Monica Rappaccini

Monica Rappaccini is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. She first appeared in "Amazing Fantasy" vol. 2 #7 (2005), created by Fred Van Lente and Leonard Kirk. The character is depicted as a genius-level biochemist and the Scientist Supreme of the supervillain organization A.I.M. She has briefly dated both Bruce Banner and fellow A.I.M. agent George Tarleton, and is the mother of Carmilla Black.
Fictional character biography.
Monica's first invention was an electric knife to help her mother slice ham; she never got over losing the science fair to a tomato sauce-spouting volcano model.
While enrolled as a biochemistry student at the University of Padua, Monica Rappaccini went to New Mexico's Desert State University to study and shared a brief relationship with physics student Robert Bruce Banner. The ruthless Monica used their relationship to exploit Banner's radiation expertise for her own research. Upon attaining her doctorate, Monica quickly became a world-renowned innovator of antitoxins and antidotes for various environmental poisons and nearly won the Nobel Prize.
Recognizing the many environmental and political failings of Western civilization, Monica decided that it was too corrupt to exist. She joined a series of terrorist organizations - first the pan-European leftist group the Black Orchestra, then Advanced Idea Mechanics (or A.I.M. for short), where she had a brief relationship with fellow agent George Tarleton. Making poisons instead of curing them, Monica's expertise with toxins allowed her to rise quickly through A.I.M.'s ranks. She implanted her own daughter and several other newborn children of A.I.M. members with memetic antibodies and released them into the world as A.I.M. Waker agents with no knowledge of their heritage, programmed to travel instinctively to the nearest A.I.M. biohaven when their antibodies activated at age 16. Monica's daughter was raised in Vermont as Carmilla Black by undercover A.I.M. agents.
Monica went underground for nearly two decades, studying potential power sources such as the sentient Uni-Power and orchestrating attacks on capitalism, such as the dioxin-based gas attack on Hong Kong. When the A.I.M. Scientist Supreme was slain by renegade A.I.M. creation MODOK, Monica became head of a splinter faction of A.I.M. that remained independent from MODOK's control. Following MODOK's numerous defeats, Monica's splinter group absorbed more cells into a sizable rival faction, and she was made Scientist Supreme of this "true" version of A.I.M. As A.I.M.'s leader, Monica rarely did field work, preferring to act through agents and proxies.
When she led an A.I.M. attack on the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, it was thwarted by her estranged 19-year-old daughter, who had since joined forces with S.H.I.E.L.D. and became the costumed superheroine the Scorpion II. Monica eluded capture and soon attempted to harness the malfunctioning Uni-Power, but her plans were thwarted by the Scorpion II and several superheroes who bonded with the Uni-Power.
Her A.I.M. faction was involved in an A.I.M. civil war against MODOK's faction that drew in several of the Marvel superheroes, prominent among them Ms. Marvel and the Hulk.Following Ms. Marvel's thwarting of a plan to turn MODOK into a bomb, Monica reunited the organization under her control.
Monica infiltrated MODOK's supervillain group MODOK's 11 with A.I.M.'s new robot the Ultra-Adaptoid (which was impersonating the Chameleon). She attempted to prevent MODOK from obtaining a weapon called the Hypernova and using it to erase all life on Earth. She had a stated aim to stop A.I.M. from creating "inventions that turn around and try to destroy us". In the end, MODOK gained the Hypernova and Monica gave him $1 billion dollars in exchange for it - which, unknown to her, had been MODOK's plan all along, as he had already worked out that the Hypernova would grow unstable and explode anyway. A.I.M.'s base was destroyed in the explosion and MODOK believed Monica was dead.
During the "Dark Reign" storyline, it is revealed that she survived and came into conflict with Mockingbird and Ronin. She also hired Deadpool to retrieve a batch of baby M.O.D.O.C.'s enhanced to warp reality from H.A.M.M.E.R. headquarters.
After a failed attempt to persuade Hank Pym to join A.I.M., Monica and her followers were stranded on Earth-Charnel when the Wasp deactivated her facility's dimensional screen.
Monica and A.I.M. later sided with Norman Osborn after he escaped from prison and reformed H.A.M.M.E.R. Following Osborn's defeat, Monica and A.I.M. end up retreating.
During the "Avengers vs. X-Men" storyline, Noh-Varr located a secret A.I.M. base where Monica Rappaccini and the A.I.M. agents that escaped following Osborn's defeat were hiding out. The Avengers raided the base and arrested Monica and the other A.I.M. members that were present at the time.
She then escaped from prison and fought the new Wasp.
In the pages of the "Ravencroft" miniseries, Monica was seen as a member of J.A.N.U.S.
Powers and abilities.
A biochemical genius, Monica is one of the world's foremost authorities on organic toxins. Her inventions include the enhanced lymphatic system of the A.I.M. Waker agents that granted them total immunity to all biological, chemical and radiological weapons; memetic antibodies, synthetic microbes that attack the human psyche and trigger pre-coded memories and impulses; hallucinogenic drugs that deliver programmed hallucinations before being absorbed into the system; and many innovative weapons of mass destruction, from gas attacks to nanobacterial bombs. Monica's A.I.M. uniform belt contains a phasing device that allows her to teleport short distances. She keeps many different devices at hand, varying upon her situation and opponent; when facing a captured Hank Pym, she admitted that she kept 157 methods of containing him on hand.
Other versions.
"House of M".
When the mutant Scarlet Witch reality-warped Earth into a mutant-dominated society, Monica worked alongside the Scorpion II and the Hulk to overthrow Governor Exodus' fascist mutant government in Australia. When the Hulk became Australia's new leader, Monica's secret plan to create a cybernetic army to overthrow Earth's mutant rulers was exposed. Denying any knowledge of the army, Monica promised to restore the cyborgs' humanity. When this warped reality was undone, a disoriented Monica found herself stranded in Australia alongside Bruce Banner. Evading the Scorpion II's attempt to arrest her, Monica returned to A.I.M.
Death's Head 3.0 (Earth-6216).
In the alternate future timeline in Death's Head 3.0, Monica created the Uni-Alias, an artificial variant of Captain Universe's Uni-Power. Decades later Monica's granddaughter Varina Goddard, a Senior Scientist in the future A.I.M., used the Uni-Alias as a power source for the Death's Head robot in her attempt to assassinate the United Nations Secretary General.
"Ant-Man: Natural Enemy".
Monica appears in the 2015 Marvel novel "Ant-Man: Natural Enemy" by Jason Starr. Here, Monica captures a shrunken Scott Lang and was going to make him her pet, but later attempts to kill Lang by flushing him down the toilet. It is revealed that Monica murdered animals when she was a child (especially ants) in the novel.