MEDUSA

 

MEDUSA

Real Name: Medusalith Amaquelin-Boltagon

First Appearance: Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #36, March 1965

Powers: Medusalith Amaquelin-Boltagon is an Inhuman (Homo sapiens inanthropo), a genetically engineered offshoot of humanity created by the Kree to possess heightened strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reaction time, roughly 50% greater than humans. She was also exposed to the mutagenic properties of the Terrigen Mist, a mutagenic or mutation causing substance discovered by the Inhuman scientist Randac. It is potent enough to cause any living organism to mutate from exposure to it, although the Inhumans zealously restrict its use to Inhumans only. Medusa's exposure to it as an infant granted her the power to accelerate and control at will the growth of the hair follicles on her skull.

Medusa possesses a long, thick head of hair, every strand of which has greater tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, and shear resistance than an iron wire of the same thickness (average hair diameter: .045 inches), as well as the psychokinetic ability to animate her hair for a number of feats. Her hair, approximately 6 feet in length while relaxed, can elongate to almost twice its normal length with only about a 25% loss of overall tensile strength. One strand of hair, 2-feet long, can support 6.4 pounds, a list-sized lock of hair can support about 750 pounds and her whole head of hair can lift about 3,200 pounds (1.6 tons). A portion of her hair must be used to anchor the rest at these greater weights, so that more than her scalp/skull is used as a brace.

Medusa can control the movement of her hair as if it were countless thin appendages growing from her head. A psionic field permeates her mutagenically altered hair-cells, causing mutual attraction across the gaps between strands. These relatively small forces operate in conjunction to develop larger forces. Through concentration, she can psionically move her hair in any manner imaginable. She can snap the length of it through the air like a whip (the tip of which moves faster than the speed of sound), or rotate it in a fan-like manner. She can bind persons or objects with it as if it were rope or use it to lift objects which weigh more than she could lift with her arms. Her scalp, skull, and neck do not support the weight of an object that she lifts: it is held aloft by the psionic force coursing through the hair. Medusa can also perform delicate manipulations with her hair such as lock picking or threading a needle, and such complex acts of coordination as typing or shuffling a deck of cards. Although she has no nerve endings in her hair, she can "feel" sensations on all parts of her hair by a form of mental feedback from her psionic field.

As yet Medusa has not manifested her psychokinetic powers in any way except the animation of her own hair. Whether she has the potential to control other fibrous substances other than her own hair (as can the mutant Gypsy Moth) has not yet been determined.