Real Name

History: Patricia Walker was the only daughter of Joshua Walker, an aeronautical engineer, and Dorothy Walker, a comic book writer. While she was still a child her mother acted as her agent, helping her at modeling and commercial work. Dorothy Walker's greatest success was the creation of a comic book named after her young daughter, featuring romantic adventures of Patsy and her real-life friends as teenagers. The Patsy Walker comic book was very popular and continued for over a decade, as Patsy grew into and out of her teens. Soon after graduating high school, Patsy married her childhood friend, Robert Baxter (who had appeared in the Patsy Walker comic as her romantic interest). Baxter was in the officers training program of the Air Force, and Walker spent the next several years of her life on numerous Air Force bases.

While her husband was assigned to a security post at the heavily government-subsidized Brand Corporation in New Jersey, Patsy Walker met the Beast and learned his secret identity. Walker had long idolized "super heroes," and she elicited the promise from him that in exchange for keeping his secret, he would help her become a "super heroine." Walker's marriage eventually came to a bitter end, and she sought out the Beast, who was now a member of the Avengers, to remind him of his promise. Tagging along with the Avengers to investigate criminal activities at the Brand Corporation, Walker discovered the strength-amplifying costume worn by Greer Nelson in her identity as the Cat. (The man who financed the creation of the Cat, Mai Donalbain, was a former employee at Brand. His property, including the prototype Cat-suits, was later confiscated by the Brand Corporation.) Putting the costume on, Walker dubbed herself Hellcat and used her natural athletic abilities to help the Avengers.

Although she hoped to join the Avengers, Hellcat was persuaded by the Titanian priestess Moondragon to accompany her to Titan to undergo a period of training. During her stay on Titan, Hellcat's minor psionic potential was artificially enhanced by various electronic/organic devices and she was given extensive martial arts training. Upon her return to Earth, she met the Defenders and decided to accept their offer of membership rather than the Avengers'.

Hellcat remained a core member of the loosely organized Defenders for several years. Eventually she met Daimon Hellstrom, who in his costumed guise of the Son of Satan, joined the Defenders for a short time, and, after he was cured of his demonic aspect, found that she was in love with him. Renouncing her costumed identity, Patsy Walker decided to marry Hellstrom. The couple was married in Greentown, Ohio, where her father resided. The wedding, attended by several of her Defenders colleagues, was interrupted by her ex-husband "Buzz" Baxter who had assumed the costumed guise of Mad-Dog, and the Mutant Force. The Defenders repulsed the attack and Hellstrom himself subdued Mad-Dog. The Hellstroms then moved to San Francisco where they established themselves as occult investigators. In this capacity, they helped several superheroes in mystical problems, notably the Avengers' West Coast branch. In helping the Avengers, Pasty again donned the Hellcat costume and remained on hand to help them capture the villains Tiger Shark and Whirlwind.

Sometime later, however, Hellstrom's dark soul reasserted itself and Patsy was driven mad at the sight of it. She languished in a near-vegetable state for months afterward until the mercy-killing entity Deathurge sensed her despair and, at her request, freed her spirit from her body, effectively killing herself. She soon after contacted Earth from a spirit plane and announced her intention via radio to return in the near future.

Patsy had ended up in the realm of the demon Mephisto, fighting an eternal battle in the so-called Arena of Tainted Souls, alongside fallen Avenger Mockingbird. Months later, the Avenger villain Grim Reaper resurrected Patsy and Mockingbird, among others, tainting them with his hatred for the Avengers and setting them against the team. With the help of the Scarlet Witch, Patsy and the others reverted to their true personalities and aided the Avengers against the Grim Reaper before returning from whence they came. Before she disappeared, Mockingbird was able to send a warning to her husband Hawkeye about a plan Hellstrom was developing. Hawkeye and his team the Thunderbolts confronted Hellstrom and then used their sorcerous connections to go to Hell in order to restore Mockingbird. They were tricked however, by Hellstrom, and the Thunderbolts rescued Patsy instead, restoring her bodily to Earth.

Pasty remained despondent and depressed due to her perceived failures in life and time spent in Hell. She nevertheless presented a good front, wrote an autobiography and began a book tour. Shortly thereafter, Patsy returned to Centerville to find her high school rival Hedy had joined with the corporation that was built upon the Patsy comics fortune and turned Centerville into a tourist attraction. Patsy discovered the town was also infiltrated with demonic forces, led by the evil warlock Nicholas Scratch. Scratch had allowed a cult called the Sons of the Serpents to use the citizens of Centerville for their occult purposes, and altering the Avengers, Patsy resumed her Hellcat identity and defeated the Serpents alongside her team.

Patsy was still despondent about life when later Scratch's minions attacked Hellcat. She then uncovered a plot by the extradimensional villain Dormammu to take over the various dimensions of Hell, each led by different demons, among them Mephisto, Hellstrom, and Satannish. Hellcat helped Mephisto thwart Dormammu by uniting the demons along with the death gods Pluto and Hela. She also revealed Hellstrom's father was actually Satannish, a pawn of Dormammu. Ultimately, she escaped back to Earth by proving to Mephisto that he would be better served to have her on Earth. Revitalized by her adventure, Pasty rededicated her life to super heroics as Hellcat.

One day, Patsy's supernaturally-tinged senses brought her to the attention of a homeless man. She tried to recuperate him, and he turned out to be the Defenders' villain Yandroth the Magician, who began systematically attacking Earth by binding the spirit of Mother Earth itself. Patsy escaped and managed to contact the various members of the Defenders to stop him, re-forming the team after a long hiatus. As a result of the battle, several of the Defenders were cursed to continually band together, and Patsy and the remaining Defenders elected to stay together as a team to support them.

Height: 5 ft. 8 in.
Weight: 135 lbs.
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Red

Strength Level: Patsy Walker Hellstrom possesses the normal human strength of a woman of her age, ~height, and build who engages in intensive regular examisa. Her strength is extended, though not to superhuman levels, when she wears her Hellcat costume.

Known Superhuman Powers: Hellcat once possessed enhanced psionic abilities, due to the mental stimulation of Moondragon's Titanian technology. She could move small objects telekinetically, resist mental control, and on one occasion was able to generate a psychokinetic force-blast. Moondragon has since used her own advanced psionic powers to undo the effects of her psychic augmenter. Since then, Hellcat's psychic abilities have returned but to a far lesser degree than at their peak. She no longer has any psychokinetic ability, but she is still sensitive to certain psychic phenomena.

Abilities: Patsy Walker Hellstrom is a natural athlete who was coached in field combat techniques by the Avengers and the martial arts by Moondragon.

Paraphernalia: Hellcat wears a costume designed for Greer Nelson, formerly the Cat, which extends the strength, speed, and agility of any woman wearing it (though not to superhuman levels). The costume is outfitted with retractable, casehardened, steel alloy claws on both the gloves and boots, enabling Hellcat to rend brick or stone. Hellcat can employ her cable-claw, which straps to her wrist and uses a compressed gas firing mechanism to propel a four clawed grappling hook connected to a 30 foot length of steel-niobium alloy memory cable (that coils itself back into its spool upon rewinding), which she uses for swinging or tightrope walking.

Hellcat used a Shadow-Cloak confiscated from an Agent of Fortune for a brief period, employing it to move psychokinetically and to produce weapons from its inter-dimensional pocket. Eventually deciding it was too dangerous to use, Hellcat folded it up into its own pocket dimension.