Supervillains of Note: Singularity

I've talked about Singularity in the past. She retired, or disappeared, a few years ago. Still, her villainous career is long and notable.

Singularity

This lady came from the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tri-state area, or at least that's where a lot of her activities were focused. She wasn't the first super to claim extraterrestrial heritage, but she was certainly the most convincing. A lot of this was due to her good looks (even for a typical super), her presence, and her charisma. But she made several claims that were backed up by astronomers, who verify she couldn't have possibly known about what she claimed. Why? Because the light from the stellar events she described couldn't have reached Earth by the time she mentioned them.

Past

Singularity was active in the tri-state area from 1985 to 2005. She was a recurring foil for the American All-Stars. Before that, nobody's sure where she came from.

She herself told the following story: she was a farm girl in Iowa, when she was visited by extraterrestrials and taken up in their spaceship. They did certain experiments on her, told her she was "ready" and would be "the first of many", and released her. When she returned home, she claimed her powers were fully manifested.

At first she preached the aliens' message - that Earth was going to be invaded, that the good aliens who had kidnapped her were preparing the planet for the arrival of evil aliens from across the galaxy. She said we had to get ready. Wars had to end, capitalism had to be abolished, socialism had to become the new system of government or the good aliens would judge us unworthy. Obviously, nobody in America in the 80's was interested in hearing that, so she started getting more aggressive.

Position

Singularity tried to round up sympathetic superhumans, but most of them were, frankly, nutters. To her credit, she was pretty good about weeding out the real freaks or the con-men. She would join multiple hero teams early on, trying to convince them of her message, but nobody took her really seriously. Super-biology had been understood for a decade, so claims of empowering aliens seemed unlikely.

She worked solo since then. Her powers made her a formidable brick with energy projection. She could use her energy defensively too, so she didn't really need support from anyone. At the end of her career, experts assessed her (from observation) as being Stage 5 or perhaps even Stage 6.

Personality

Singularity was a driven woman. She never got into villainy for selfish reasons, though she was very good at what she did. She could be bitter about people failing to accept her message, or maybe just frustrated at being called on her bullshit - it really depends on what you think the truth is.

The one thing she was absolutely known for was her charisma and presentation. She had the ability to command an audience, on par with world leaders. She must have studied somewhere, because her rhetorical skills were absolutely top-notch. I've read entire books dedicated to studying her speaking style. She could absolutely have been a world leader herself - between her style and her powers, she could have knocked over any small country of her choice and installed herself.

Over her villainous career, she made several announcements about stellar events - novae, newly discovered variable stars, that sort of thing. A few months later, astronomers would confirm them as light reached the earth. This seriously creeps a lot of people out. Singularity claimed that some of these were alien activities, and that they formed a pattern. Nobody ever noticed a larger pattern, and astronomers typically think she was just using some strange foreknowledge to support her story.

Powers

The Transhuman Capability Catalog assigns Singularity the classification of TCC F12 - control of the unified electromagnetic force. She could do amazing things with her powers, and a lot of people claimed that she was the living incarnation of some of Nikola Tesla's wilder theories about electricity. Director of Research Ben Ford at CERN claimed that electromagnetic physics advanced 5 years after scientists studied one of her crime scenes for 2 hours.

Problems

Well, obviously she's not around any more, so either she got killed off (and if so, that's scary - think about who could take out someone that powerful?), got tired of playing Princess Alien Invasion, or something. Some people think it was all just an act, and that she was trolling the world at large until she could retire.

She repeatedly tackled the American All-Stars, and there was never a clear motive for it. My personal reason, shared by a few veteran villains, is that she was playing on their no-kill policy to deliberately power herself up through trauma.

The scariest explanation is that she got powerful enough to tackle her evil alien invaders, and went off to fight them. Well in that case, did she succeed, or did she fail? Leave the lights on tonight, kids!

That's it for Supervillains of Note, at least for now! Please write in with any questions you'd like answered, and we'll be back on with our usual content in the coming days.