Zener Villain: Centerfold (Patreon)

Another Zener character done in there style of Danilo! Here is Centerfold, Zener's sometimes enemy and sometimes patient.

ORIGIN

Samia Amani was tragically born with severe defects that warped her face and body. Her family was not especially supportive of her, and though they never said so outright Samia knew that they were embarrassed to have her as a child. Samia also had a little sister who was astonishingly beautiful, and when she arrived at the age to enter the dating market she would often bring boys home. At her parents’ instruction, Samia would hide in her room whenever one of her sister’s boyfriends was at the house because they feared that if the boys knew of her presence it would scare them away.

Samia spent much of her time locked in her room watching romance movies and reading shipping fanfics. The one thing she desperately wanted more than anything else was for people to think she was beautiful and love her, but thought that such things could never be more than a fantasy for her. Instead, she listened to the sounds of her sister talking to her boyfriends through the door and cried herself to sleep at night.

Once superhumans started showing up in her hometown of Indigo Valley, Samia started seeing rumors on the internet that some of the villains terrorizing the city bore a striking resemblance to certain people who had disappeared mysteriously in the past. The connections were tenuous at best, but the theory was spreading that somebody was kidnapping people who wouldn’t be missed and performing experiments on them. This gave Samia an idea: surely if anyone in this world wouldn’t be missed it would be her, right? And if these people could grant super powers, surely they could fix birth defects? She took to sneaking out at night and hanging out in the seedy parts of town. Sure enough, one night she was abducted while pretending to be a homeless person under a bridge.

She found herself in the captivity of Ryker’s organization, where she underwent a series of painful experiments. When all was said and done, she was given the ability to slowly shapeshift into her ideal body, as well as the ability to mind control anyone based on their lust reaction to her. She was, however, unaware of this second ability.

Using her beautiful new body and unwittingly mind-controlling her captors she was able to escape from Ryker’s people and re-enter society. Once in the outside world, almost anyone who saw her fell in love with her and did whatever she told them to, which she thought was simply because they wanted to please her but was in reality her mind control abilities at work. Drunk with all the love and affection that she had wished for her whole life, she surrounded herself with all her adoring followers, stealing them away from friends and family and even their livelihoods to become a part of her ever-growing harem. This mass of people surrounding her drew the attention of Zener and Willow the Wisp, who very quickly realized that something was amiss. They confronted Samia, who had taken the name Centerfold, but quickly fell under her spell. Now with two of the most powerful beings in Indigo Valley under her control, Centerfold was virtually unstoppable.

Everything seemed hopeless until help arrived from an unlikely place. Piper, Zener and Willow’s normal human roommate, showed up to try help her friends. Though she didn’t know how Centerfold’s powers worked and didn’t have any idea how she could save the other two, she knew she had to try. As it turned out, however, Piper was immune to Centerfold’s spell due to her lack of romantic interest in women. Suddenly faced with someone who didn’t love her, Centerfold’s hatred of her own body reasserted itself, and even though she was as beautiful as it was possible for a human to be, she still thought she wasn’t beautiful enough. She broke down, and her change in mental state broke her mind control ability.

Things would only get worse when Zener explained to her how her powers worked, and that people were only doing what she told them to because of mind control and not because of love. Distraught at the idea, she tried to throw herself from a building, but Zener saved her.

Centerfold is now one of Zener’s patients, and he’s trying to help her learn to love herself and seek relationships in a healthy way. She sometimes helps him out in his crime fighting, but the temptation for her to use her powers is great and sometimes it’s her who needs to be stopped. She also has developed something of an obsession for Piper, the woman who rejected her advances, and still tries from time to time to figure out a way to win her love. So far none of her attempts have been successful.

Powers/Abilities

• Centerfold can showly shapeshift her appearance over time. This process is too sluggish to use in combat, but if she has time she can disguise herself as someone else
• Able to make anyone with either a romantic or sexual interest in her do anything she tells them to. Some people can develop a resistance to this over time, but there seems to be no upper limit to the number of people she can control at once.

Let us know what you guys think with a comment below!

Zener: Master of the Mind © NRG Comics

Art by Danilo Cassonato