Real Name: DiaboliqueDIABOLIQUE
Real Name: Diabolique
Identity/Class: Demon-human hybrid
Occupation: Amusement seeker
Group Membership: None
Affiliations: Darkholders, Mike Clemson and Reverend Nice (former pawns); Zoroaster and Playmate (creations); Salomé (sought as mentor); Whisperer (associate);
Enemies: Darkhold Redeemers, Blanche and Merle Haverford, Rebecca Taylor, Vengeance
Known Relatives: DeGuzman (surrogate father); unidentified demoness (surrogate mother, deceased)
Aliases: Witch-Child, Diana Bolick
Base of Operations: mobile; Formerly Brooklyn, New York City; Formerly Darkholder base in Los Angeles, California;
First Appearance: (Named) Darkhold#8 (May, 1993);
(seen) Darkhold#9 (June, 1993)
Powers/Abilities: Diabolique possesses a variety of magical powers. If she kills someone, she gains control of his or her form. She fuses her victims into a single entity, which she refers to as Playmate. Her Playmate can grow to mammoth proportions and slaughter anything in its path. Its power grows with the number of victims contained within it. In addition, Diabolique's power depends on Playmate as well. Her power grows when she has a large Playmate, and she can temporarily be rendered virtually powerless by the destruction of a Playmate.
When full of power, Diabolique can mentally control others, open dimensional portals, rend victims limb from limb, absorb and manipulate blasts of hellfire, practice sympathetic magic (ie. injure others through the use of voodoo dolls)
Diabolique also utilizes a spider named Zoroaster. She can cause the spider to grow to enormous size and strength. It can regenerate lost limbs, and is immune to hellfire. Its strength and ability is presumably directly related to the amount of power Diabolique has amassed.
Lastly, Diabolique appears to be a
young human girl. She is easily able to gain the trust and
assistance of others due to her seemingly harmless nature. In
reality, she is dark and twisted, feeding off of the torment and
slaughter of others.
Height: 4'2"
Weight: 80 lbs.
Eyes: Golden Brown
Hair: Blonde
History: (Mystic Arcana: The Book of Marvel Magic) - Diabolique was an enigmatic, seemingly six year old girl, who continually sought out surrogate parents, which she slew before moving to another set.
(Darkhold#8-10) - Diabolique became the daughter of DeGuzman, the former head of a sect of the Darkholders (a cult worshipping the demon Chthon, through his book, the Darkhold), and an unidentified demoness. When she first made her presence known, she was already feared by the Darkholders, indicating she had long been a threat to them.
In recent years, DeGuzman sought to reassemble the pages of the Darkhold, and to slay Victoria Montesi, last in the line of the family that had opposed the Darkhold throughout the ages. It was at that point that Diabolique and her mother returned to her father's life. She made a room for herself in the FBI building which DeGuzman used as his Darkholder base. She pretended to be the loving daughter, while she slowly encountered and slew several Darkholders, creating a new Playmate, and enhancing her power. As DeGuzman continued his plans against Montesi and her allies, Diabolique methodically wiped out most of the Darkholders. DeGuzman investigated, in time to see Diabolique slay her own mother, and then playing with her eyes. She promised to give DeGuzman a glimpse of Chthon, knowing full well that to actually glimpse the true form of the demon would drive him mad.
(Darkhold#12) - With the Darkholders slaughtered, her mother dead, and her father a drooling lunatic, Diabolique decided that she needed new parents. She wandered to the home of Blanche and Merle Haverford and spent a week with them. How she spent that time is not known, but by the end of the week, both of them were dead. She then summoned the demon prophet, the Whisperer, also known as the Voice of Chthon. The Whisperer granted her answers to any three questions in exchange for her two victims as sacrifices. The three questions all gave Diabolique information on the past history and true nature of Victoria Montesi.
(Darkhold#14) - Diabolique then invaded the Vatican and confronted Montesi's friend and fellow Darkhold Redeemer, Louise Hastings, leading her to Victoria's fathers files. Diabolique had pulled one specific file, which revealed Victoria's past to Louise.
(Marvel Comics Presents I#160-163) - Diabolique was next seen after she had taken control of a another human couple, making them her victims and forcing them to be her parents. She proceeded to kill several people in the subways, enabling her Playmate to grow further in power. The couple eventually gained sufficient strength to resist her and jumped in front of a subway, killing themselves. Diabolique, believed to be an innocent and traumatized orphan, was brought to social services, where she encountered Lt. Michael Badalino, who was investigating the subway deaths. Wanting Badalino to be her father, Diabolique followed him to the subway where he encountered the Playmate, in the process of slaughtering another victim.
Recognizing the threat of the Playmate, Badalino transformed into Vengeance and attacked it. Feeling that Badalino had deceived her by pretending to be human, Diabolique sent her spider, Zoroaster to attack Vengeance as well. However, Diabolique then sensed the power of the demon sorceress, Salomé whom she wished to be her mother and mentor. She withdrew her Playmate and confronted Salomé expressing her desires. Vengeance managed to overpower and destroy Zoroaster, and then tracked Diabolique and again confronted her. Intrigued by the power of the young witch-girl, Salomé agreed as long as Diabolique could pass her test: destroying Vengeance.
Diabolique badly injured Vengeance by attacking him with her voodoo doll, but Vengeance managed to destroy Playmate with a blast of hellfire, rendering her powerless. Salomé teleported Vengeance away, allowing Diabolique to escape. Salomé agreed on the potential for a future apprenticeship after Diabolique created a new Playmate. Within days, Diabolique was on the hunt for a new mother.
(Marvel Comics Presents I#172-173) - A short time later, Diabolique ended up in a children's hospital, powerless, where she was unable to create a new Playmate for power. While there, she met and befriended Rebecca Taylor, a member of the Paranormal Law Enforcement Team. Diabolique was freed by Mike Clemson, of the government agency, the Conclave, who sought to destroy Vengeance. Clemson's ally, Reverend Nice, also eager to destroy Vengeance, offered his own wife, Wendy Sue, to become her new Playmate. Diabolique then confronted Vengeance, and used her sympathetic magic to kill Rebecca, who was also the girlfriend of Badalino, and frame him for her death. She teleported away before he could stop her.
Comments: Created by Chris Cooper and Rurik Tyler.
It may not be accurate to call her a
human-demon hybrid; it might be better to say "presumably human". De Guzman was
definitely not her real father. My aim, perhaps too subtle, was to create a
parallel between Diabolique, who was constantly changing fake "parents", and
Vicki Montesi, whose Darkhold-fighting father also turned out to be not her real
father (Vicki's real father was, in fact, Chthon).
Also, note that Diabolique doesn't kill her victims to
create Playmate; the horror of it is that her victims are still very much alive,
but enslaved body, mind, and soul, and in constant torment as part of the
amalgamated abomination they have become. Death, in fact, is presumably the only
way to escape the torment of being part of Playmate; i.e., if Playmate is
destroyed, the enslaved victims die and are finally free. Playmate serves as
both Diabolique's slave--the muscle to carry out the physical feats she as a
little girl can't-- and as a living battery for her magicks, since she draws on
the enslaved lifeforces to ramp up her power.
Finally, though this distinction is probably just semantic, Diabolique
may or may not be evil. She's definitely bad, and does terrible things; but you
wouldn't necessarily call a 6-year-old throwing an ear-splitting tantrum evil.
Diabolique is like that, but her powers make her tantrums truly terrible. Yet
she has longings like other kids, hence her constant quest for "parents" (even
if she does tire of them and get rid of them soon after). That's why I seriously
doubt I made her mother demonic: It's her humanity-gone-wrong that makes her a
much more interesting character.
--Chris Cooper.
Another source claimed Diabolique had killed her real mother by using sympathetic magic and snapping the head off of a doll. This may have been one of her human "adoptive" mothers.
Diabolique's murder of Rebecca was the start of Vengeance's decline into insanity, which culminated in his destruction.
Diabolique has an entry in Mystic Arcana: The Book of Marvel Magic.
images: (without ads)
Marvel Comics Presents I#160, barcode side, p8, pan2 (Diabolique with spider)
Appearances:
Darkhold#8 (May, 1993) - Chris Cooper (writer), Rurik Tyler (pencils), Bud LaRosa (inks), Hildy Mesnik (editor)
Darkhold#9-10 (June-July, 1993) - Chris Cooper (writer), Rurik Tyler (pencils), Bob Downs (inks), Hildy Mesnik (editor)
Darkhold#12 (September, 1993) - Chris Cooper (writer), Rurik Tyler (pencils), Bud LaRosa (inks), Hildy Mesnik (editor)
Darkhold#14 (November, 1993) - Chris Cooper (writer), Rurik Tyler (pencils), Bud LaRosa (inks), Hildy Mesnik (editor)
Marvel Comics Presents I#160-163 (early August - late September, 1994) - Chris Cooper (writer), Reggie Jones (pencils), Fred Harper (inks), Richard Ashford (editor)
Marvel Comics Presents I#172 (late January, 1995) - Chris Cooper (writer), Reggie Jones (pencils), Fred Harper (inks), Richard Ashford (editor)
Marvel Comics Presents I#173 (early February, 1995) - Chris Cooper (writer), Reggie Jones (artist), Richard Ashford (editor)
Last updated: 06/15/12
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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