Inspired by He-Man.org’s Roast Gooble Dinner podcast, welcome to PGPoA’s latest MOTUC Bio Discussion!

Battle Cat Bio

Real Name: Cringerâ„¢

A member of the Green Tiger Tribe, Cringerâ„¢ was saved from a parek-narr attack by a young Prince Adam and afterwards became his devoted companion for life. He assisted Adam during his quest to unite both halves of the Power Sword of He and afterwards was enhanced by its power to become Battle Cat, the Fighting Tiger of Eternia. Cringerâ„¢ is one of only a handful of allies who knows Adam’s secret and fights alongside the other Masters of the Universe, carrying He-Man into battle against the forces of evil.

Portrait Art Source: Marketing Art

To my knowledge, Battle Cat has received only one original story in the various He-Media: in the Filmation episode “Battlecat,” young Adam rescues a green kitten from a “sabrecat,” and adopts him. Teela and the other kids call him “cringer” because of his scaredy-cat nature, and the name sticks. Later, after Adam learns to turn into He-Man, he discovers he also has the ability to turn Cringer into Battle Cat. The only other thing that comes close to an origin story is in the DC miniseries (my personal favorite piece of MOTU fiction), where Battle Cat refers to the jungle as the “place of his birth and youth” (though he “hates it”).

The MOTUC bio introduces some new elements. First, there’s the “Green Tiger Tribe,” which seems to prefigure Gygor and his yellow apes and perhaps Panthor of the Purple Tigers? (Sounds like a youth league basketball team.) I’m not sure I need a “Green Tiger Tribe.” While the bio is appreciatively silent on the question of whether Battle Cat can talk, allowing fans to decide that for themselves, I would think any species that can form a tribe has to at least be able to communicate amongst themselves–so MOTUC Battle Cat is possibly as intelligent as the talking animal of the Filmation cartoon, and probably more intelligent than the BC of the Millennium era.

We learn a little more about Adam’s relationship to the Power Sword. Apparently Adam actually went on a “quest” to find the sword halves. This part of the MOTUC story still really intrigues me, and I hope we find out more eventually (another reason we should have gotten an Adam bio). Note that the whole “Power Sword” and “Sword of He” thing was still developing here–it’s referred to as “The Power Sword of He.”

Unlike the Filmation cartoon, in the MOTUC bio the kitten Cringer is menaced by a “parek-narr,” a kind of big rhinocerous-thing from the Millennium cartoon.

There’s not really that much to this bio. Aside from the relatively innocuous “Green Tiger Tribe” angle, it doesn’t introduce anything groundbreaking to the Battle Cat legend, nor does it fundamentally alter the character or his background in any way. Given the choice of major changes for the better, no major changes, or major changes for the bad, no major changes is fine with me.