Cheshire
27 years ago - Jade Nguyen is born. Her father, an American diplomat, abandons her mother who sells her into slavery.
16 years ago - 11-year-old Jade kills her owners and escapes. She becomes a pupil to mercenary & assassin Weng Chen.
10 years ago - 17-year-old Jade kills Weng Chen, and begins studyin under African poison master Spitting Cobra.
8 years ago - 19-year-old Jade marries Spitting Cobra.
7 years ago - 20-year-old Jade joins the Ravens after the death of Spitting Cobra, becoming an apprentice to Slade Wilson. She begins an affair with fellow apprentice Roy Harper.
6 years ago - 21-year-old Jade goes rogue from the Ravens, killing Liam Hawkleigh, stealing a nuclear warhead from Kobra and detonating it in Qurac, killing several members of the Teen Titans West.
5 years ago - 22-year-old Jade gives birth to Roy Harper's daughter Lian Harper while on the run. She is eventually captured by Roy's new Titans.
4 years ago - 23-year-old Jade manipulates her DEO imprisonment to take over the facility and kill her biological father. She is stopped by the Titans.
Cheshire's Comic HistoryCheshire made her first appearance in 1983's New Teen Titans Annual #2, a creation of series masterminds Marv Wolfman & George Perez. She was one of a solid half-dozen assassin characters with a whole variety of methods and tactics introduced in the issue. Out of a crowd that included characters specialized in spears, rocket launchers, throwing knives, as well as one guy who was literally just half a tank, Cheshire's weapon of choice was her poisoned fingernails. Perhaps more interestingly, however, she actually managed to out-fight Starfire, which for a book at the height of the New Teen Titans popularity is no mean feat. She's also a pretty classic George Perez design, with her asymmetrical costume.
She made a few more appearance in the regular series before 1986's New Teen Titans #20, which ended with the bombshell revelation that Roy had an affair with her while undercover, and that she had given birth to his daughter. |
This was followed by a series of short stories in Action Comics that told the story of Roy & Nightwing tracking her down and claiming Lian, but she also made appearances in a wide variety of other stories during this period, establishing her as a popular femme fatale, although there was a little disparity between the slightly sympathetic, product-of-the-trauma-of-her-childhood character that was sometimes seen interacting with the Teen Titans, and the ruthlessly efficient killing machine that you often saw elsewhere. That disparity was most on display in the 1991 Deathstroke series (which weirdly was also by Marv Wolfman), when Slade went undercover with the Brotherhood of Evil for Checkmate in a story with very obvious shades of G.I.Joe vs Cobra. It was revealed that Cheshire was actually the supremely evil leader of the Brotherhood for that story, which culminated in her stealing nuclear warheads to decimate the fiction middle eastern country of Qurac.
This deliberately evil act would loom large over all of her subsequent appearances. She would often appear in series featuring female heroes like Wonder Woman of the Birds of Prey, until she was finally recaptured by Arsenal during the Devon Grayson Titans series. From then on, it was understood that Roy, as he continued to be a major character in several series, would regularly bring his daughter to visit her mother in high-security prison. |
Our Cheshire StoryCheshire is obviously a very important character if for no reason other than her role as the mother of Roy's child, but she also presents a very interesting opportunity, because the disparity between the murderous and clearly unhinged assassin and the woman with a traumatic childhood and traumatic past that Roy fell in love with is actually a really interesting story path to take. She was clearly, from the very beginning, designed to be an archetypal femme fatale, and there' a reason that character trope is so common; because it really works when done well.
After we explained her backstory, we condensed a lot of the events of her life into one major sequence. We used the name of the group of female assassins Cheshire assembled in the pages of Birds of Prey, instead making it a group built by Deathstroke. This is where she meets and has her affair with Roy, but it is also where she goes rogue (by herself, rather than leading what appeared to be a massive paramilitary terrorist group) and detonates a nuclear warhead. We're using that event as a massive catalyst for change among the Teen Titans, and she actually works really well as the character driving a lot of that change. |
Cheshire's FutureWe should definitely at least take a moment and acknowledge the version of this character depicted in the animated Young Justice series. While the show has gone on to focus more on the relationship between Jade & Roy, as it began it actually invented the idea that she was the older sister of another member of the team, Artemis. She's actually an amalgam of a few other classic characters, and since we're USING those characters we won't be adapting this take on Jade, but we can at least say that this was an incredibly clever innovation, and we're also huge fans of this costume.
Meanwhile, we're actually adapting an idea that series; that Vandal Savage creates a team specifically to distract the heroes from his true new organization, the Light. We're making that team specifically designed to take out the new Watchtower, and Devon Grayson actually did that in her Titans series, so we're using that group's name; Tartarus. If you're trying to find someone specifically to mess with Watchtower member Arsenal, then you pretty much HAVE to go for Cheshire. She's a great baddie for anyone, as a supremely skilled and lethal assassin, but for Roy she just represents something else completely. |