Who's Dr. Cyber?

Who's This? A beauty hater.

The facts: Created for 1968's Wonder Woman #179 by Dennis O'Neil, Mike Sekowsky and Dick Giordano, Dr. Cyber was a femme fatale type who designed to plague Diana during her powerless spy phase, and appeared consistently in that era. After she was disfigured (in Wonder Woman #187), she was given a mask and a bigger reason to hate Diana Prince - her beauty. She stopped appearing in 1976, but returned with the costume from the Who's Who entry in the early 80s and finally killed in WW #321. Of course, she'd died before and might have come back, but the Crisis hit, Wonder Woman's history was rewritten and Dr. Cyber wasn't in it. At least not until The Power Company #1 in 2002, the Enginehead series, and then a few issues of Wonder Woman in the mid-2000s. There she had merged with a living computer.
How you could have heard of her: There is a different, cybernetic Dr. Cyber as of Rebirth, and an A.I. by that name in the animated film Wonder Woman: Bloodlines, if you want to count them. Gloria Marquez, who previously appeared in the Wonder Woman (1975) TV series, is revealed to be Doctor Cyber in Wonder Woman '77 Meets The Bionic Woman, and this, I'll count!
Example story: Wonder Woman #200 (June 1972) "The Beauty Hater!" by Dennis O'Neil and Dick Giordano
Diana Prince and current partner Jonny Double have just escaped something or other and are making their way through the snowy mountainside when a St. Bernard walks up to them with a keg... of nitro!
It was defending a small cabin that turns out to be less than cabin-like inside, and going by the art collection, it belongs to a certain "beauty hater".
Then, zealots in robes from the Tribunal of Terror show up, get beaten up by Diana, and the heroes steal their VTOL. But they're shocked to find that the aircraft is being remotely controlled, guided to Dr. Cyber's location (ah, finally). Cyber and her acolyte Dr. Moon are waiting for them, and you'll be happy to know that Cyber was behind the Tribunal. It all comes back to her.
Now *I* know and *you* know that this is a Dr. Cyber story, and that they're not showing her face because she was presumed killed a year ago (as publication flies). So that's why the high collar. And to withhold it longer - and because she's an unpowered mastermind type - Diana and Jonny have to deal with a number of henchwomen first.
Ridiculous, but if you've seen James Bond flicks from this period, probably not that much. Note the "C" in front of the cyber-cycles, giving away who's behind it all. Diana knows before the reader knows. She eventually falls into a dungeon filled with buxom beauties chained to pillars and staring vacantly, as if drugged. Diana is soon zapped by an automated system and chained to a wall - it's like the good old days! - at which point, Cyber finally reintroduces herself.
Yes, that mask would have been a dead giveaway. Cue villain explaining her scheme - rebuilt the tribunal to destroy all who traffic in feminine beauty, discovered a serum to bend people to her will, yadda yadda...
She's been kidnapping girls to insert her brain into one of their bodies, but with Diana RIGHT THERE, she's picked her winner. They put Diana under and Cyber assists Moon in the surgery - I guess it's not an immediate transfer!
But Diana Prince was faking - she studied yoga! - and she manages to free herself before the scalpel comes too close. A physical struggle between Prince and Cyber ensues, and...
So Dr. Cyber is presumed killed AGAIN. At no point do they check the body. It's not that big a knife, guys. She'll be back.

Cyber is a character that works well in a superspy setting, but once Diana regained her Amazon powers, evolutions of the character in a more superhero-centric context didn't do so well. I don't see why she needed those changes. There's no reason she HAD to go toe-to-toe with Diana physically. It degraded the character to uselessness over time.

Who's Next? Not Skeletor.

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