Sisters of Justice
The Sisters of Justice is a team of all-female superheroes in the fictional universe of Millennium Comics. The first version never generated a great deal of interest, but a new incarnation has become a steady seller after an miniseries introducing the new version of the team.
Version One
Originally, the Sisters were comprised of Kit Vixen, the teenage sidekick of Vixen, The Hummingbird and Suzanne Dale, the friend of the android superhero Mentor who had given her numerous small inventions (as had her uncle, whose murder inspired her to fight supervillains in the first place). Suzanne Dale never quite settled on a nom-de-guerre, although the press dubbed her Gadget Girl.
Later, the group was sometimes helped/joined by Joculatrix, a teenaged runaway who had also befriended Mentor. Her natural cunning and thorough knowledge of the shadowy corners of Millennium City (the abandoned subway stations, old sewer system, the natural caves, etc.) proved very valuable.
The team generally found itself fighting "second tier" villains in the Millennium universe. In fact, they even inspired a short-lived supervillains team called the Brothers in Crime (The Questioneer, Dr. Wax and Count Nocturno). Once, they went up against the Coalition of Evil and won, albeit barely. Some villains they fought were actually unique to them:
- Ratkin - a thief who had a strange affinity to rats, and had trained thousands of them to do as he wanted.
- Lightning Bug - a mutant with the power to absorb and re-direct electricity. He hired himself out as a hit man.
- Silver Scarab - a bored socialite who decided to make his mark in the world via a life of crime.
- The Horror - an elderly criminal mastermind from the First Great War who sought to train others to carry on his "work."
By 1990 the team rarely met and there was little interest in it. When Kit Vixen decided to go it alone as She Lynx for all practical purposes the team disbanded.
Version Two
In 2002, a miniseries re-introduced the Sisters of Justice with a new premise and new characters. The start involved the murder of Suzanne Dale and Joculatrix's desire to hunt down the killer, which led to her recruitment of allies. One of these was The Green Girl, the semi-foster daughter of Doc Gabriel.
Central to that story was Dark Novice, who began as a teenaged girl obsessed with superheroes who accidently witnessed something to do with Suzanne Dale's murder. She was kidnapped by Novice, a white-clad martial arts henchwoman of the new Doctor Wax. Used as a test subject for what was supposed to be a weapon that disintegrated matter, instead she (very painfully) gained a weird power of her own--a kind of control over darkness. She could darken an area, or move a shadow, or even enter one shadow and emerge from another (but they had to be line-of-sight). But she also gained an extreme sensitivity to light, as well as a burning hatred for the torture she'd endured. She escaped and was able to help the new Sisters track down Novice.
The new Sisters were in some ways more like a street gang or perhaps a version of Robin Hood's merrie men than a superhero team. Rather that deal with threats to the world, for example, they focussed on thwarting the activities of Millennium City's most unreachable crimelords, the ones who tend to have bizarre and/or superhuman minions. Most of their adventures so far take place against a backdrop of the struggle between two crime lords in particular:
- "Gargoyle" McQueen is in some ways a conventional but brilliant leader of organized crime. Yet his appearance and abilities bely that. Almost seven feet tall, he has rocky grey skin as well as horns and claws. His teeth include fangs. His eyes glow red (he can certainly see in the dark). McQueen is virtually bullet-proof, able to survive small explosions and immune to every poison that's been tried on him. He also is strong enough to bend steel with his bare hands. Interestingly enough, he's also a rather vain dresser and enjoys gourmet food. Likewise, he is rarely without a beautiful woman on his arm, at least in public. His bizarre appearance he explains by claiming a birth defect, which absolutely no one believes. To his minions, he gives the hint he is in fact a demon, but evidence suggests this is not true. At least his parents (who are still alive) seem perfectly human, if tremendously disturbed by their son's activities. His first name is Lars.
- Doctor Wax is actually the second crimelord to use this name. The first was a foe of Vixen and was obsessed with waxworks. Although a vicious and sometimes brilliant criminal, he was also clearly obsessive-compulsive and that was his undoing. He died in the miniseries about the Coalition of Evil. The new Doctor Wax is more mysterious, taking on the name and deliberately copying some of the attributes of Doctor Wax 1. For example, he surrounds himself with wax figures, but in his case these figures are also androids capable of acting in his self defense. He often kills his enemies by dipping them in boiling wax and then leaving the body somewhere very public. His minions usually wear wax flowers, which are in fact communication and tracking devices. The new Doctor Wax wears a version of the first's trademark purple and black evening wear, but conceals his face behind a mask.
Dynamics
The new Sisters of Justice can be described as a barely-functional trinity. Joculatrix is the senior-most of them, in many ways the most world-wise. Dark Novice is the most angry and unstable, who feels great affinity for the other two as the only ones who can dimly understand her POV. Green Girl, on the other hand, is the most patient and perhaps the sanest of them.
All three tend to be more intuitive than methodical, which has proven one of their greatest advantages--almost no one manages to predict what they'll do next. In fact, some regard them as little better than the criminals they seek to apprehend. More than one police officer and politician have tried to apprehend the Sisters, but they have proven very loyal to each other and hence difficult to capture permanently.
