Contributed by Hope

Victoria was fired from her job at S.H.I.E.L.D after she questioned director Nick Fury on his soft stance on international crime, and dumped by her girlfriend, an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D on the same day.

Due to her vocal opposition of Nick Fury and Iron Man, Victoria was promoted to Norman Osborn’s second in command when he took over S.H.I.E.L.D and renamed it H.A.M.M.E.R.

Victoria has a level of command over the Dark Avengers, but is primarily in charge of catering to Normans wishes and running operations on a day to day level. She was responsible for bombarding Bruce Banner with increased gamma radiation in order to hasten his future transformation into the Hulk (which his son, Skaar has sworn to kill on the day he appears)

While not amoral like her colleagues, Victoria has strict ideas of punishment and retribution for those who do wrong. It has been suggested that she is ignoring Norman Osborne’s increasingly unbalanced behaviour in the hopes that when he cracks she will have his position and be able to mete out justice in any way she wishes.

Currently Victoria co-stars or appears in all of the Dark Marvel titles. Hand made her first appearance in Dark Avengers #1.

© and ® Marvel Comics. Used without permission.

Art by Rurick Tyler

Contributed by Ronald Byrd

Victoria Montesi is the only child of Monsignor Vittorio Montesi; the Montesi line was long ago designated as the guardians of the Darkhold, a tome of ancient black magic which has the potential to summon the Elder God Chthon to wreak havoc upon the Earth, but Victoria, half-American, disbelieves her father’s claims and takes up hospital work in Rome, where she lives with her lover, karate instructor Natasha “Nash” Salvato. However, when pages from the Darkhold are distributed to unsuspecting mortals by a demonic Dwarf and Nash is rendered quadriplegic and comatose following an explosion intended to kill Victoria, Victoria joins with occult expert Louise Hastings and Interpol agent Sam Buchanan to recover the pages as the Darkhold Redeemers. After some months of such adventures, Victoria’s life takes an even worse turn when it is revealed that she is in fact Chthon’s daughter, created when the sterile Vittorio used magic to guarantee himself an heir, and she is mystically impregnated with Chthon himself; Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange kept Victoria in mystic stasis for a time to delay Chthon’s rebirth into the Earth dimension, and he was ultimately able to prevent it. When last seen, Victoria was being spirited away by the Midwife, a creation of Chthon’s who nevertheless rebelled against her master’s rebirth and sought to help Victoria recover from her ordeal; what has become of her since then, as well as whether or not Nash ever recovered, is unknown.

Except for a period when she briefly possessed demonic abilities obtained from a Darkhold page, Victoria Montesi had no superhuman physical powers, although as the daughter of Chthon, she no doubt had the potential to manifest such powers; her half-demon nature granted her visions directing her to the missing Darkhold pages. She also possessed a reasonable level of fighting skill, much of it learned from Nash.

[Gay writer Chris Cooper penned all 16 issues of the short lived Darkhold: Pages From the Book of Sin series. Cooper also founded the Queer Nation website, one of the first, if not the original, webcomic to feature LGBT superheroes. - J. Palmer]

© and ® Marvel Comics. Used without permission.