Selene (comics)
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| Selene | |
 Selene Art by Mark Beachum |
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| Publication information | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | New Mutants (v1) #9 (November 1983) |
| Created by | Chris Claremont Sal Buscema |
| In story information | |
| Alter ego | Selene Gallio |
| Species | Human Mutant |
| Team affiliations | Lords Cardinal of the Hellfire Club Externals |
| Notable aliases | Black Queen, Black Priestess |
| Abilities | Superhuman physical attributes Telepathy Telekinesis Animation and control of non-living materials Flame manipulation Ability to drain the life force of others |
Selene Gallio is a fictional character, a comic book supervillainess from the Marvel Comics universe. The character first appeared in New Mutants vol. 1, #9. She is a mutant, and an enemy of the X-Men often associated with the Hellfire Club's inner circle.
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[edit] Fictional character biography
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.
Selene was revealed to have been an old enemy of sorcerer Kulan Gath.[1] 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 the modern era[2]. Thus, Selene was active at least as early as the Hyborian age.
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.
In Nova Roma, Selene attempted to kill Amara Aquilla. She knocked Amara into a lava pool, thereby releasing her latent mutant powers, as Magma. Selene fought and defeated Magma, and plotted to turn Danielle Moonstar into a psychic vampire like herself and conquer the world. Selene fought the New Mutants, and was cast into lava and buried alive.[3]
Selene directed her worshippers to undertake tasks that eventually allowed her to leave Nova Roma. In New York City, she nearly seduced and attacked the Juggernaut. She attacked Phoenix II and fought the X-Men.[4] Selene soon became the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. She was then captured by her ancient enemy, Kulan Gath.[5] She was later revealed to have been manipulating a power struggle within the Hellfire Club.[6]
After Selene left Nova Roma, 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 possible 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. However, she gained limited mobility from an alliance with Donald Pierce. She tried once again to take vengeance on Rachel, but was thwarted in this attempt as well. Selene remained trapped for a time beneath the Hellfire Club headquarters.
[edit] After M-Day
Selene was one of the few mutants to retain her powers after the events of M-Day.
Selene, disguised as an old woman, befriends Wither and they live together in Mutant Town.[7] She encourages him to use his powers and not be afraid of his natural gifts. She then asks him if he would use his powers to save his or her life. She had been killing a large number of people by draining the life out of them, and during her last feeding her disguise was spotted by a witness. She reveals to Wither that Laurie has died; while he was away, she was attacked by the police and managed to kill two of them before being shot multiple times. Wither arrives and kills the other two officers, only for Selene to drop her disguise, telling him she is immortal and that they are two of a kind and should be together. She tells Wither that she will be his queen if he agrees, then kisses him, and he consents.
[edit] Powers and abilities
Selene is both a mutant and a powerful sorceress. She possesses a wide range of superhuman abilities, but it has never been clearly defined which of these are her actual mutant abilities and which are skills derived from magic or other sources.
Selene is a "psychic vampire" with the ability to sustain herself by psionically draining the life force of other human beings into herself. If she drains a person's entire life force, the victim dies and crumbles to dust in seconds. If Selene only drains the victim's life force partially, she achieves a measure of psychic control over her victim's mind, thereby subverting them to her will. Through unknown means Selene can also cause a human being to become a psychic vampire like herself, but be subordinate to Selene's own will. Selene's youthful appearance and vitality depends upon her absorbing the life forces of one or more people on a regular basis. This restores Selene to a youthful and healthy appearance when she has been injured, or when she over-exerts her other powers, and sustain her centuries-long life. A side-effect of this process is that Selene remembers the life of anyone she absorbs.
By using the absorbed life energies that sustain her, Selene can enhance her physical strength, speed, stamina, agility, reflexes, and durability to superhuman levels. The amount of energy she has retained from her victims does seem to correlate somewhat with her physical strength and resistance to injury. Selene can momentarily move at superhuman speeds rivaling those of Quicksilver, though this requires a heavy expenditure of energy and can cause her to age rapidly and require more life energy immediately. It is not known how often Selene must drain a human's life force in order to survive. Great expenditure of power causes Selene to age rapidly, but she can rejuvenate herself by absorbing more life force.
She appears to be immune to most forms of conventional injury; she has survived both a knife wound and a crossbow bolt to her heart with no apparent strain or lasting effect. While not indestructible, Selene's healing ability enables her to endure injuries without lasting harm or even feeling pain. She once survived and recovered completely from molecular discorporation, though it took considerable time to reconstitute herself.
Selene possesses formidable telepathic powers that allow her to blend her own psychic signature into the background thoughts around her, making her difficult for other psionics to locate or track. Selene is not as powerful as other high-order telepaths such as Professor X or Jean Grey, and is vulnerable to psionic attack should she be located. She often uses her telepathy to induce a hypnotic trance in others, and then slips away at superhuman speed, leaving them with the impression that she simply vanished. She is also telekinetic and uses this power to levitate herself and others using this ability, but cannot fly like other telekinetics. She can also create powerful telekinetic shields around herself. Selene can psychokinetically manipulate inorganic matter on a molecular level by projecting part of her absorbed life force into it, levitating and animating nearly anything within her line of sight, or reducing objects to dust at will.
Selene also has the ability to control and manipulate fire, though she cannot create the fire herself. By concentrating on flames, she can manipulate them for a variety of uses. Whether this is a facet of her psychokinesis or a separate power is not clear.
Selene possesses considerable magical abilities and extensive knowledge of sorcery, enabling her to cast and counteract spells. While the full extent of Selene's magical powers isn't known, her greatly extended lifespan has given her great knowledge and experience sufficient to be considered a threat to Kulan Gath.
In more recent appearances, Selene has been depicted as a being of semi-substantial living darkness with the ability to appear and disappear at will and imprison people in the dark energy she is composed of.
[edit] In other media
- Selene appears as the final boss of Gambit's stage in the 1992 video game, Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge.
- In X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, Selene (voiced by Jeannie Elias) is one of the many characters to make a cameo. She is a captive in 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 that so the X-Men would help her.
- Kevin Grevioux stated that the character of Selene in his movie "Underworld" is loosely based on Marvel Comics Selene.[citation needed]
