Vanessa Kapatelis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vanessa "Nessie" Kapatelis is a fictional character, the daughter of David and Julia Kapatelis, first appearing in Wonder Woman (volume two) #3. She later became the third Silver Swan.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Nessie was among the first people to meet the Amazon princess when her mother, Julia, took in Princess Diana when she first arrived in the United States. At first, she was jealous of Diana's beauty, but after Diana had rescued her from Decay who had magically aged her by decades only to be restored by the Amazon and the two got to know each other better, Nessie started to love her as an elder sister. The high-school student would sometimes dream of fighting evil alongside Diana.

The trauma of her father's death while she was a kid and the later suicide of her best friend Lucy made Vanessa go over the edge and she began to blame herself for everything bad things that would happen to the people whom she cared about. Meanwhile, Doctor Psycho started to cause her to have nightmares. To help her daughter recover, the school counselor told Julia that Diana had to leave their house.

Nessie eventually recovered but she could not forgive her mother for making Diana leave and she then started to blame Diana for abandoning her. Her mixed emotions were a perfect target for Circe who decided to use her to help get her revenge upon Diana. Dr. Psycho and Circe used mental conditioning and physical implants to transform Vanessa into a new Silver Swan and then released her against her former friend.

After Circe was defeated, Diana took Nessie to a hospital in Buenos Aires so she could heal. While she was recovering, Sebastian Ballesteros, the man behind Nessie's transformation, abducted her. Veronica Cale, a woman who hated Diana very much, then bought Nessie from him and transformed her further into a cyborg, and then sent her back to fight Diana. However, this time when Diana defeated Nessie, she begged Doctor Leslie Anderson to operate on her and remove the cyborg implants. Diana then sent her to Themyscira for recovery. Vanessa's recovery from her ordeals has been slow.