Foes of the Superwomen of EVA #20: Man-Killer
"Chandgragupta Honsa endured a great amount of sexism in her home village in a rural part of India, and as such grew into something of a militant feminist who always sought to prove herself better than those who looked down on her. As such, she became a very competitive athlete as early as her mid-teens, growing up to become a talented champion professional skier who even at one point placed in the top rankings at the Winter Olympics. Her attitude didn't earn her a lot of friends even as she earned many accolades and endorsement deals, which proved to be her undoing on one fateful day. Honsa was a contestant in a highly-publicized skiing tournament where she got into a heated argument with another competitor, the unapologetically chauvinistic Karl Lubbings, to the point where the two of them wound up bringing their disagreement to the slopes in what the press called another high-profile 'battle of the sexes'. During their run down the slopes, Lubbings made the fatal mistake of cheating by cutting off Honsa, resulting in the two of them plummeting into a ravine. Lubbings was killed in the fall, while Honsa was crippled, seemingly for life.
While she recovered in the hospital, Honsa became depressed over her career coming to an inglorious end in such a way, as her attitude towards men began festering into a near-fanatical hatred. It was while she was in this state that she was approached by Dr. Deidre Wentworth, secretly the renegade scientist Superia, who offered to help her not only regain her lost mobility, but make her stronger, faster, and more powerful than she'd ever been before. Desperate, Honsa agreed, and after being moved to Wentworth's private facility, was subjected to a series of genetic enhancement procedures devised by Wentworth. Some of the data Superia utilized came from a series of files she had 'borrowed' from the supervillain genius the Leader (formerly Shiro Tokita, a high-level executive for Japan Heavy Chemical Industries), which he in turn had previously stolen from former NERV head scientist Ritsuko Akagi (who had become the superhero Spider-Woman); the files in question outlined Akagi's aborted "Project: Titania". Combined with the data she had acquired from Drs. Yoshio Sawada and Karl Malus on their formula for the MGH drug they had developed for former pharmaceutical magnate Tetsuma Kido (who had been exposed as the crimelord known as the Power Broker), and Superia was able to transform Honsa into a super-strong, powerhouse of muscle. While she underwent these procedures, Honsa also was subjected by Superia to a series of performance-boosting subliminal messages that further stoked her hatred of men. By the time she was fully-recovered and empowered, Honsa was now Superia's primary muscle, operating under the codename "Man-Killer".
As Man-Killer, she accompanied Superia in her endeavors to bring about the rise of the Femizonian Empire two centuries early, after the latter had learned of the existence of her descendant, the warrior woman known as Thundra. Superia's scheming brought them into conflict with the superhero team known as the Avengers (made up of various women and teen girls directly or peripherally involved with NERV), with one plot in which Man-Killer was to assassinate a member of the Japanese parliament known for their 'less-enlightened' views of women being thwarted by Spider-Woman and She-Hulk (former NERV tactical director Misato Katsuragi), in spite of the two heroes not being fans of the man themselves. Superia and Man-Killer would later be hired by Sunset Bain, the CEO of Baintronics International and secretly the underworld weapons dealer Madame Menace, with Man-Killer being part of a group of super-criminals sent after Iron Maiden (secretly engineering wunderkind Mana Kirishima). At another point, Man-Killer was sent to abduct radical left-wing activist Hiromi Damura from the courthouse where her trial was occurring (Damura had become disillusioned with her methodology and, after paying her debt to society, wanted to work for social change through peaceful means). Witnessing the incident while out one day, She-Hulk and Spider-Woman sprang into action to protect Damura from Man-Killer and Superia's henchwomen. In the chaos, some of the henchwomen manage to make off with Damura while Man-Killer and the others kept the two heroes occupied, departing when their mission was accomplished. Spider-Woman manages to get a tracer on the VTOL the assailants were using, allowing her and She-Hulk to track them to the abandoned warehouse Superia was currently using as her field base. The two were joined by a few of their fellow Avengers in Ghost Rider (former NERV Evangelion pilot Asuka Langley-Sohryu), Captain America (another former pilot in Mari "Illustrious" Makinami), and Ms. Fantastic (Ritsuko's girlfriend and former assistant Maya Ibuki) as they stormed the warehouse. Man-Killer again proved to be a match for She-Hulk, though without scruples when it comes to fighting. Man-Killer was ultimately defeated by a combination of She-Hulk somehow overpowering her, and Ghost Rider delivering the coup de grace with her Penance Stare ability, rendering the strongwoman temporarily catatonic. (Superia, while fighting Captain America, managed to flee in the chaos.)
Honsa, still reeling from the effects of the Penance Stare, was remanded into the custody of the international peacekeeping organization SHIELD, who placed her in their facility for super-powered criminals. It was while there that, on the advisement of one of their reformed inmates in Abominatrix (Ritsuko's gamma-powered clone, going by the name 'Ririko Akagi'), Honsa underwent counseling to help undo the mental damage done by Superia (among other factors); out of concern for her possible reactions to working with the facility's on-staff psychiatrist, the gamma-powered Dr. Leonard Samson, Samson himself brought in his colleague, Dr. Ashley Kafka, to assist. Over time, Honsa grew genuinely remorseful towards her actions, and as such, when SHIELD initiated 'Operation: Justice, Like Lightning', she volunteered to be its second recruit into the task force it put together, codenamed the Thunderbolts. When she joined, Honsa, wanting to distance herself from her previous life, adopted a new moniker in Durga, after the Hindu warrior goddess."
*Author's Note(s)*
For the Marvel half of this 'wave', I decided to do a slight reinvention of a C-list villain in Man-Killer, who given her name and overall 'characterization' could onlyhave been created in the 1970s (with the writer behind her being my all-time favorite in the business, Gerry Conway). It's no wonder why some contemporary critics describe her as a "caricature of feminists, who despise all men". Relatively consistent 'character' aside, she's been a Master of Evil, a Thunderbolt, and generally an all-around villain who's tangled with most of the Marvel Universe's denizens. For my take on her, I decided to dial back the 'caricature' aspect, as well as give her some semblance of why she had the attitude she did before her transformation (which, to the best of my knowledge, the comics haven't really provided any background on), along with her genuinely reforming later on to tie into the Thunderbolts part of her history. Also, while the comics Man-Killer got her abilities from an advanced exoskeleton, I instead decided to lean into the genetic enhancement angle, especially considering which anime character I used as the visual basis.
Said character, in this instance, is Sandra Guts, the (for some reason) fan-favorite one-shot villain from the Dirty Pair franchise, who appeared in the episode "Rigged Ring? Revenge Of The Muscle Lady" from the OVA series. Given how Guts employed means both physical and scientific to turn herself into the powerhouse she became, it made sense to do the same with my take on Man-Killer. While in her comics origin she received her exoskeleton from Advanced Idea Mechanics(built by, to her chagrin, male scientists), here I decided to pair her up with another well-known misandrist of comics in the Captain America villain Superia, who here uses the same methodology to empower Man-Killer that she used in the comics to create Captain America's ally Free Spirit. Whether or not Guts was confirmed as being Indian (the red dot on her forehead may or may not be a bindi), it also played heavily into how much of her background I changed for this take. Her name is a nod to both characters drawn upon-Chandragupta sounding a bit like 'Sandra Guts', while Honsa being somewhat based on the comics Man-Killer's last name (her real name being Katrina Luisa Van Horn). The exploits mentioned draw upon some of Man-Killer's earliest comic appearances-the assassination plot is inspired by her first appearance in Marvel Team-Up #8 (1973), where while trying to kill the anti-feminist mayor of Chicago she faced Spider-Man and the Cat (pre-Tigra Greer Nelson); her working with Madame Menace is based on the events of Iron Man #126-127 (1979), with Madame Menace replacing Justin Hammer; and lastly, her abduction of the activist comes from Marvel Team-Up#107 (1981), with Hiromi Damura being based on Hildy Dawes (unlike that story, Damura survives). I feel I managed to sufficiently Photoshop this image of Sandra Guts enough to turn her into my take on Man-Killer, with the colors being very close to Van Horn's usual getup. The logo above her (as seen in the piece on my DeviantArt profile) comes from a pin-up found on page 35 of 1987's Web of Spider-Man Annual #3. Finally, whereas Van Horn adopted the codename 'Amazon' during her time in the Thunderbolts, for Honsa I opted for something closer to her background, hence the use of 'Durga'.