First Cheetah, Wonder Woman #6 CGC 9.4 From 1943, For Auction Today

Any comic book from 1943 that CGC grades at 9.4 is a remarkable fluke of history, and Wonder Woman #6 in that grade is up for auction today from ComicConnect. It’s the first appearance of Cheetah, who appeared in the Wonder Woman 84 movie. Oh, and it also had two covers printed onto the comic in error, making it a one-of-a-kind for the comic in question, which also helped keep its condition so high – the top cover is 7.5 separately, but the inside cover on which this is grade is at 9.4. That is the highest grade measured for the first appearance of Cheetah in the world.

It currently has 20 bids taking it to $40,000, but the odds are it will go higher. ComicConnect reminds us, “Most early Wonder Woman issues fell victim to wartime paper drives, spotty distribution, and neglect from boy comic hoarders who didn’t like icky girl books (and man, were they wrong). Thus, this comic is incredibly rare, maybe in the top-five-rarest Golden Age DC keys — there are just over 75 copies on the census, and if more than 100 to 125 copies are in existence, we’d be shocked. When copies do surface, throw out the price guide.” Because, yes, the price guide lists this as $17,000 for a CGC 9.2 copy, and this is way above that already. Prices are on the march…

Here’s the ComicConnect video celebrating the item and showing off its very specific appeal.

“And you thought modern supervillain origin stories were crazy? Check out the Cheetah, aka Priscilla Rich, a socialite and general all-around nutcase whose criminal inspiration was a split personality that manifested itself when Wonder Woman upstaged her at a charity event. Her alter ego, the Cheetah, appears as a hallucination in a damaged full-length mirror, causing the already unstable Rich to go full-on bugnuts, dress in a leopard-print leotard, and turn traitor, selling military secrets to the Axis. Told with William Moulton Marston’s usual propulsive prose and illustrated by H.G. Peter’s florid, hyper-surreal style, this is a neglected classic of the Golden Age, the kind of story that burned into young readers’ brains and refused to let go. Later writers and artists would try to rework and re-imagine the Cheetah’s origin, leaning into more mystic and fantastic realms, but the sheer unadulterated lunacy of this early gem is mighty hard to top.”