First Appearance: Sensation Comics 2 (1942)
Creators: William Marston and H.G Peter
Abilities: Doctor Poison is an expert in the use of poisons, toxins, and plagues, and in addition to her scientific expertise, is now a trained soldier.
Backstory: One of Wonder Woman’s oldest villains, Dr. Poison’s origin has a wartime theme, like many of the era: a dark and devious scientist with a knack for creating destructive state-of-the-art toxins. Her identity has seen alterations over time (4 so far), but she continues to be a dangerous threat to the world—her specific skill set and consistent military ties allowing her to remain disturbingly relevant in modern times.
Originally the Chief of the Nazi Poison Division in league with German spies, Dr. Poison wore a mask and a bodysuit that hid her identity and made her gender ambiguous, but at the end of her debut story, she was revealed to be a Japanese princess appropriatly enough named Maru, the Japanese word for poison. Her debut toxin was a drug called ‘Reverso’, which altered a victims brain to do the opposite of what they were told- particularly troublesome when used against military troops reliant on orders to advance, retreat or stand down. Dr. Poison is ultimately captured and forced to give up the antidote, but would go on to other comic appearances and villainous team-ups with several of Diana’s most notable adversaries.
Other inventions concocted by Princess Maru included anesthetic gas grenades, stadium quantity amounts of paralyzing gas, and a projectile toxin which could ‘poison planes’ causing them to abruptly drop from the sky to their destruction.
Post-Crisis, Doctor Poison was reintroduced to the pages of Wonder Woman as scientist Marina Maru, granddaughter of the original Doctor Poison. Marina would also wear a full bodysuit and beneath her mask was the same psychotic grin. We then learn of her grandmother’s fate: infected by Reverso, her growth patterns are disrupted causing her to grow younger, eventually regressing into a fetus and disappearing! As Marina puts it, “Horrible end…wonderful poison.” She was then updated during New 52 as a vengeful Russian scientist known only as Dr. Maru, whose parents were wrongfully imprisoned. She planned to take revenge against the government through chemical attacks, but Diana is able to stop her.
More recently, she has become Colonel Marina Maru, a soldier with physical scarring, who still deals in chemicals. Her family helps create a bio-agent that causes its victims to fly into a rage, killing anything in sight. While notably different than previous incarnations, Colonel Maru still looks the part—she even wore her version of the suit and cowl worn by the second Doctor Poison, complete with the caduceus over her eye, and would battle Diana once more.
