Voodoo (Wildstorm)

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caption =Voodoo's new costume, art by Giuseppe Camuncoli
comic_color = background:#8080ff
character_name = Voodoo
real_name = Priscilla Kitaen
publisher = Wildstorm
debut = WildC.A.T.S. #1 (August, 1992)
creators = Brandon Choi, Jim Lee
alliance_color = background:#ffc0c0
alliances = Wildcats
aliases =
powers = Telepathy, power beam [made of complete telepathic energy converted into force] the Sight (allows her to recognise Daemonite-possessed humans), time-manipulation, regeneration, can shapeshift into a beast-like form, Voodoo magic, and control over magnetic fields.

Voodoo is the name of a comic book character from DC Comics/Wildstorm.

History

Priscilla Kitaen was an exotic dancer before being rescued by the WildC.A.T.s from the Daemonites. Voodoo had a gift called the "Sight", allowing her to perceive if a person was possessed by a Daemonite, and being able to separate daemonites from the bodies they were possessing which made her very important to both the WildC.A.T.s and the Daemonites. Voodoo joined the WildC.A.T.S and revealed even greater powers, such as telepathy and the ability to develop animal-like traits, such as sprouting claws from her fingertips. She was later trained by Zealot in the martial arts of The Coda and developed an attraction towards Spartan.Her Daemonite ancestry was not revealed until when she entered into a coma after being shot. Void entered in her mind through a computer, and it was revealed that one of her ancestors, a Kherubim, was possessed by a Daemonite.

When the WildC.A.T.s travelled to Khera, homeplanet of the Kherubim, Voodoo was separated from her friends because of her Daemonite heritage. She was relocated to a Daemonite ghetto and discovered that the war between Khera and Daemonites had been over for centuries. More importantly she discovered that most Daemonites were not evil as she always was led to believe; the Daemonites on Earth were all highly fanatical soldiers, but on Khera the Daemonites were citizens. She managed to find the other WildC.A.T.s and confronted Zealot, who shamed her as being of an inferior race in front of the Coda sisterhood. Voodoo became disgusted with the Kherans and renounced Zealot, her former teacher. Despite this she then helped the WildC.A.Ts to stop an assassination attempt on Zealot and she too turned away from Khera. The WildC.A.T.s returned to Earth, but Voodoo couldn't forget Khera and Zealot's behaviour. Disappointed by her life as a superhero, she left the WildC.A.T.s.

Priscilla moved to New Orleans to return to exotic dancing. As she arrived, she met two men, Carry-4 and Attibon. Carry-4 took Voodoo to The Midnight Lounge, where the owner Christian Charles offered her a job as one of his dancers had disappeared. She became friends with Purity, another dancer. Needing a place to stay, Attibon took her to a hotel, the Royale, where she met Freeda, a former prostitute and Saturday, a former hitman. These three later revealed themselves as Erzulie, Papa Legba and Baron Samedi.Soon it became clear that Christian Charles had been murdering his dancers to bathe in their blood, an arcane ritual to resurrect his dead father, a dark magician. Christian had help from Carry-4 who was in reality Mait' Carrefour. Priscilla and lieutenant David Dove, the police officer investigating the murders, arrived in time to save Purity, but Christian had absorbed enough blood to summon his dead father. Priscilla faced him and channelled Erzulie. Despite all his power, Christian and his father couldn't resist her dance and Priscilla lured him back to the Royale. Inside the Royale, Baron Samedi, Erzulie and Papa Legba waited for Christian and his father, telling them that they disturbed the balance. The three pointed Christian and his father towards a door where they faced Damballa, causing the Royale to explode. The experience made Priscilla decide to learn more about voodoo magic and she became an apprentice to a mambo.

Several months later she briefly rejoined the WildC.A.Ts, but left again when the team disbanded following Zealot's apparent death. She moved in with Dr. Jeremy Stone, but despite her attempts to get closer to him, he often locked himself up in his lab. Unknown to Priscilla, Jeremy had fallen in love with her and was developing a method to remove the Daemonite-genes from her. Voodoo had no direction to her life at this time, but a Daemonite, disguised as an elderly man followed her around.

Priscilla was given a creditcard from the Halo Corporation under the name Marlowe. Tracking this credit-card, Voodoo was attacked by a serial killer called Samuel Smith, who was trying to kill Jacob Marlowe and all his relatives. It turned out that Jacob had defeated Smith's grandfather, a criminal with superhuman powers and now Samuel wanted revenge. He surprised her and his powers seriously injured her, separating her legs from her body and injuring her throat. Spartan, now Jack Marlowe, and Grifter took down Smith later. Grifter also convinced Jeremy that his plan to heal Voodoo from her Daemonite-side might not be welcomed at all by Voodoo.

While she was treated in the hospital, she amazed the medical staff by quickly recovering from her throat injuries. She quickly grew annoyed by the medical staff until she noticed a Daemonite among them. Soon afterwards the Daemonite confronted her. He told her that he was not an enemy, but a rare conscientious objector among the Daemonite military and that she should see him as her grandfather. He instructed her in the proper use of her Daemonite powers of time-manipulation and regeneration and within several hours, Voodoo had regrown her legs. Before leaving, he also convinced Priscilla to start a relationship with Jeremy. This relationship has ended recently; an aspect of her telepathic powers is that they increase with physical intimacy, and Voodoo's willingness to be intimate with other men to use them was, despite his protests, not something Jeremy could cope with. The break-up fight was ended when Priscilla intentionally angered him to the point that he grew in size. With the resulting loss of intellect that comes with his size growth, he forgot they were fighting, and she took the opportunity to leave. (as of Worldstorm # 2)

When DC Comics' character Captain Atom was stranded in the Wildstorm reality, Voodoo and the other WildC.A.T.S were sent to capture him. Voodoo displayed magnetic abilities that allowed her to control the metal of his uniform, and even disrupt the flow of iron in his bloodstream. However, when she attempted to use her telepathy to probe his mind, he connected her brain to all of the information in the world, which overloaded her mind and rendered her unconscious.

WildCats vol. 4

No longer a superhero, Priscilla Kitaen is, at the start of this series, once again an exotic dancer - now dancing for oil sheiks and billionaires. However, despite her telling Hadrian that it had been "years since [they] were superheroes together," it was clear that their former passion was not dimmed, and they ended up in bed together. She now appears to be an employee of the Halo Corporation once more, with Hadrian offering to triple her current wages.

TV series

In the short-lived WildC.A.T.s animated cartoon, Voodoo was portrayed as a somewhat naìve teenager, rather than an exotic dancer.

Powers and abilities

Voodoo is a telepathic human-Kherubim hybrid with Daemonite ancestry and possesses "the Sight," the ability to see Daemonites who have possessed humans. Along with this, she can use her powers to separate Daemonites from their hosts and has shown the ability to do this to other organisms that have been bonded. She can read and manipulate the thoughts and emotions of others, and even shut off people's minds. Her powers increase proportionate to physical intimacy, enabling her greater ability to psychically manipulate and read others. Early on, she was able to shapeshift into a humanoid wolf-like state, complete with fur and claws, and in this state her personality became savage and feral. Later this power was changed so that she shifted into a Daemonite form. An elderly Daemonite appeared to her and taught her the use of her hidden powers of regeneration and time-manipulation. Zealot has trained her in the martial arts of The Coda. She was also mentored in the use of Voodoo magic by a High Voodoo Priestess.

Recently, Voodoo has displayed the power to control magnetic fields, and can move and manipulate ferrous metals with her mind. Her precision is so great, that she can even control the trace amounts of iron in a person's bloodstream. Voodoo can even focus her magnetic power into waves of energy that can strike a target with devastating force.