Selene (comics)

Selene, the second Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, is a fictional supervillain in Marvel Comics. Her first appearance was in New Mutants (v1) #9.

History

Selene is a psychic vampire, with vast magical and psionic powers. She is associated with the Hellfire Club inner circle. She is an immortal of uncertain age (centuries or millennia old), and an enemy of the X-Men.

Her long life is attributed to the fact that she is a psychic vampire, able to drain the life from others to extend her own. Her name derives from the ancient lunar deity Selene, daughter of the Titans:Hyperion and Theia.

She has claimed to have already been old when mankind was just emerging. Assuming her definition of mankind only includes Homo sapiens, the only actually surviving species of the genus Homo, this would place her birth in or before the Upper Paleolithic.

Uncanny X-Men #191-192 (March - April, 1985) revealed her to have been an old enemy of sorcerer Kulan Gath. Kulan Gath was active during the Hyborian Age (before any recorded civilizations) and is known to have faced both Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja. In fact Sonja reportedly managed to kill him and his spirit would not manifest again until Marvel Team-Up #79. This would prove that Selene herself was active at least as early as the Hyborian age. She has been suggested as the oldest mutant. Otherwise, the earliest known mutant is Apocalypse, born in the 30th century BC.

Selene is assumed to have been wandering the world for millennia. In relatively recent times, she was trapped for centuries in the Amazon in the Romanesque town of Nova Roma (New Rome). She was worshipped as a goddess and worked to maintain the isolation of the town so she could maintain control. She was able to marry several times and have descendants. These include Amara Juliana Olivia Aquilla. Her most recent known husband was Marcus Domitius Gallio, a Senator.

Selene directed her worshippers to undertake tasks that eventually allowed her to leave Nova Roma. After she left the town, the citizens regained their memories and sought to return to their previous lives. Later stories attempted to suggest Nova Roma had been an illusion, sustained by Selene, and later the mutant known as Empath. This was ultimately disproved by Magma, who discovered that the supposed revelation of Nova Roma being an illusion was a ploy to steal her away from her home and torment those who loved her. It is highly likely that Selene was the one who made Magma think Nova Roma was not real.

Of all the X-Men and their related teams, she possesses particular hatred for Magma and Rachel Summers. In particular, Rachel almost killed her once, before being stopped by Wolverine. She was most recently seen during the latest membership change in the Hellfire Club, where she apparently has been kept prisoner beneath the building. She tried once again to take vengenance on Rachel, but was thwarted in this attempt as well. Selene currently remains trapped beneath the Hellfire Club headquarters.

Powers

Selene appears to be both a powerful mutant and a demon sorceress. She has vast psionic and magical abilities. She can animate, shape and control fire and inanimate objects, such as stone, and she can reduce them to dust at will. These powers are derived in part from magical arcane arts she has learned throughout the millennia and in part from her mutant psionic gifts. The extent of her sorcerous powers is unknown but presumed to be vast. She was considered a threat to Kulan Gath who had incredible mystical power.

Another feature of her psionic powers is the ability to hypnotize people in her vicinity, and she has limited mind control powers. Selene also has moderate telepathic powers as evidenced in her psionic battles with Professor X, and her use of telepathy to select victims from whom she can drain life. She also is able to switch bodies with another person. In recent issues, Selene has appeared to be composed of shadow. In this form, she can manipulate tendrils of shadow to ensnare victims.

Selene has enhanced physical strength; entailing that she can lift somewhere between 900 pounds and 2 tons. The amount of energy she has retained from her victims does correlate somewhat with her physical strength and resilience. She can move inhumanly fast, hundreds of miles per hour, for short bursts. Accompanied by her ability to hypnotize or mind control her enemies, this can allow her to appear to teleport: in reality, she is simply moving faster than the human eye and mind can follow while those around her are momentarily distracted. She also appears to be immune to conventional injuries: Sunspot once plunged a knife into her heart to no effect.

Selene is a psychic vampire. She can drain the lifeforce of others to sustain her own. Her victims normally die; their bodies reduced to dried gray husks. It also seems that the better the disposition of the victim, the better he or she "tastes" to Selene. It has also been hinted that she can turn someone into a psychic vampire like herself, as she tried to with the New Mutants member Psyche (later known as Mirage). Whenever Selene over-exerts herself when using her powers, she ages significantly. Again, by draining the life-force of another being she is rejuvenated. As long as she does so, Selene appears to be immortal.

Other appearances

Selene appears as the final boss of Gambit's stage in the 1992 video game, Arcade's Revenge.

In Rise of Apocalypse Selene is one of the many characters to make a cameo. She is a captive of Apocalypse's citadel, and the X-Men free her as part of a deal they made with Sebastian Shaw earlier in the game. Selene promises to give them information, but upon being freed reveals she had no information, and had only said so so the X-Men would help her.

External links

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History

Powers

Other appearances

External links