WANTED: Earth-Two's Most Dangerous Super-Villains

The Tigress

Personal information

Character History

Real Name: Unknown

 

Residence: Mobile 
Occupation: Criminal
First Appearance (Golden Age): Action Comics #1 (June 1938)
First Appearance (Post-Golden Age): None 

The full history of the Tigress is unknown and indeed, even her early encounters with primary adversay John Zatara have not been fully revealed.  Her first recorded case occurred in the summer of 1938 when she was involved in a series of train robberies.  Zatara had been following the case after two major robberies and when his mystical prognostication revealed a third, he and Tong attempted to intercept the criminals.  Unknown to them, an inside agent was assisting the thieves led by the Tigress who ambushed Zatara and Tong, fling them off the train.  Doing some detective work, Zatara identified the agent as Inspector Babcock, who had killed Detective Brady and used his clothing to follow Zatara at the prior train robbery and make him think Brady was in with the criminals.  As Zatara closed in, the Tigress ambushes him again, allowing her men to bind him in a burning house before fleeing to the next robbery.  Zatara barely escapes and this time has an ambush of his own, having tipped off the railmen to the theives code that guided their robberies, causing them to offload useless boxes.  Thwarted, the Tigress leaps from the train and escapes (Action Comics #1).

Over the next several months, the Tigress continued a series of brazen crimes.  She hired a gang of criminal pilots to murder men whom she had charmed into including her in their estate.  The Tigress would woo the men, obtain the legal documents and the criminal pilots execute them from the sky.  Zatara thwarted the plot but the Tigress again escaped (Action Comics #3).  Shortly thereafter, The Tigress learned on an extremely valuable emerald hidden in the Egyptian pyramids.  She contracted some local Bedouin warlords promising  they could have the remaining treasure if she could have the emerald.  Things went awry when Zatara arrived and her Arab assistant turned on her, capturing the emerald and attempting to sell the Tigress into slavery.  Zatara is ultimately successful and he and  the Tigress returned the emerald to its resting place (Action Comics #6).  The Tigress slips away and heads south where she attempts to fleece the Zulus out of the diamonds from their extensive mines.  Zatara intercedes and she is finally captured (Action Comics #7).

zatara vs tigress inks colors resize

African jails would not hold the Tigress and within weeks, she was free again.  The wily seductress makes her way to Tibet where the Mad Lama Jerbel has assembled a group of talented hypnotists who plan to use their abilities to conquer the world.  Zatara has attended to the disguise to determine Jerbel's intentions while the Tigress mingles with men of power as Madame la France.  At a dinner, each of the guests illustrate their powers including Zatara, who frightens Jerbel enough to have Zatara killed as a potential rival.  He imprisons the mage, who soon escapes with his assistant Tong and encounters the Tigress who the Lama has also condemned to death, believing that she is the one who invited Zatara to Tibet.  The three join forces, vanquishing Jerbel's forces and ultimately destroying the mage himself (Action Comics #9).  Weeks later, the two are again in proximity in Mongolia, pursuing the hidden treasure of Genghis Khan.  Zatara has learned of the treasure from an Explorer's Club in Shanghai and the Tigress has overheard and follows him.   Zatara arrives first and the villagers take him as a tomb raider and thwart his efforts.  The Tigress is thought to be trying to stop him and she is directed in his path, allowing them to converge on the tomb of Khan together.  They are confronted by a jinn who poses three tasks to reach the treasure.  Zatara's magic easily defeats the first two but the last, killing the jinn, offends his moral character and he refuses.  The Tigress, unencumbered by such scruples, shoot the jinn dead.  She and Zatara then split the treasure and return to America (Action Comics #10).

A year later, the Tigress was back to her old schemes.  She teams with a criminal impersonator known as the Mask but they are defeated by Zatara and told to leave the country (Action Comics #22). Undeterred, the Tigress is back several weeks later, chasing Zatara in another treasure hunt, only to find enormous jewels uses as bait by a madman to murder those who seek them.  The madman and most of the jewels are destroyed when the tower housing them is self-destructed (Action Comics #23).  Months later, she is entangled with crime boss Asmodeus, tho whether she was guilty of anything is unclear (Action Comics #25). In the following year, the Tigress became embroiled in a murder for robbery scheme in which a poisonous South America insect is used to induce a mottled death in his victim.  Zatara deduces the cause and pursue  the Tigress and her co-conspirators to South America, where they are defeated and the Tigress sent to an American jail (Action Comics #30).  Likely while in South America, she learns of an American youth's inheritance and kidnaps that kid while creating a doppelganger to receive the inheritance in his place.  Zatara catches wise and intercepts the criminals, allowing the true inheritor to claim his due rewards (Action Comics #35).  

In the final recorded case in 1941, the Tigress falls in with notorious criminal Frosty Parke.  When a bank robbery goes awry, the Tigress flees and Parke is wounded.  At the hospital for treatment, Parke overhears of an experiment mind control device and sneaks into the lab to try it out.  When he accidentally damages it, the feedback from the device gives Parke the power to command others.  Reuniting with the Tigress, the go on a crime spree and when Zatara intervenes, Parke uses the mind-control to order Zatara to leap off a building.  Zatara complies but then magically lowers himself to the ground as Parke's powers appear to have worn off.  As they have been given everything and not stolen it, Zatara offers to release them if they pledge to go straight and leave the city.  The both agree to do so (Action Comics #42).   Whether the Tigress actually reformed and what her final fate was on Earth-Two remains to be told.

tigress colors

Powers and Abilities

While the Tigress had no defined super-powers, she possessed an array of skills that aided her in her exploits including marksmanship and being a pilot.  Her primary skill however was manipulation.  She seduced and beguiled an array of powerful men and prominent crime lords, integrating themselves into their operations or making them her victims. She even charmed Zatara to some extent, such that he rarely fully enforced the legal penalties for her crimes and often allowed her to escape.  Her material resources are unknown, tho after that discovery of Khan's tomb would have been considerable assuming she was been able to retain them. 

Weaknesses and Limitations

The Tigress was an ordinary human female of average to above-average physical condition who could be injured or killed as such.   

Multiversity Villains

Multiversity

Earth-0

The Tigress is thought to have existed in  this timeline with a largely similar history as her Earth-Two counterpart (Secret Origins Vol. 2 #27).

Appearances

Issue

Comment

Reprinted in

Action Comics #1

1st Appearance – vs. Zatara

Limited Collector's Edition #C-26, Millienium Edition Action Comics #1, Facsimile Edition Action Comics #1, Action Comics 80 Years of Superman Deluxe Edition

Action Comics #3

vs. Zatara

 

Action Comics #6

vs. Zatara

 

Action Comics #7

vs. Zatara

 

Action Comics #9

– vs. Mad Lama Jerbel, with Zatara

 

Action Comics #10

Competes with Zatara for Khan’s fortune

 

Action Comics #22

vs. Zatara

 

Action Comics #23

vs. Zatara

Facsimile Edition Action Comics #23

Action Comics #25

Background appearance

 

Action Comics #30

vs. Zatara

 

Action Comics #35

vs. Zatara

 

Action Comics #42

vs. Zatara