Foes of the Superwomen of EVA #22: Corona
"Franco-Japanese scientist Cécile Kurumi was of a highly-ambitious sort who, in her arrogance, wouldn't let ethics get in the way of her research's pursuits; it was a sentiment shared by her partner in her endeavors, her mildly-sociopathic adoptive brother Lloyd Åslund. The two were successful enough to open research concerns in first New York, USA and then in the South of France, and eventually they established a third branch in Tokyo-3, Japan, the focal point of humankind's battles with the otherworldly menaces codenamed 'Angels' by the U.N. special agency NERV. Cécile and Lloyd's latest project brought them to their Tokyo-3 branch, where Cécile found herself catching up briefly with her former classmate in her university days, NERV head scientist Ritsuko Akagi (who had recently secretly become the fledgling superhero Spider-Woman). The project was designed to prove that human cells were capable of converting matter directly into energy, and had reached the point where Cécile and Lloyd were ready to begin human trials, since the next phase of the experiment involved putting a human subject in a big tube filled with a specially-designed yellow liquid, and from there subjecting them to chemical and radiation treatments. Knowing Lloyd would stoop to the level of abducting some random homeless person off the street to use as the test subject, Cécile, in a rare showing of her scruples, volunteered to undergo the process.
Once in the tube, she and Lloyd began the experiment, but in the process, Lloyd, in a rare showing of his cowardice, shut the apparatus down while it was still halfway finished. While Cécile was still transformed by the process, she had less than the full power she had been aiming for; though she could now project bursts of energy and transmute matter at will, this left her in an unstable state (evidenced by brief moments of back-and-forth rapid aging) that was gradually killing her. Additionally, Lloyd, ignoring the safety protocols they'd put in place, flushed the chemicals used in the experiment into the Tokyo-3 water systems when he'd abruptly shut their apparatus off; this resulted in a number of the city's denizens contracting a disease that gave them debilitating, and potentially fatal, fevers. When her assistant Maya Ibuki found herself as one of the victims, a gravely-concerned Ritsuko donned her Spider-Woman guise to investigate the cause of this. Her sleuthing led to her getting into the middle of a feud that erupted between Cécile-going by the alias "Corona"-and Lloyd, with the former desperate to acquire the antidote the latter had concocted. Lloyd would only give Cécile the antidote if she would agree to be his experimental subject, which put her in a desperate situation, as she needed it to not only gain her full power, but also prevent her from exploding like an atomic bomb. Ritsuko knew that she'd need the antidote in order to cure everyone of the illness that had struck, and in the three-way struggle that ensued, Corona accidentally destroys the vial containing the antidote. Instead of exploding, however, she winds up turning into a shriveled-up husk of a hag temporarily, a change that she blames on Spider-Woman.
Spider-Woman forces Lloyd to help her recreate the antidote (which is then distributed to the afflicted populace), and manages to prevent Corona from killing herself, only for the transformed scientist to be knocked out by Lloyd's personal security. Spider-Woman voices her desire to help Cécile, only to be prevented from doing so thanks to a court order that granted Lloyd custody of Cécile. Essentially getting away scot-free, Lloyd takes Cécile away, where she becomes his personal human guinea pig. During one experiment, Lloyd implanted in her a 'bio-monitor' that stabilized Cécile's body chemistry, which manages to undo her 'shriveled husk' state; said implant was also remote-controlled by Lloyd, which thanks to another feature could allow him to stimulate her brain's pain centers, essentially turning her into a living tool for his own use. Lloyd used her to supplement their finances through theft, only for him to accidentally lose the remote to a cheap hood by the name of Ren "The Operator" Furuta, who proceeds to use Corona as his bodyguard and enforcer. Spider-Woman manages to intervene successfully, destroying the remote and getting both Ren and Lloyd arrested. Freed from her servitude and humbled by the experience, Corona thanks Spider-Woman, and is about to fly away from the city before Ritsuko, appealing to her ex-classmate, convinces her to stay and allow her to help get a better handle on her condition. Cécile accepts, later taking a position at the Japan campus of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. on recommendation from a former researcher there (and current NERV scientist) in Hitomi Kaga (secretly the superhero Ms. Marvel). Corona has since then occasionally helped out Spider-Woman, both when on her own and whenever she was working with the superhero team she helped found, the Avengers."
*Author's Note(s)*
As stated, this new 'wave' of foes is centered around the theme of 'energy-powered victims of circumstance', and for the Marvel half, the honor goes to a minor Spider-Man antagonist created by Kurt Busiek and Sal Buscema in the pages of 1991's The Spectacular Spider-Man #176. I first became aware of Corona in the pages of 1993's Spider-Man Unlimited #3 (found in a quarter bin in college), aka the comic where Doctor Octopus tries to create a cure for AIDS, and she's stuck around in the back of my mind since then. When thinking of the makeup of this wave of entries, it hit me that Corona would fit the bill for the overall theme of it. Coming up with an anime character to take up her role, on the other hand, proved to be a challenge.
Eventually, one longtime follower gave me a decent suggestion when they brought up Cécile Croomy from Code Geass, and given the working relationship she has with scientist Lloyd Asplund in that series, upon further reading of their backgrounds I decided she'd work for my purposes. From there, it was a matter of Photoshopping the image seen above to give her elements of Corona's appearance, while in terms of a bio I reworked hers and Lloyd's backstories (along with their names) to put them somewhat in the same positions as Dagny and Cedric Forrester in the comics. (Ren Furuta is a 'Nippon-ized' take on Lenny "The Operator" Flynn.) Of course, unlike the comics Corona, Cécile gets something of a happier fate in contrast to Dagny presently being in obscurity.
