MANDRILL & NEKRA

 

MANDRILL & NEKRA

Real Names: Jerome Beechman (Mandrill); Nekra Sinclair (Nekra)

First Appearances: Shanna, The She-Devil (Vol. 1) #4, June 1973 (Mandrill); Shanna, The She-Devil (Vol. 1) #5, August 1973 (Nekra)

Powers: Jerome Beechman was the son of Frederick Beechman, an atomic research scientist at Los Alamos Atomic Proving Grounds, New Mexico, and his wife Emily. Prior to his conception, Dr. Beechman, a Caucasian scientist, as well as Gemma Sinclair, a Black cleaning woman, were exposed to a massive dose of radiation when faulty electrical wiring caused an explosion which breached the facility's experimental, small nuclear pile. A year later, the Beechmans’ son was born around the same time Gemma's daughter, Nekra, was born. However, the racial patterns displayed by the children were reversed: The child born to Black parents, Gemma Sinclair and her husband, had chalk-white skin and fangs while the child born to the Caucasian Beechmans had deep brown skin and tufts of body hair. Mistreated by family and peers, Nekra ran away while Jerome was abandoned in the desert by his parents, both were 10 years of age at the time. They encountered each other at the age of 16 and developed a partnership, manifesting their respective mutant powers after an encounter with an angry mob.

Mandrill is a mutant with many bestial characteristics, including the appearance of a baboon along with enhanced levels of strength, agility, reflexes, and some degree of enhanced senses as well. His primary mutant power is the chemically-based ability to attract and enslave most adult women to his will. Like many animals (including humans to a small extent), Mandrill continually emits pheromones (natural, airborne hormones secreted primarily through-sweat glands which communicate and stimulate behavior) of great potency and volume. Once the Mandrill's pheromone emissions, released into the atmosphere, reach the olfactory centers of a woman, her hormonal balance is altered, causing her to feel extreme physical attraction. The Mandrill's mutant pheromones are released at a rate of 2,000 parts per million, several thousand times that of a normal human. Consequently, any woman within range (about 250 feet downwind, or in the direct path of the emission) is severely affected. Within seconds of exposure to the Mandrill, most women become submissive and open to manipulation by him, as if hypnotized.

The mutagenically-altered structure of Mandrill's sex pheromones is practically addictive. Initial contact with Mandrill and subsequent reinforcement over a period of a few months is sufficient to keep most women in his power almost permanently. If, however, the woman is removed from his presence after the initial contact, she will go through a mild period of "withdrawal" and be free after a period of a few months.

Some women, notably Shanna the She-Devil and the Black Widow, have been able to resist Mandrill's power, by some unknown, natural means, perhaps solely through will power. Certain mild, electrical stimulation can also deaden the pheromone-affected nerve centers of the female brain. Most male endocrine systems are biologically unable to perceive the Mandrill's pheromone emissions.

Nekra is a mutant with enlarged canine teeth and chalky-white skin lacking pigmentation, giving her a vampiric appearance. Her mutant ability is to augment her strength, speed, agility, endurance, durability, and recuperative powers to superhuman levels by harnessing the negative psychic energy comprising her violent emotions, especially hate. It's not entirely clear whether she is transforming that emotional energy into physical power, or if strong emotions produce a bio-chemical reaction that augments her strength. In either case, heightened adrenal activity causes a series of metabolic reactions throughout her body, resulting in a great increase of the efficiency of her muscles and a toughening of her skin. At her peak, she can withstand bullets, the heat and concussion of 100 pounds of TNT at a distance of 5 feet, temperature variations between -30° and 1,000° Fahrenheit without harm, gunfire, electric shocks, open flame, animal attacks, falls from great heights, and more, usually without injury.

Because Nekra's powers are based on her emotional state, there is a limit for how long she can sustain them. Under normal conditions, she can work herself into a frenzy for only about an hour before emotional fatigue will set in. Mood-altering drugs and pheromones can inhibit he powers, and she seems especially sensitive to the influence of Mandrill and Spider-Woman (though Nekra has developed a chemical that temporarily immunizes her against this effect). She is vulnerable to the manipulation of physiological pressure points and if her emotional focus is interrupted by some external distraction, she will experience a corresponding drop in her physical power.

Extremely agile and fluidly graceful, Nekra is a formidable unarmed combatant. She is also an accomplished brainwasher whose tools have included drugs, mesmerizing illumination, chanting, and hypnotic dancing. She is proficient in various voodoo rituals such as the creation and manipulation of zombies (reanimated corpses), and has developed her own unique hybrid brand of voodoo which combines the Black Talon's teachings with rites derived from the Cult of Kali and certain West African tribes. Using her hybrid voodoo (components of which include quartz crystals, magnetism, rare cavern herbs, ritual dancing, and open flame), Nekra can produce zombies who almost perfectly stimulate living beings, replicating the deceased person's full intellect, personality, and appearance (as opposed to decaying, near-mindless conventional zombies); in fact, Nekra's zombies are generally unaware of their undead state.