Greatest Villains of All Time: Selene Gallio
The Search for the Greatest Villain of All Time
Also known as the Black Queen, Selene Gallio is one of the oldest—and most formidable—mutants on Earth. A telepathic vampire, she can psionically drain the life force of others through physical touch, reducing her victims to dust in seconds. In addition to her vampiric abilities, Selene possesses superhuman strength, speed, stamina, agility, reflexes, and durability. However, using these powers comes at a cost: the more energy she expends, the more rapidly she ages. Fortunately for her, the cycle is self-sustaining—by absorbing additional life force, she can reverse the aging process and maintain her youth indefinitely. In short: she’s immortal, as long as she keeps feeding.
Ancient Times
Born before recorded history, Selene Gallio seemed destined for darkness from the very start. As an infant, the elders of her tribe commanded her mother’s people to sacrifice themselves to sustain Selene’s unnatural hunger. She is believed to have wandered the world for millennia, hidden in the shadows of history, until the rise of the Roman Empire.
During that era, she forged a deadly alliance with a Roman senator named Eliphas, promising him immortality in exchange for his help with a horrifying plan: a massive sacrificial ritual intended to consume the entire population of Rome and elevate her to godhood. But the plan unraveled. While Eliphas was secretly drawing pentagrams and preparing the ritual across the city, a moment of guilt overcame him—he warned a young girl to flee with her family. The girl’s family alerted the authorities, and both Selene and Eliphas were captured before the spell could be completed.
Selene, furious at Eliphas’s betrayal, cursed him with a twisted form of immortality. She transformed him into a vampire-like creature and condemned him to an eternity of suffering—burying him alive, to rot forever in the dark.
Necrosha
Throughout the centuries, Selene Gallio’s reign of terror has left a trail of devastation across the globe. She once enslaved the entire city of Nova Roma, forcing its people to worship her as a living goddess. She even claimed responsibility for triggering the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius that buried Pompeii in ash. But none of her atrocities compare to the events of Necrosha.
In her most audacious bid for godhood, Selene decimated the Hellfire Club and launched a war against the X-Men—backed by an army of 16 million resurrected mutants, raised from the mass graves of Genosha. As the chaos unfolded, she consumed the souls of a million of the undead, finally ascending to true godhood in a horrific crescendo of death and dark power.
Selene Gallio is evil in its purest form. Her singular goal is to consume enough souls to fully transform into a deity. Her insatiable hunger has driven her to instigate wars, spark disasters, and manipulate powerful institutions—all to feed her power and extend her unnatural life. Having walked the Earth for over 17,000 years, the number of lives she has taken is beyond measure—and she shows no signs of stopping.
Among the countless villains in the X-Men universe, Selene Gallio stands apart, boasting one of the highest body counts in mutant history.
