First Appearance: Wonder Woman 37 (1949)
Creators: Robert Kanigher and H.G Peter.
Abilities: A demigod and loyal follower of the Goddess Hecate, her abilities range from kinesis, transfiguration, flight, and illusions, to teleportation, necromancy, hypnosis and mind control.
Backstory: One of Wonder Woman’s oldest and most cunning adversaries, Circe is known for being unrepentant and willing to bide her time to finish what she starts. She has seen multiple transformations since her debut, even acting honorably at times, but always maintains her love of sorcery, hunger for power, and cherished hobby of turning humans into various animals.
Based on the Greek mythological figure, Circe’s earliest appearances were as a powerful ancient sorceress, who accumulated considerable magical power while living on the island of Aeaea. She is kept young by an elixir called vitae, and becomes skilled at turning men into animals (for her amusement), but she is then banished into space by Queen Hippolyta for her crimes, igniting a lasting lust for vengeance against the Amazons and their champion, foretold as the cause of her demise.
Circe continued to wreak havoc across the DC Comics landscape during the Gold, Silver and Bronze Ages, but since reappearing just before Crisis on Infinite Earths, her ambitions and deceptions have known no limits. She has even incited war among the pantheon, and made Gods kneel before her magical might. As the daughter of Titans, and devoted follower of Hecate, Greek goddess of witchcraft and the moon, Circe is chosen as the deity’s instrument of vengeance, granting her immortality and incredible godly powers. She continued to use her mastery of the occult and treachery to achieve her goals, and through it all, Diana is often prophesied as Circe’s downfall, making her a persistent enemy seeking to eliminate Diana in unique ways.
In one ironic story arc, however, in order to get close enough to Diana to kill her, she went undercover as lawyer Donna Milton, going so far as to cast a spell on herself to suppress her own memories. As a result, Circe ended up accidentally having a child with Ares, but still became Diana’s trusted friend and ally as planned. Ultimately, though, conflicted with her new memories, Circe chose to safeguard Diana, ‘her only friend’, instead of destroying her…and also sent Ares into a black hole—no big deal. More recently, she sought to gain all of Hecate’s power as her own by both helping Justice League Dark to save the magic realm, and eliminating her most formidable threats in the process: a witch-marked Diana and Hecate herself.