Who's This? The mother of Speedy's child.
The facts: The French-Vietnamese assassin was introduced as a New Teen Titans villain in the team's second Annual in 1983, but it's her specific connection to Speedy that's made her important to DC continuity. He fathered her daughter Lian while undercover. As a mercenary, she's partnered with Deathstroke, the Birds of Prey, the Secret Six, the League of Assassins, and the Titans themselves. The New52 version appears in Grifter and Aquaman stories.
How you could have heard of her: Cheshire has had a presence in both the Rebirth and Infinite Frontier "eras" of DC Comics as THE female assassin of note (kind of like Elektra is to Marvel), currently wearing the costume she wore on the Young Justice animated series.
Example story: Tales of the Teen Titans #51-52 (March-April 1985) by Marv Wolfman, Rich Buckler, Bob Smith and Mike DeCarlo
Watch out world! First appearance of Qurac and its President Marlo! He wants Adeline Wilson (former wife of Deathstroke, mother of Jericho, and current head of the freelance intelligence agency Searchers Inc.) because she has information of Kyran (a fake Iraq deserves a fake Iran), and he's hired Cheshire to kidnap her. And if the Titans get in the way? She'll get a bonus for every kill. Driven by Roy-colored subplots, she agrees to his terms.
In New York, Searchers Inc. proves easy to infiltrate, and we get to see Cheshire in action. She's fast!
She's agile! She's dangerous! And she... calls everyone "Hon", "Precious" and "Sweets" a lot.
And she can make mistakes. Not that anyone should expect a dowdy old lady to be an old O.S.S. operative who's still got it. But honestly, her patter is terrible. I don't know if it's supposed to be some kind of distracting flirting, but she sounds like a waitress who's come to refill my cup of coffee. It doesn't help that Adeline and "Icy" were just calling each other "Sweets" a page earlier. Sorry Marv, this doesn't pass the scripting test. Anyway, though caught by surprise, Cheshire soon gains control of the situation.
She spikes the old woman with a shard of broken flooring and puts Adeline to sleep with her specially treated nails. And then Jericho shows up, and she's done her homework. If he can't lock eyes with hers, he can't possess her, but her peripheral vision is more than equal to the task.
Somersaulting through a sequence of panels, she puts Jericho down but SADLY and ILLOGICALLY doesn't take the bonus kill! What?! Ok, she's on a time crunch, but how long would it have taken? And she's on a time crunch because she wants to interrogate Adeline herself before delivering her to Marlo.
Roy Harper - he does things to a girl, y'know? We don't know what beans Adeline might have spilled, but in the next issue, Jericho gets a rematch and doesn't do much better. Until he remembers there's more to his powers than just possessing opponents.
Hiding inside Amber, his mom's Pam Grieriest agent, he surprises our slick assassin and gets a lucky shot in. By the time Adeline is freed, she's put some distance between herself and Marlo's sinking ship.
Cheshire is lucky to have a personal relationship with a Titan because otherwise, her shtick is fairly generic, especially if she's going to sound like she's from the American Midwest. How is this character Franco-Vietnamese? She's got a good look (George Perez for the win), but there's probably a reason I confuse her with Lady Shiva 5 times out of 10.
Who's Next? The Doom Patrol's leader.
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