Real name/other ones: Mesmer, Sylvia Sersi, Circe
First Appearance: Strange Tales
Vol. 1 #109
Base of Operations: New York City, New York
Occupation: Adventuress
Place of Birth: Olympia, Greece
Classification: Eternal
Marital Status: Single
Membership Status: Inactive
Affiliations: Avengers, Eternals, Heroes for Hire, New Breed
Powers:
Sersi possesses the conventional attributes of the Eternal race as
well as certain special abilities developed through rigorous
discipline. Like that of all Eternals, her life force is augmented
by cosmic energy and she has total mental control of her physical
form and bodily processes even when she is asleep or unconscious. As
a result she is virtually immortal, immune to disease and aging, and
invulnerable to conventional forms of injury. Should Sersi be
injured somehow, she can regenerate any injured or missing tissue.
An Eternal can only die through an injury that disperses a
significant portion of her bodily molecules, or if she is fatally
injured after her mental control is somehow broken. Cosmic energy
bolsters Sersi's metabolism so that she does not tire from any
physical exertion. She can resist temperature extremes through
mental concentration.
Although all Eternals can psionically manipulate atoms and
molecules, Sersi's ability to do so, developed through centuries of
rigorous training and maintained at top level through continual
practice, is far greater than than that of any other Eternal. Sersi
can not only psionically rearrange atoms and molecules so as to
transform an object's shape, but she can also transmute substances
by rearranging subatomic particles as well. She can rearrange the
atoms and molecules of another living being without ill effects to
her subject's health, as when she transforms a person into a pig and
back. In a manner not yet understood, Sersi's psionic powers prevent
energy from escaping when she transmutes or rearranges matter. The
transformations that Sersi induces are permanent unless she herself,
another person, or a device that can rearrange or transmute matter
undoes them. The limit to the amount of matter she can transform at
one time is unknown (she has, for example, transformed the clothing
of dozens of people at one of her parties simultaneously), as is the
length of time she can use this power continually. Apparently Sersi
can create non-sentient living beings from inanimate matter, as when
she seemingly created a scorpion (possibly she only teleported it
from a known location). However, Sersi cannot use her powers to
create a sentient living being capable of independent thought.
Humanoid beings which she has seemingly created out of air are
actually automatons created from nearby materials and given a
semblance of life through her powers, and controlled by Sersi
psionically.
Sersi is the only fifth-level adept among the Eternals in the
five-level discipline of matter rearrangement, the fifth level being
the highest.
Sersi is also a mistress of mentally creating illusions. She can
disguise her own appearance by mentally projecting an illusion into
the minds of those about her. She can also disguise her own
appearance and that of others by rearranging their own atoms and
molecules, so as to transform her own shape and those of the others,
or by rearranging the atoms and molecules in the air about them so
that they reflected light differently, distorting the way the
individuals look of others. By projecting illusions into another
person's mind telepathically, she can make her subject think his
entire surroundings have changed, as when she once caused a person
at a Manhattan party with her to believe they were alone together in
an ancient Greek temple. It should be pointed out that in many cases
a witness to one of Sersi's feats cannot be certain if she has
merely created an illusion that she has transformed an object, or of
she has actually used her matter-rearranging powers to transform it.
Sersi's illusions can affect all five senses, so that the illusion,
for example, can feel real as well as look real.
Sersi has limited telepathic abilities which enable her to engage in
simple short-range telepathic communication with other persons and
higher animals, and to scan the surface thoughts of the mind of any
Eternal or ordinary human being who is less telepathically adept
than she. She cannot read the minds of Deviants, but she can
psionically control the minds of Deviants whose wills are inferior
in strength to her own.
Sersi can teleport herself or other individuals psionically, but,
like all Eternals, finds the Eternal method of teleportation
physically unpleasant. The limit of her teleportational range is
unknown: she has teleported herself from Manhattan to Olympia in
Greece without any apparent ill effects.
History:
Born to Helios and Perse, Sersi is a third or fourth-generation
member of the Eternals, evolutionary offshoots of humanity who
possess indefinite life spans and superhuman powers. Although she is
at least 4,000 years old, Sersi is still considered a young woman by
her fellow Eternals.
As a child, Sersi accompanied Utnapishtim, hoping to learn if he was
an Eternal. She had a brief encounter with the hero Captain America,
who had time-travelled to the past, and her fellow Eternal, the
Forgotten One, at this time.
Even though Sersi has always loved the pursuit of pleasure, and she
has been known for giving unforgettable parties since the days of
ancient Greece, she has always been equally dedicated to her work.
Having spent centuries developing her talents for psionically
rearranging and transmuting matter, Sersi has gained greater mastery
over this discipline than any other Eternal. She had already
perfected her psionic abilities by the time of her meeting with
Odysseus (the legendary hero known to the Romans as Ulysses) in the
13th Century B.C.
Returning from the Trojan War, Odysseus and his crew landed on the
Mediterranean island where Sersi lived. Some of the crew went ashore
to explore, and Sersi was pleased to have them as dinner guests. The
ravenous sailors gorged themselves with little regard for manners.
Becoming drunk, they menaced the beautiful Eternal and her servants.
Disgusted, Sersi transformed the sailors into pigs. Her anger having
passed, Sersi took a liking to Odysseus when he came to see about
his missing men. She turned the pigs back into sailors at his
request, and bid them welcome once again. Though initially
reluctant, Odysseus and his crew ended up spending an entire year
feasting and celebrating at Sersi's villa.
Sersi also visited Camelot during the reign of King Arthur
Pendragon. While there, she helped to expose the mutant Maha Yogi,
who was at the time impersonating the then-missing sorcerer Merlin.
She also visited France during the French Revolution, and witnessed
the use of the guillotine. She met the poet Thomas Chatterton at
some point, and gave him some pointers in forging his supposed
antiquarian poems.
In recent years, Sersi has been living in Manhattan. She rents a
large apartment on Manhattan's West Side and a huge loft in Soho.
She is famous in New York City social circles and elsewhere around
the world as a hostess of lavish and bizarre parties.
When the Eternals and another evolutionary offshoot of humanity, the
Deviants, decided to reveal their existence to the rest of the human
race, Sersi publicly revealed herself to be an Eternal. The general
public, however, tends not to believe in the existence of these
hidden races of superhuman beings.
At one time Sersi had a close relationship with Professor Samuel
Holden, a man who first publicly spoke out regarding the origins of
how the first Deviants, Eternals, and humans were intertwined.
When the Eternals as a whole decided to leave Earth, their
collective consciousness in the form of the Uni-Mind decreed that a
small number of Eternals who were particularly involved with Earthly
matters, including Sersi, remain behind. Although Sersi has often
prefers not to involve herself with the Eternals' battles against
the Deviants, when those conflicts required her participation, she
joined her fellows in such adventures.
On one such occasion, Sersi joined her fellow Eternals to battle the
Deviant Priest-Lord Ghaur, whose army attacked Olympia, the
Eternals' mountaintop retreat and sanctuary. Ghaur acquired his army
through heinous means. As part of the Deviant religion, those
citizens found to be genetically unclean were consigned to die in
the sacred flame pits. For countless years, Deviants walked solemnly
up the temple steps to face their fate in the flame pits, all at the
command of Ghaur and his priests. In actuality, however, the
Priest-Lord had been taking the best of the Deviants for millennia,
condemning them to death under false pretenses, and then secretly
storing them in stasis coffins where their minds were slowly wiped
clean. The millions of Deviants supposedly sent to the fire pits
suffered absolute thralldom so that Ghaur's dreams for conquest over
the Eternals might come true. Ghaur's army was defeated, however,
when the machinery granting them life was sabotaged by Thena, then-
leader of the Eternals on Earth, and Warlord Kro, a rebellious
Deviant.
Some time later, Captain America contacted Sersi for help in a case
requiring an ally with shape-changing abilities Sersi helped Captain
America and began a flirtatious relationship. Later still, Sersi
aided Captain America's team, the Avengers, in their struggle
against the Deviants and the Elder God Set. When the Forgotton One
was injured while serving as an Avenger, the Avengers came to Sersi
for help, and she aided them against the otherdimensional Blastaar.
Afterwards, Sersi has asked to join the Avengers, and she agreed
primarily out of flirtation with Captain America.
Sersi became a dutiful and reliable member of the Avengers.
Sersi