Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Rescue Me: The Cheetah

In the "Rescue Me" challenge, I pluck one of Scourge's villainous victims from the mists of obscurity and give them a hypothetical makeover. I mean, even more hypothetical than my usual makeovers, in the sense that I have a policy against helping supervillains. In this case there's no harm, since they're dead!

This time I'm making over the old Captain Marvel villain, the Cheetah. This guy had a couple of aesthetic strikes against him. Starting with the fact his name doesn't even come close to matching his appearance. Since when do cheetahs have brown fur? The guy needs a full-body dye job, but I suppose that's impractical. (And speaking of dye jobs... look for an exciting personal announcement at the end of the week!) But I'll at least give him a new villain get-up. The one he had, with the Doctor Strange-size collar? And the chest-belt, whatever the hell that thing was for? It blew. Chunks. So here's how I would have dressed him.

mycheetahvillain

Since he got his powers from a Kree robot(!) I gave him a Kree-style costume to match! It's the whole "hero's opposite" thing, like Black Adam and the Reverse Flash. In this case, it means a cheetah head symbol based on Captain Marvel's star logo, a partial cowl like on one of my favorite costumes, and bikini "overwear" -- the only type of overwear I'd ever endorse. Muy macho!

Tomorrow: I continue the cat theme with Rescue Me: Lionfang!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the "Reverse costume" approach; one of my favorite tropes it is. Logical in this instance as well. Thoughtful.

And maybe it turns out cheetahs on the Kree homeworld look just like a cross between Werewolf By Night and G'Nort, so it's all good there too.

Anonymous said...

I cannot comprehend how a guy named "Cheetah" never had spots in his original design...and they're still missing in your re-imagining!

You could've at least gone for dots on the costume instead of on his fur proper.

For shame!

(I'm only critical because I love so much.)

Brandon Bragg said...

You should have a "Manimal Mustache Madness" week.

Jeremy Rizza said...

Chawunky: Thanks! I knew I was risking the design looking uninspired by basing it on an existing costume but I thought it made sense here. You're spot-on about the Kree cheetah, or "kreetah" as it's called. Also, it craps power stones. The Kree savannahs are just littered with power-bestowing gemstones.

The Thing: Aw, I love you too! I probably should have just gone ahead and dyed the fucker from head to toe. But since I didn't do that, I figured putting an actual cheetah pattern on his costume would just draw attention to the fact he doesn't look a damn thing like one.

Brandon: Haw!

Anonymous said...

It craps power-gems? How helpful!

Anonymous said...

You're making this look so easy, BB.