Selene

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.

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.

Hyborian Age

Selene was revealed 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 the modern era. Thus, Selene was active at least as early as the Hyborian age.

Rome and Eliphas

Selene is assumed to have been wandering the world for millennia. She approaches Eliphas, a well respected senator whose wife had left him for a general named Mascius. Selene offers him immortality in exchange for helping her kill and absorb every soul in Rome. Eliphas goes about drawing pentagrams and performing rituals at several locations in the city, but warns a small girl to get her family out. The girl's father alerts the authorities and Eliphas and Selene are captured before the spell can be carried out. Just before they are burned at the stake, Selene kills the guards. She then curses Eliphas for his perceived betrayal with an eternal life of torture, turning him into a vampire-like creature. Eliphas is buried alive for 700 years until a farmer discovers him in his field.

Nova Roma

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. Eliphas, having at some point in time changed his name to "Eli Bard," finally locates Selene in Nova Roma, where she is worshiped as a god. Still in love with her despite her curse, Bard realizes that he must make an offering to her before he approaches her. She also 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 of Nova Roma.

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.

Becoming the Black Queen

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 III and fought the X-Men.^[5] Selene soon became the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. She then overcame and destroyed her ancient enemy, Kulan Gath. She was later revealed to have been manipulating a power struggle within the Hellfire Club.

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.^[8] 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 seen during a 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.

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. 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. Later she is 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.

Eli Bard's offering

Selene's relationship with Eli Bard the rogue member of the Purifiers, is explained by Warpath to the other members of X-Force. It is revealed he had originally planned to sacrifice the Purifiers to Selene but changed his plans upon seeing Bastion reprogram an offspring of Magus. Using the Technarch transmode virus he re-animated the corpses in the burial grounds of the Apache tribe that he decimated decades earlier as well as Caliban and presented him to Selene for the purpose of finding other dead mutants and resurrecting them by the same means, so Bard can sacrifice them and their powers to her. Wither did not appear with her. There were, however, several figures standing behind Selene in the shadows, but it is unknown if he was among them.

Necrosha

Selene will be the primary antagonist in the upcoming Necrosha storyline in October 2009 that will run through X-Force, New Mutants and X-Men: Legacy.

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.

Selene 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 lasting effects. While not indestructible, she once survived and recovered completely from molecular discorporation, though it took considerable time to reconstitute herself.

Selene's most direct weapon is the telekinetic power to animate and/or levitate inorganic matter on a molecular level, by projecting part of her absorbed life force into it. She can affect nearly anything within her line of sight, and can warp and alter the molecules of inanimate matter to her whim, causing objects to wrap around and constrict others, creating lifelike humanoid structures to combat her opponents, or simply reducing objects to dust. She can use this power in more standard ways, such as creating powerful force-fields around herself, and can levitate herself and others but cannot truly fly. Selene can also control and manipulate fire in a variety of ways, though she cannot create the fire herself; whether this is a facet of her telekinesis or a separate power is unclear.

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 high-order telepaths such as Professor X or Jean Grey, and is vulnerable to psionic attack should she be directly engaged. 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.

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 skill is not known, her greatly extended lifespan has given her sufficient knowledge and experience to be considered a threat to Kulan Gath. She was able to cast an illusion sufficient to fool Kulan Gath at his most poweful.

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, similar to Blackheart, imprison people in the dark energy she appears to be composed of.

Selene was revealed as one of several magic-users with the potential to be the next Sorcerer Supreme after Doctor Strange by the Eye of Agamotto.