Tigra

Greer Grant Nelson started as the Cat, a costumed hero created in 1972 as part of Marvel's push for female-led titles, and lasted four issues. Two years later, mortally wounded, she was saved by the Cat People, an ancient race who transformed her into Tigra, a genuine were-woman with fur, claws and heightened animal instinct. The transformation was permanent and it made her one of the Avengers' most physically distinctive members.

Her modern history is defined by one of the ugliest scenes Marvel has published. During the New Avengers run, the Hood beat her savagely and filmed it to intimidate the superhero community, a sequence that has driven her characterisation ever since, through Avengers Academy where she taught the next generation, and through her long campaign to make the Hood pay. Tigra is one of Marvel's more sympathetic long-haul survivors.

Linda Fite and Marie Severin created Greer Nelson as the Cat in 1972, one of four female-led titles Marvel launched that year. The book was cancelled after four issues, and Tony Isabella and Don Perlin transformed her into Tigra in Giant-Size Creatures #1 in 1974, folding her into the Cat People mythology.

She joined the Avengers in the late 1970s and became a mainstay of the West Coast Avengers. New Avengers #35 in 2007 featured the Hood's brutal filmed assault on her, an intensely controversial sequence whose fallout ran through Dark Reign and Avengers Academy, where Tigra served as a teacher and had a son, William.