from Florida and he's an alien android construct. Their relationship could be a homage to the relationship between the Vision and Scarlet Witch from Marvel due to Jack's continuous doubt of his humanity and Voodoo's continuous reassurance of him being the man she loves.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Zealot turned against her because of her Daemonite heritage, Voodoo quit the team.
• Super Zeroes: Her ability to see Daemonites makes her an asset to the team, but her lack of combat training made her a liability when she first joined. She later got combat training from Zealot.
• Telepathy: Her main power is the ability to read minds.
• Twofer Token Minority: She is mixed race (half-black, half-Kherubim) and bisexual.

Maul

Jeremy Stone

Massive Crossbreed Warrior

Species: Human-Titanthrope hybrid

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #1 (January 1992)

Dr. Jeremy Stone is a human-titanthrope hybrid. He's a Nobel-prize winning scientist that can grow to great size at the cost of intelligence, or grow smaller to get even smarter.

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• Dumb Muscle: Maul actually gets dumber as he gets bigger. He once got so big he forgot how to return to normal size. He is a bizarre case: while his power is that he can swap brains for brawn, in his "normal" form he's a nobel laureate so, when he doesn't grow too much, he retains enough smarts to be more like a Genius Bruiser.
• Genius Bruiser: Maul is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who gets dumber as he uses his powers to get larger and stronger. For a while, he was also able to make himself smarter by shrinking, but that turned out to leave him weakened as a side effect.
• Half-Human Hybrid: His alien ancestor was a titanthrope native to Khera.
• HULK MASH!-Up: He is a Nobel-winning scientific genius who can increase his size, bulk and strength, but at the cost of reducing his intelligence. His color scheme is also the exact inverse of the Hulk—purple skin with green outfits.
• Hulking Out: Maul has the power to grow in size and strength at the cost of intelligence. If seriously provoked he sometimes forgets himself and grows past the point where he can tell friend from foe.
• Logical Weakness: As his powers work by manipulating mass, someone that can manipulate atoms that can depower him. When he fought Captain Atom, Atom used his powers to manipulated his mass and turn him back into Jeremy.
• Purple Is Powerful: His skin turns purple when he changes size.
• Super-Strength: Maul's strength fluctuates with his size.

Additional Members

Condition Red

Maxwell Cash

Species: Human

First appearance: Savage Dragon #13 A (October 1994)

Grifter's younger brother.

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• Replacement Goldfish: After Grifter refuses to join Savant's team, she recruits Max since he's Grifter's brother with similar gun skills.

Mr. Majestic

Lord Majestros of Khera

Maverick Kherubim Master

Species: Kherubim

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #11 (June 1994)

A native of Khera (the same planet from which Zealot, Spartan, and Lord Emp hail), the warlord Majestros became stuck on Earth during the Kherubim/Daemonite War, and spent centuries fighting for justice in secret, eventually joining Team One. Centuries later, Majestic went public with his identity and became Earth's champion, in much the same way as Superman, but with a twist - Majestic, being a former warlord and soldier, is far more warlike and ruthless.

At one point, Mr. Majestic was shunted into the mainstream DC Comics universe, where his very different worldview brought him into conflict with Superman, though the two put aside their differences to battle Eradicator before Superman helped Majestic return home.

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• Adaptation Species Change: Sadly when he was Canon Welded into the DC Universe, the Kherubim mythology was thrown out the window and now he's just a human who was experimented on
• The Cape: Majestic is the Wildstorm Universe's equivalent of Superman.
• Expy Coexistence: Daemonite technology transported him to the DC Universe where he met his inspiration, Superman.
• Flying Brick: Majestros's body possesses a high degree of resistance to physical injury. He is nigh invulnerable and can survive bullets, explosions, lasers, nukes and the like without injury.
• Good is Not Nice: While Majestic is a hero who fights for justice, his idea of justice is very different from conventional superheroes. For one thing, he doesn't care about human concepts like fair trials or free will. He's also not above completely re-arranging the solar system in order to deal with a threat (although he did put everything back afterwards.)
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Majestic is very conescending towards humans, but he also has a genuine desire to protect them.
• Kryptonite Factor: Shown by Majestic, the Kusar Blades forged by the Kheran craftsmen are capable of rending beings of such high invulnerability levels as Superman and even Majestic himself.
• Landmarking the Hidden Base: Has hi Rushmore Sanctuary inside Mount Rushmore.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Majestic's body possesses a high degree of resistance to physical injury. He is nigh invulnerable and can survive bullets, explosions, lasers, nukes and the like without any injury.
• Older Than They Look: He was already a father when the Roman Empire was still around, but looks to be in his thirties.
• Old Superhero: Taken to the extreme in “The Big Chill” which features an aged, bearded, but still undiminished Majestic still around at the end of time.
• Parental Substitute: Ladytron essentially adopts him as her father figure. Why Majestic goes along with it is anyone's guess, but he does and he's actually quite serious about it.
• Really 700 Years Old: Like most Kherubim, his lifespans is measured in centuries rather than years or decades.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: when TAO tries his manipulative shtick on him, Majestic sums him up with one word before burning him to ashes - he calls TAO an "abomination." TAO came back that time but that doesn't make the moment any less epic.
• Superman Substitute: He's obviously a parallel for Superman and has the alien origin and the role as a Big Good for the WildC.A.T.s.

Savant

Kenesha of Khera

Species: Human

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #11 (June, 1994)

Savant is the daughter of Zealot and Mr. Majestic. She was raised as Zealot's sister and for most of her life (thousands of years) was unaware of her parentage. She and Majestic started the WildC.A.T.S replacement team after the original team was thought dead.

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• Adventurer Archaeologist: Over the years she eventually developed a love of history and became a pioneer in the field of archeology.
• Bag of Holding: She also came into possession of a mystic bag that seemingly has no bottom called the Tesseract Tote. She uses the bag to store many of her treasured finds, which usually she can somehow find and pull out of the bag's opening no matter what size or length the item inside seems to be.
• Family Relationship Switcheroo: She's the daughter of Majestic and Zealot, but was raised as Zealot's sister.
• Like Mother, Unlike Daughter: While Zannah loves fighting and bloodshed, Kanesha always preferred knowledge.

TAO

Tactical Augmented Organism

Species: Human

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #21 (July, 1995)

A test-tube grown super-intelligent man who once joined and then fought the WildC.A.T.S.

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• Artificial Human: His "mother" was a Petri dish.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: TAO's grasp of tactical, strategic thinking has achieved a seemingly transcendent level which utterly surpasses normal human consciousness.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Grifter ultimately deals with him.
  "Ah, shaddup."
• Break Them by Talking: TAO's specialty.
• Catchphrase: "Let us reason together ..."
• The Chessmaster: He just needs to manipulate a single villain to create a chain of events that cause a gang war.
• Compelling Voice: His inhuman perception allows him to see a persons deepest secrets and flaws after a few glancing moments or a conversation.
• Death by Irony: During the whole crime war arc he at one point mentions that every time he's in the same room as Grifter he expects a bullet to the back of the head. No points for guessing how he eventually dies and who does him in.
• Decoy Getaway: When pursued by the Wild C.A.T.s, TAO has the Daemonite shapeshifter Mr White replace him, so he is the one incinerated by Majestic.
• Fun with Acronyms: TAO stands for Tactical Augmented Organism.
• Manipulative Bastard: Usually TAO manipulates circumstances so that he has no need to fight. TAO's ability to manipulate others not only allows for a personal army to fight for him, but rarely do his enemies find themselves able to lift a finger against him.
• Mind Rape: TAO can quickly manipulate people using his words, forcing them to do what he wants or erasing specific memories. At one point he is shown completely undermining Stormwatch-member Fuji's self-confidence, rendering him nearly catatonic merely by having a short conversation with him.
• More than Mind Control: Uses logic on his smarter targets and emotional trauma on his simpler ones.
• Psychotic Smirk: Occasionally blossoms into full-on Slasher Smile.
• Smug Snake: TAO's a bona-fide superhuman genius, make no mistake, but he has one glaring flaw - he does NOT know when to shut up. He managed to talk Holden Carver into ripping his tongue out, Majestic into incinerating him with eye beams (it didn't stick but still), and Grifter into shooting him in the head (this one DID stick, if only because it came about at the tail-end of Wildstorm's existence).
• Super-Intelligence: TAO is superhumanly intelligent, especially when it comes to predicting and manipulating human behavior. His mind has been said to have entered a conceptual territory so far above from conventional humans that one might as well attempt explaining quantum physics to an ant. His I.Q. is said to be immeasurable by any human test and was said to have absorbed all of human knowledge by the time he was physically a teenager.
• Wicked Cultured
• Withholding the Cure: TAO claims to have the cures for AIDS and all forms of cancer, as well as a genetic patent on a strain of corn that will end world hunger forever. He uses these as bargaining chips when he gets in trouble. Majestic doesn't care.

Ladytron

Maxine Manchester

Species: Cyborg

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #21 (July, 1995)

A criminal from an abusive home who after being gravely injured in a shootout was turned into a cyborg.

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• Alliterative Name: Maxine Manchester.
• Book Dumb: Both a strength and a fault, Maxine Manchester isn't very bright nor is she all that levelheaded an individual, often charging recklessly into distressing situations without pause for thought.
• Odd Friendship: Ladytron regards Majestic as a surrogate father figure and for his part Majestic humors her. Their interactions are actually quite touching (and usually hilarious given that Majestic's as straight a Straight Man as they get whereas Ladytron... isn't.) and when TAO's manipulations cause Ladytron's nuclear power source to explode, Majestic makeshim pay.
• Dating Catwoman: After a fight against Overtkill (at the time when Wildstorm was part of a wider Image Universe), they decide to go to watch a movie together.
• Robotic Psychopath: Ladytron is basically the world's most annoying teenage girl with robotic death cannons installed.
• Too Dumb to Fool: When TAO tries his manipulation tricks on Ladytron, they simply don't work. She spells it out for him: He can influence the way rational people think, but she's a violent, stupid criminal — anything but rational. It's then immediately subverted when he switches tactics and uses effective emotional manipulation on her just long enough to take her out.

Olympia

Olympia Atreidae

Species: Daemonite

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #37 (April, 1997)

A peaceful Daemonite.

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• Token Heroic Orc: She is a Daemonite in the side of good.

Backlash

Jodi Morinaka Slayton

Species: Daemonite

First appearance: Backlash #9 (June, 1995)

Marc Slayton's daughter.

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• Affirmative-Action Legacy: She took her father's identity.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Her father is a half-Kherubim, making her a quarter Kherubim.

Nemesis

Lady Charis

Species: Kherubim

First appearance: Wildcats: Nemesis #1 (November, 2005)

A member of the Adrastea.

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• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Nemesis' Creation Engine Blades can cut through pretty much anything, including Majestic's body. Warblade's claws are also extremely sharp.
• The Empath: Nemesis.
• No Such Thing as Space Jesus: Nemesis' appearance and exploits are attributed to Greek goddess Nemesis.
• Talking through Technique: The Coda have a martial art that doubles as a language which Nemesis uses to talk past an immortal madman with microscopic vision and superhearing.

Mythos

Xeno

Species: Kherubim

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #37 (April, 1997)

A Kherubim martial artist.

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• Bare-Fisted Monk: He is a martial arts master.

Kenyan

Kenyan

Species: Human

First appearance: Wild C.A.T.S/X-Men: The Golden Age #1 - The Golden Age

A human gifted immortality by Lord Emp.

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• Canon Immigrant: He debuted as an antagonist in an Intercontinuity Crossover with the X-Men.
• Driven to Suicide: Emp tries to trick Kenyan into killing him to ascend, because the process of ascending releases enough energy to incinerate the killer, thereby killing two birds with one stone. However, it turns out Kenyan is apparently so obsessively attached to their ongoing rivalry that, unable to accept the situation, he kills himself instead.

Antagonists

Helspont

Helspont

Ruler of the Cabal

Species: Daemonites

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #1 (August, 1992)

One of the most powerful Daemonites in existence thanks to the Acuran body that he stole. He is leader of the Cabal and an enemy of the WildC.A.T.s as well as Mr. Majestic.

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• Arch-Enemy: He hates Majestic over any other C.A.T.
• Big Bad
• The Heavy: Helspont is not the only big bad in the series but is the most prominent.
• Skull for a Head: Helspont has a flaming horned skull for a head due to his possession of an Acuran host.

Daemonites

Savage Alien Foe of the Wild C.A.T.S

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #1 (August, 1992)

A reptilian alien race from the planet Daemon, who are capable of possessing host bodies.

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• Aliens Are Bastards: Daemonites are bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.
• Puppeteer Parasite: They possess human bodies to infiltrate society.

Pike

Pike

Chief Enforcer of the Cabal

Species: Human-Kherubim hybrid

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #1 (August, 1992)

Chief enforcer of the Cabal.

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• The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: Pike turns a new leaf after World's End, protecting survivors with a team of young legacy heroes.
• The Dragon: He is Helspont's main field agent, and remains working as such for the Cabal after Helspont's presumed demise.
• Half-Human Hybrid: He is a half-human, half-Kherubim hybrid.
• Meaningful Name: Pike seems to be a good codename to a villain carrying a baton or "pike" as his Weapon of Choice, but then we find his father's name is Daniel Pike, therefore "Pike" is the character's surname.

The Troika

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #1 (August, 1992)

A trio of super-powered mercenaries who work for other villains. They are Attica, H.A.R.M. and Slag.

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• Captain Obvious: H.A.R.M. loves to point out the obvious, although it was probably hardcoded into his AI. When transformed into a hover-like craft: "Entering vehicle mode!". Get hit by a Wild C.A.T.: "Damage!".
• Comforting the Widow: After H.A.R.M.'s death, Attica clearly tries this by impressing his widow Irene, to no avail.
• Magma Man: Slag.
• Un-Robotic Reveal: Only to the readers, as the heroes seemed to know beforehand, but when Ladytron takes H.A.R.M.'s helmet out, his organic brain is revealed. Likely Alan Moore retconned him from a robot into a cyborg so he could be killed.
• Villainous Friendship: Attica sees the Machinist as a friend and offers him a spot when he joins Defile's gang.

Kaizen Gamorra

Kaizen Gamorra

First appearance: Stormwatch #40 (October, 1996)

The dictator of the Asian island Gamorra (formerly Parousia) and a world terrorist. He actually is John Colt (or at least his body after his mind was transferred to the Spartan body), who replaced the actual Kaizen as part of Miles Craven's machinations. After his death, the real Kaizen Gamorra resurfaced in the pages of Storm Watch.

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• Dragon with an Agenda: He was put into office by Miles Craven, but follows his own plans, and when he works alongside Craven again, is more akin to an equal partner.
• Magic Plastic Surgery: Averted. While plastic surgery gave him features similar to the actual Kaizen, he still wasn't identical and had to cover that "Kaizen" had recieved the surgery due to injuries.
• Mecha-Mooks: His hunter-killers are technically cyborgs, but since their organic parts are corpses, they are mostly automatons with organic parts, save for some elite soldiers who keep their minds.
• The Paragon Always Rebels: John Colt was the greatest hero of Team One, and became an evil dictator.
• Split-Personality Takeover: An interpretation of Colt turning evil is that he had an evil second personality trying to arise, and he asked Majestic to kill him before that happened. However, the body regenerated after Majestic's eye beams burned it, with the evil personality in full control.

Black Razors

Black Razors

Emergency Tactical Response (ETR) Team

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #2 (September, 1992)

Covert military squads working under the intelligence agency known as International Operations.

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• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: They are mostly good guys who pursue the heroes for their vigilante actions.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Subverted when Emp shoots a Razor's knee. The aforementioned Black Razor, Benito Santini, gets more fleshed out in later issues and hates Emp for what he did.

Lord Entropy

Entropous

Species: Kherubim

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #8 (February, 1994)

One of the four Kherubim Lords.

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• Luke, I Am Your Father: He is Emp's brother, though in a variation, they both know and the surprise is for Void and the readers.
• Self-Serving Memory: Entropy remembers that Emp killed his wife, but he refuses to acknowledge that she was possessed by a Daemonite at the time and Emp killed her to save Entropy.

Tapestry

Tapestry

First appearance: WildC.A.Ts #10 (April, 1994)

An immortal sorceress who once imprisoned Zealot for 100 years.

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• Arch-Enemy: To Zealot, who she had enslaved for a century at one point.
• Evil Sorcerer: One who hailed from Atlantis.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Her outfits tend to expose all the way to her navel.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: In contrast to Zealot's red outfit, her outfits are usually purple.
• Warrior vs. Sorcerer: Her archnemesis is the Kherubim warrior Zealot. As Zealot is a Wonder Woman Wannabe, this arguably makes Tapestry the Wildstorm equivalent of Circe, who is also an Evil Sorceress and one of Wonder Woman's major enemies. Both even have a purple Color Motif.

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