Greatest Villains of All-Time: Selene Gallio
The Search for the Greatest Villain of All-Time
AKA The Black Queen, Selene Gallio is one of the oldest mutants on earth and also one of the most powerful. A telepathic vampire that can psionically drain the life forces of other human beings into herself through physical touch, reducing the victim’s body to dust. While she also possesses superhuman strength, speed, stamina, agility, reflexes, and durability, heavy expenditure of these powers causes her to age, and the more energy she uses, the faster she ages. But it all comes full circle, as she can rejuvenate herself by absorbing more life force, will not age as long as she maintains her supply of absorbed life force. Yup, she’s also immortal.
Ancient Times
Since her birth in the time before recorded history, Selene Gallio was destined to be evil. While still an infant, her tribal elders ordered her mother’s people to sacrifice themselves to Selene for sustenance. She is assumed to have been wandering the world for millennia, until the rise of the Roman Empire. At which point she befriended a senator named Eliphas, promising him immortality in exchange for helping her in a plot to sacrifice the entire population of Rome in a ceremony that would grant her godlike power. The plot ultimately did not work, while Eliphas was drawing pentagrams and performing rituals throughout the city, he warns a little girl to get her family out. Her family alerts the authorities, and Eliphas and Selene are captured before the spell can be carried out. She then curses Eliphas for his betrayal with an eternal life of torture, turning him into a vampire-like creature and burying him alive.
Necrosha
Other events would take place over the centuries, including enslaving the entire city of Nova Roma to worship her as a goddess, and admitted to triggering Mount Vesuvius’s eruption that destroyed Pompeii, but Selene would top everything in the story of Necrosha. In another plot to become a true goddess, she laid waste to the Hellfire Club and waged to war on the X-Men with an army of 16 million, resurrected from the massacred mutants of Genosha’s ruins. The slaughter saw Selene absorbing the reanimated souls of a million mutants and ascending to godhood.
Selene Gallio is as evil as evil can be. Her entire goal in life is to consume enough souls to become a deity. This, combined with the nature of her powers, has encouraged her to initiate dozens of wars and catastrophes throughout history, and will often ally herself with powerful establishments so she can use their influence to commit atrocities. Considering she’s been around for 17,000 years, there’s no counting how many lives she has taken to maintain her youth, and still fully intends on killing millions more.
Selene Gallio is considered to have one the highest body counts in all of X-Men.
