Enchantress

The Enchantress is an Æsir sorceress and villain living in Asgard. She is renowned for her exceptional beauty, and regularly uses this fact to take advantage of ordinary men. Her sexual power over mortals seems to be on some level magical, though she also possesses a remarkable natural appeal to other Asgardians. She frequently fights alongside the Executioner, who contrasts her wiles with brute strength. The two have also allied themselves with Baron Zemo and his Masters of Evil in the past.

Biography

In early 1964, the Enchantress was called upon by Odin and Loki to tempt Thor into leaving his true love, the human Jane Foster. Thor at that time was embodied by the human Dr. Donald Blake, and Enchantress went to meet him in his New York office. She came on to him, and as she got closer he realized who it was. As Jane walked into the room, Enchantress suddenly kissed Don on the lips, causing Jane to storm out. The handicapped Dr. Blake attempted to chase after her, as Enchantress was dumbfounded at the fact that Blake had left her embrace. She realized that as long as Foster was available, Thor would never leave her, and thus conspired to remove her from the equation. She returned to Asgard and recruited the Executioner, a mighty warrior who like many others was infatuated with her. Executioner eventually sent Foster to the Limbo dimension, but was defeated by Thor and forced to return her. Enchantress returned to Earth and punished the warrior for his failure by turning his limbs to tree branches. A panicked Executioner begged Thor for protection. Using his hammer, Thor created a whirlwind that sent Enchantress and Executioner back to Asgard once again.

Masters of Evil

For their crimes, Enchantress and Executioner were brought before Odin, who banished them to Earth and stripped Executioner of his axe and helmet. Thrown into an unfamiliar world with nowhere to go, Enchantress realized they needed an ally, and saw a potential candidate in a newspaper headline, the villainous Baron Zemo. Zemo had recently attempted to defeat the Avengers (including Thor) with his team the Masters of Evil, but the remaining Masters were taken into custody in the process. Enchantress sent mental projections of herself and Executioner to Zemo's jungle base, offering an alliance so that they could get their collective revenge on Thor and the Avengers. Executioner disguised himself as a former ally of Zemo's and met with Captain America, telling him Zemo's location in order to bait him away from New York and the other Avengers. By coincidence, Giant-Man and Wasp had just left the city for scientific research, while Iron Man had recently been suspended from the team, leaving Thor as the only active Avenger in the city. Enchantress used her sorcery to hypnotize Thor into thinking that the Avengers were his enemies. He radioed Giant-Man and Wasp to return, leading to a fight that soon involved Iron Man as well. Zemo's underlings met Captain America as he arrived in the jungle, but Cap bravely fought through them and hitched a ride on Zemo's getaway plane to New York. Meanwhile, Iron Man was able to snap Thor out of his hypnosis with a blast of reflected sunlight into his eyes. As Zemo and the Asgardians came together for the first time, Thor caught them and their ship in a space warp that sent them to a random location in the multiverse.

They drifted between dimensions, but the Enchantress's magical powers allowed them to escape Thor's space warp and land back on Earth, in Zemo's jungle hideaway in South America. There they plotted their coming riposte at the Avengers for weeks. They recruited Simon Williams, an American inventor who was accused of embezzling money from Tony Stark, and promised him revenge against Stark by way of Iron Man. Zemo used advanced technology to turn Williams into the powerful Wonder Man. They used Wonder Man as a spy within the Avengers to bait the heroes into a trap. This worked perfectly at first, but Wonder Man had a change of heart just before Zemo planned to kill all of the incapacitated Avengers, and turned the tide of battle in their favor, forcing Zemo and the Asgardians to flee. Wonder Man perished shortly thereafter of poisoning from Zemo's experiments—Zemo had promised him the antidote on the condition of his loyalty. Several months later, Zemo attempted another assembly of the Masters of Evil, enlisting Enchantress and Executioner to spring Black Knight and the Melter—two original members of the group—out of prison. The four confronted the Avengers while Zemo observed from his South American base, but wound up defeated. Black Knight and Melter were returned to prison, but the Asgardians escaped. Captain America traveled to South America and confronted Zemo, who misfired his weapon and accidentally killed himself.

Loki's lackeys

Shortly afterward, Enchantress and Executioner got back in touch with Loki, who had them accost (but not harm) Jane Foster as a way of distracting Thor from the ongoing Trial of the Gods. The two took Foster into the streets, drawing perhaps more attention than Loki intended. They drew the eye of the noble Asgardian Balder, who came to Midgard and confronted them. They fought until Thor arrived, causing the villains to flee. The two didn't emerge again for several months, when they were coerced by Doctor Doom's emotion machine into attacking the Baxter Building on the day of the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm. A veritable legion of villains fought a similarly powerful force of heroes defending the Baxter Building. Black Knight and Melter were also present, resulting in something of a reunion of the Masters of Evil sans Zemo. In the end, Reed Richards used a device provided by Uatu to transport all of the villains back slightly in time and wipe their memories of these events. Reed and Sue Storm were thus successfully and peacefully married.

Forging Power Man

Enchantress sought revenge against the Avengers for destroying the Masters of Evil, but she remained cautious and calculating. She waited for a prime moment to strike, and found an opportunity later in the year. She witnessed Erik Josten, a mercenary follower of Zemo, enter the South American laboratory where Zemo had created Wonder Man, long buried by rubble. Josten had a broken leg, and wanted to gain powers like Wonder Man had had, but he didn't know how to operate the machinery. Enchantress warped to the lab and offered to do it for him. He agreed, and Enchantress put him through the machine. When the process was done, Josten's leg was healed, and he felt a great deal of strength flowing through him. Enchantress wanted him to be a "living symbol of the Masters of Evil," and supplied him with an appropriate dark-red costume. She dubbed him "Power Man," an appropriate successor to Wonder Man—and a preferable replacement to her usual brawny counterpart, the Executioner, whom she called a fool. Power Man was less than thrilled about having a gimmick, but his newfound power and Enchantress's wiles were more than enough to sway him.

The Enchantress's plan was to defeat the Avengers not by beating them in combat, but by discrediting them in the public eye. First, she conjured an image of a huge beast in the streets that only the Avengers could see. Their attacks went right through the illusion, and they wound up doing a great deal of damage to the surrounding area, much to the displeasure of the police. Next, she arranged a plot to trick the Avengers into destroying a subway train. She and Power Man sent a radio message to the Avengers warning them that someone was tampering with the subway tracks, and the heroes arrived soon after. The super-fast Quicksilver arrived first, and Power Man knocked him out from behind and laid him across the train tracks. The others—Captain America, Hawkeye, and Quicksilver's sister Scarlet Witch—arrived moments later as the train came from the other direction. Enchantress ensured that the train was empty, which allowed Hawkeye to destroy it with an explosive arrow before it could hit Quicksilver. The authorities again blamed the Avengers for the extensive property damage. Next, Power Man beat up a pair of thieves disguised as guards, who were trying to escape from an office building with important confidential documents. Enchantress, hiding in the bushes, used a light persuasion spell to get Captain America to come, and he saw Power Man beating up the uniformed men. He attacked, but Power Man and Enchantress overpowered him. When the businesspeople from the office arrived, it looked as though Power Man had saved the day in spite of Captain America. When news about this event was printed in the newspaper the following day, Enchantress used her influence to print the address of a mansion where she and Power Man were staying. As expected, some of the Avengers came to investigate: Hawkeye and Quicksilver came in turn, and the evil duo defeated them both. Scarlet Witch arrived soon after, and Power Man had all three arrested for trespassing. The next day, the New York city council declared the Avengers a public menace and issued a court order demanding their dissolution. Enchantress's intricate plot seemed to have worked.

Enchantress and Power Man hid out in an apartment while the Avengers disbanded. One day, they were visited by a man with a briefcase claiming to be a representative of sorts. He suggested that they should recreate the Avengers in their image. He bragged about having been responsible for breaking up the Avengers, which drew Power Man's ire. He assured the man that he and Enchantress had been responsible for framing the Avengers' downfall, giving away an incriminating amount of detail. Enchantress detected that something was wrong, and the man revealed himself to be Captain America in an elaborate disguise, running a tape recorder in his briefcase. He pocketed the tape of evidence and fought Power Man while Enchantress stood back, curious to see how her charge could handle a fight on his own. Cap's skill and wits proved formidable, but Power Man got the better of him after a while. The other Avengers arrived thanks to Captain America accidentally activating a fluke distress signal, and Hawkeye incapacitated Enchantress with a sleep arrow. The three fought Power Man while Cap handed off the recording to the police nearby. He returned and told Power Man that his time was up. Enchantress recovered and cut all ties with Power Man, expressing her disappointment in his failure and warping away. Power Man was distraught and aimless without her guidance, and posed no threat to the Avengers. He wasn't charged, as he hadn't actually committed any provable crimes.