Villainy Inc.
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Villainy Inc. is a group comprised of villains who battle Wonder Woman. They originally appeared in the Golden Age, and have reappeared as a modern-age team with a revamped line-up.
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[edit] History
[edit] Pre-crisis
Villainy Inc. debuted in Wonder Woman #28 (Vol. 1), in the last story written by series creator William Moulton Marston.
The villains (who were individually sentenced to prison on the Amazon penal colony Transformation Island and soon escape) pool their talents as Villainy, Incorporated; led by the Saturnian slaver Eviless. They are defeated by Wonder Woman and return to Transformation Island. The team consisted of:
- Blue Snowman (Byrna Brilyant) - A woman disguised as a man who uses the invention of "blue snow," a special form of precipitation that freezes everything it touches.
- Cheetah (Priscilla Rich) - A debutante and thief whose terrible feeling of inferiority periodically causes her Cheetah self to seize control of her personality.
- Doctor Poison (Princess Maru) - Leader of a Nazi spy ring whose ultimate goal was to wreak havoc in the US Army by contaminating the army's water with "reverso," a drug that "confuses the brain centers… [making] soldiers do the exact opposite of what they are told."
- Eviless - Criminal from Saturn.
- Giganta - An ape who is artificially evolved into a human strongwoman by Professor Zool.
- Hypnota - A stage magician who conceals her gender via masculine costume and false facial hair, who has the ability to mesmerize others with a glance.
- Queen Clea - The cruel blonde monarch who is the ruler of the Atlantean nation of Venturia - a subsea realm situated somewhere beneath the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean (Comics Cavalcade No. 18, Dec/Jan '46/47: "The Menace of the Rebel Manlings" until she is deposed by Wonder Woman in Spring 1944.
- Zara - Priestess of the Crimson Flame.
[edit] Post-crisis
Following the retcons in Crisis on Infinite Earths, the group's history began when they first menaced Hippolyta in the Golden Age. Cheetah, Zara, Doctor Poison and Hypnotic Woman (formerly Hypnota) were assembled by Queen Clea (it has not been revealed if Eviless or Blue Snowman were members, and Giganta was retconned into a modern-age villainess who joined later). The Atlantean monarch of the city Venturia enlisted the others to defeat her rival city, Aurania. They were repeatedly foiled by Hippolyta. (Wonder Woman: Our Worlds at War #1)
Later, Hippolyta's daughter Diana traveled back in time and discovered them in battle. Clea was defeated by Diana (who disguised herself as Miss America) and Clea's own daughter, Ptra.
Clea was not seen again for many years, save once. With a host of other villains, she allied with King Kull against the Justice League and Justice Society. She and her subjects fought alongside Blockbuster, but were easily defeated (Justice League of America #135).
In recent times, when all of Atlantis disappeared from the Earth, Clea again set out to conquer a land to rule. She assembled a new Villainy, Inc. consisting of:
- Cyborgirl (LeTonya Charles) - The niece of Dr. Sarah Charles, who required emergency surgery after a reaction to the "super-steroid" Tar. Her cybernetic implants give her all the same abilities as Victor Stone (Cyborg), but she has none of his sense of responsibility.
- Doctor Poison - The grandchild of the original Doctor Poison who continues her grandmother's grudge against Wonder Woman, though she holds her grandmother in contempt.
- Giganta (Doris Zuel) - A scientist whose mind was transferred first into the body of an ape, and later into the body of a circus strongwoman. She has the ability to grow in size, and she is now a modern-age villainess and did not exist in the Golden Age).
- Jinx - An elemental sorceress whose powers include the ability to command elements such as air, the manipulation of magical energy that she can manifest as offensive force bolts and green flame, the ability to dissolve matter, and create ground tremors.
- Trinity - A woman with three faces which are Time, War, and Chaos, each of which possesses its own power.
Together they descended upon the other-dimensional Skartaris. She used Cyborgirl to take control of the entire dimension. Clea's entire plan, however, was commandeered by Trinity. Trinity was in fact revealed to be a virus, engineered by the founders of Skartaris. When the "Trinity Virus" was reintroduced into Skartaris' governing computer system, the whole land began to regress and "devolve" to its origins. Wonder Woman managed to stop the process from becoming permanent, but still, some of Skartaris' inhabitants (including Clea) were lost in the de-evolution. (Wonder Woman #179-183, Vol. 2)
The team has not appeared since.
