The Fantastic Felines were originally conceived as a spoof of the Fantastic Four, taking their powers and applying them to some TMNT-style cat mutants. However, I ended up reusing them for something, and liked them enough to make them canon to my Power Universe superhero setting, tweaking their powers so as to not just be a complete knock-off of the original FF. Instead, they were just knock-offs of other existing Marvel characters in cat form.
In their main canon, the Fantastic Felines were creations of the Illuminati-esque genetics corporation known only as “the Company.” The Company primarily battled their own renegade creations, the Mutant Force, and to that end, created several teams of powerful “creature mutants” to combat them, several of whom just ended up going rogue and fighting their creators anyway. Seriously, the Company is probably responsible for like 70% of the Power Universe’s superhero and supervillain characters, because they kept creating them, and they just kept breaking free or deserting their posts or whatever. Really makes you wonder just what exactly the plan or even the goal was.
Shared Abilities
All members of the Fantastic Felines are humanoid cat people, similar to the Khajiit in the Elder Scroll games and the cat-folk in the SWAT Kats cartoon. This grants them the minor perks you’d expect of cat-folk: better balance and agility than the average human, natural claw and fang weapons, better hearing, and low-light vision. Otherwise, they have the same limits as humans in terms of their base anatomy.
SPIDER CAT
Powers and Abilities: He’s got all the powers of Spider-Man, except he can make his own webs and doesn’t have Spider-Sense.
Description: Spider-Cat is the leader of the team, brave, daring, and highly intelligent. Originally the Mr. Fantastic analogue of the group, he retains Reed’s personality type despite the shift in powers.
ICE CAT
Powers and Abilities: Basically has the powers of pre-Omega Ice Man, firing “cryobeams” to flash freeze things and make ice constructs. He can make a layer of ice armor over himself, but can’t actually turn into living ice.
Description: He’s the Human Torch analogue, with his powers reversed. The swashbuckling hot-head of the group.
STRONG CAT
Powers and Abilities: Luke Cage-level strength and durability.
Description: Yep, he’s the Thing still, just without the rock body. Complete with that street tough with a heart of gold attitude.
LASER CAT
Powers and Abilities: Can create Invisible Woman style force fields and fire Cyclops-style laser blasts from her hands. She’s not nearly as powerful as them, though.
Description: She was the Invisible Woman parallel of the team, and retains that personality, being the level-headed protector of the team. Her powers half-stayed the same, even.
MIMICAT
Powers and Abilities: Has all the powers of the other Fantastic Felines, but only at half power.
Description: When I last used this team for a tournament, I retroactively added this guy in. Naturally, he’s the Super Skrull analogue, and his story is that he was created by the Company to eliminate the Fantastic Felines for their betrayal.
Initially, he was easily able to best the Cats individually, since while he couldn’t match any single Cat in power, his variety of abilities allowed him to overwhelm them. However, once the Cats were able to take a second shot at him, their teamwork quickly proved more than a match for Mimicat.
However, as with nearly all their creations, Mimicat ended up breaking the Company’s control. (Seriously, who the hell was handling the command duties?) Unlike the other Cats, he hadn’t really had the chance to develop a personality or experiences, leaving him a near-child once the control was broken. He had no real grudge against them, having simply operated under his orders, but acknowledged that the Cats didn’t seem like bad people.
The FF opted to take him in as a fifth member and slowly help him adjust to his freedom and normal living, or at least as normal as renegate animal mutants could manage. Grateful to his new family, Mimicat became a dedicated teammate. Since he had their combined powers, albeit in diminished capacity, he proved to be an excellent support unit for the team.
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