Lady Satan

Lady Satan was an occultist and superheroine, whose civilian name, at least in some universes, was Marietta. In at least one universe, her full name was in fact Marietta “Mary” Over-There and she was a cousin of Jenny Over-There.

Description

Physical appearance

Marietta typically wore a red dress with a black coat on top, in a rather fancy style. To change into her Lady Satan persona, she merely added a domino mask to the ensemble. (PROSE: A Very Jenny Over-There Christmas)

Personality

In the 925th Universe, as a teen, Marietta wanted to believe she was special, and, drawn into a dangerous spiral of fanaticism by her forays into the occult, killed a cat as part of a ritual which she believed would destroy the world. However, she was not without empathy, and seeing her cousin's reaction to the act snapped her out of the destructive loop; from then on, plagued by nightmares of the crime and her reaction to it, a repentant Marietta pledged to use her powers for good as the heroic “Lady Satan”. Also in this universe, like Jenny, Marietta had no romantic or sexual interest in men, something she'd realised before she turned fourteen. (PROSE: A Very Jenny Over-There Christmas)

Powers & abilities

Lady Satan was a talented, knowledgeable occultist. As an adult, the 925th Universe's version of hr had mastered such abilities as teleporting across the Atlantic in an instant by stepping through a jagged red portal, and drawing “water sigils” which could cause it to rain indoors with sufficient force to quench a house-fire. (PROSE: A Very Jenny Over-There Christmas)

Biography

In the 925th Universe

In the 925th Universe, the modern Lady Satan was born as “Marietta Over-There”, the cousin of Jenny Over-There. She was active in the early 21st century, having been born around 1998; (PROSE: A Very Jenny Over-There Christmas) one account suggested that her mother and grandmother had used the persona before her. (PROSE: A Very Jenny Over-There Christmas (2024 reedit)) Her outfit consisted of a fancy red dress, a black coat, and a domino mask. She had no romantic interest in men.

She got into occultism as a teenager, and was manipulated by Nyarlathotep into sacrificing Jenny's cat Grober to Yog-Sothoth. After Jenny's horrified reaction snapped her out of it, her guilt drove her to use her magical abilities to become the superhero Lady Satan. She only made up with Jenny ten years later, in 2022, on which occasion Jenny also realised she and Lady Satan were one and the same. (PROSE: A Very Jenny Over-There Christmas)

Behind the scenes

There are a number of public-domain characters by the name of “Lady Satan”, some of them heroes and some of them villains, with various degrees of similarity and difference. One of them, who debuted in 1941 in Dynamic Comics, was originally a non-powered lady-spy character who fought the Nazis; she was later made into a sorceress battling other occult powers with no explanation given for how she'd acquired her abilities.

This Lady Satan later saw one of her adventures reprinted a few years after its printing with the name of the character changed to the less controversial “Marietta”, which Callum Phillpott made her civilian name in A Very Jenny Over-There Christmas. When revealing their version of Marietta as an Over-There and a member of the Order of the Red Key in the same story, Phillpott specified in the author's notes that “you're free to use any additions I make to either of these characters (such as surnames) in your own work”, essentially adding open-source qualities to the preexisting public-domain figure.

In other reprints, Lady Satan was instead dubbed Celeste Karloff, which is also in the public domain.

External links

Incarnations of Lady Satan
925th Universe