#22 – Black Betty (Beth Black)

Most good criminals work to avoid violence. They understand that, once enough bodies pile up, no matter whose they are, law enforcement is essentially forced to investigate the matter and look into who or what is creating such a glut of cadavers.

Beth Black is not one of those people.

Too chaotic, unorganized and untrustworthy to be an assassin of the highest order, Beth Black is the kind of woman who believes that, if you’re going to kill someone, you should send a message in the process. None of Beth’s kills can be described as much less than “spectacular” or alternatively, “grisly”. Beth is the kind of woman who will leave her target hanging from a hook, wearing a Colombian Necktie when a simple bullet would do.

A firm proponent of psychological warfare as much as her own deadly prowess, Bethis not simply a ruffian from the wrong side of the tracks. She was the valedictorian of her class in New Orleans, before leaving on a scholarship for Louisiana State University. Always combative, manipulative and disruptive, Beth dropped out of college in her sophomore year when she decided she found the curriculum disinteresting and worthless. Beth floated around the Gulf Coast for two years, working as a bartender, an exotic dancer and dealing drugs in her free time before falling afoul of a local street gang. When the leader beat and attempted to rape her, she disemboweled and beheaded him,

Beth found the experience so liberating, so fulfilling, she decided to make a career of it. She is, arguably, a sadist, and slowly discovered that that fact was no accident, that she was not “normal”, and that she gained power, and ability through inflicting pain and suffering on others. Beth has been met by other heroes before, never to good ends, and most agree, her power resides in her ability to cause people physical pain, and to feed on that. She has a pathological desire to see anyone she has focused her gaze upon bleed.

Beth a highly intelligent woman who loves inverting expectations of her. She prefers any number of bladed weapons, and believes herself to be the walking incarnation of what a woman should be, playing by her own rules and forcing men to play by hers. She considers her “work” something of a ongoing class in modern anthropology, on how society deals with violence, and how a woman committing that violence destroys expectations.

An immensely versatile criminal, Beth’s biggest failing is her predilection for violence. It is exceedingly difficult for her to simply commit a crime without harming anyone. However, she has proved an adept thief and a fine liar. Promiscuous, careless about others, she was wormed her way into the lives of others, causing pain and havoc just to see how they would react.

Tags: assassin, killer, Sadist, villain

Category: 2012, Superhero