Medusa

Medusa is an Inhuman known for her long, powerful, prehensile red hair. She first rose to notoriety as a member of the Frightful Four, foes of the Fantastic Four. She is a member of the Inhuman Royal Family: her younger sister is Crystal, and they are cousins to several other prominent Inhumans.

Biography

Amnesia and life of crime

In the early 1960s, Medusa's cousin King Black Bolt ruled Attilan peacefully and justly while his mad brother Maximus was imprisoned. Maximus fomented a revolt among the Alpha Primitives, led by the empowered Trikon, in an attempt to wreak havoc and allow him to usurp the throne. Medusa attacked the Trikon in a sky-sled, but they blasted her hard to the ground with a beam of energy, striking her with amnesia. She wandered out of Attilan, conscious of little beyond her own name. Though Trikon was sent through a portal to the Negative Zone, Maximus's insurrection proved successful, as he banished the rest of the royal family from Attilan while making their ousting look like a voluntary abdication and self-imposed exile. Months later, Medusa wound up in Paris, France, while the rest of the family sought her across Europe. Medusa struggled in Paris as she fled from judgmental and dangerous human eyes, and her amnesia made it even more difficult than usual to survive. Escaping into an apartment, she met a jewel thief named Paul Dumas, who trained her as a thief and integrated her into Parisian high society, a task for which her powers made her well suited. Within two years, the two had amassed a quarter of a million francs between them, but Medusa remained distraught at her lack of a true identity. Dumas tried to romance her, but she refused, and left him. In an act of petty retaliation, Paul called the police on her, forcing her to flee the city penniless. Gorgon found Medusa soon after, but she fled him as well due to a subconscious association with the Trikon. Gorgon had returned to Attilan alone and pleaded with Maximus to let the family return, and Maximus agreed on the condition that he returned with Medusa as well. The Seeker, Maximus's loyal lieutenant, installed a transmitter in Gorgon's headband that allowed them to spy on the family's location and communications.

Frightful Four

Medusa hid out on a Mediterranean island for months, aimless and hopeless. While fighting off the police one day, she was spotted and recruited by the Wizard, a brilliant criminal who sought to form a team to defeat the Fantastic Four, known as the Frightful Four. By 1965, she joined him along with the Sandman and Paste-Pot Pete, moving to New York City. The new team infiltrated the Fantastic Four's headquarters at the Baxter Building, catching the heroes off-guard in their home. Wizard nearly managed to send three of the Fantastic Four into the atmosphere with his anti-gravity device, but the Human Torch managed to put a stop to the Frightful Four's plans. The villains fled and regrouped, leaving the heroes off-balance and shocked that they were almost defeated so easily. Wizard went to great lengths to enact his vengeance on the Fantastic Four, constructing an underground base with a massive bomb inside it beneath a remote Pacific atoll. He and the others (including Trapster, a rebranded Paste-Pot Pete) lured the heroes to the atoll and stranded them there, leaving them to seemingly die in the explosion. A month later, the Frightful Four went to the Baxter Building and found that their enemies had not returned. They were however scared away by a burst of flame in the sky that they assumed was the Human Torch, but which was in fact the Asgardian Balder, arriving on Earth for an unrelated matter.

Against the Frightful Four's hopes, the Fantastic Four did in fact survive and return to New York. After a brief falling out between the Thing and the rest of the team, the Frightful Four captured Thing and used the "id machine" of Wizard's creation to alter the hero's mind, manipulating his anxieties and turning him to the side of evil. Thing proved to be a potent ally against the rest of the Fantastic Four, but in the end, the heroes' cunning and steadfast alliance allowed them to return the Thing to normal and finally bring the Frightful Four to justice, with the exception of Medusa, who slipped through the Human Torch's grasp by way of Wizard's anti-grav ship. During the conflict, Medusa felt a brief sense of attraction to the heroes' leader, Mr. Fantastic.

Emergence of the Inhumans

Medusa became an infamous figure, and her publicity drew the royal family to New York, where they hid in an underground base in the Bowery while Gorgon pursued her. The family's private meetings were transmitted in full to the Seeker, who arrived in New York shortly after the Frightful Four were defeated. Gorgon pursued Medusa, and she fled to the Baxter Building and abducted Human Torch, forcing him to drive her away from Gorgon using a "vacuum gun" that kept his flames at bay. Gorgon climbed to the top of the Baxter Building and stole the Fantastic Four's helicopter to give chase. Soon, the monstrous Dragon Man got involved, bearing a possessive desire for Medusa—and the Fantastic Four's Invisible Girl. Medusa, Gorgon, Dragon Man, and the Fantastic Four eventually came to a confrontation on a rooftop near the Baxter Building, and Gorgon told the heroes that he and Medusa belonged to the same race. Dragon Man fled with Invisible Girl, and Gorgon grabbed Medusa and stomped again, causing the building beneath them all to begin to crumble. Gorgon escaped with Medusa, returning her to the hideout. Medusa's memory was restored, though it's unclear how—it's possible that being around her entire family triggered the return of her memories. The naïve Crystal soon granted the Human Torch access to the hideout, thinking he was a fellow Inhuman. Gorgon recognized him and attacked, but Torch quickly fled through the ceiling, burning through it and exposing the hideout. He signaled for his teammates, who soon arrived and confronted the Inhumans.

Black Bolt returned from a brief excursion soon after, and the Inhumans and Fantastic Four fought. Mr. Fantastic fought Triton, ripping his robe and unwittingly forcing Triton to flee into the ocean. Almost immediately after diving in, Triton was found by the Seeker and abducted. Seeker and his men imprisoned Triton in a small aquarium in a secret base nearby. They also held the unconscious Dragon Man captive, having taken him from containment in the Baxter Building after assuming he was an Inhuman. Meanwhile, the other Inhumans discovered that Triton had been taken, and concluded that their hideout had been compromised. Afraid of the Seeker's pursuit, they fled to Attilan using Lockjaw's portal to confront Maximus directly. Crystal wanted to remain with Johnny, and Medusa supported giving her the chance to live as a human, but Karnak and Gorgon held her back, insisting that she remain to keep the family together. For his part, Black Bolt's electron energy had been expended, leaving him disabled. Meanwhile, the Fantastic Four arrived at Seeker's base as Dragon Man escaped, though they soon subdued him. Seeker left for Attilan with Triton in tow, but Mr. Fantastic planted a tracking device on his ship allowing the heroes to follow.

Reclaiming Attilan

The family arrived in Attilan and Maximus glad-handed them, feigning peacefulness. He made his intentions known: namely, that he wished to make Medusa his queen. In an act of desperation, Black Bolt snatched the crown from Maximus's head and wore it himself, reclaiming his rightful title. They asked about Triton, and Maximus revealed a monitor showing him contained in water in another room. The Fantastic Four arrived outside, and Crystal ran out to them to greet Johnny. The other Inhumans came outside to separate them, escalating tensions between the two groups. Speaking on Black Bolt's behalf, Medusa told the Fantastic Four that the king would spare their lives if they left now and told no one of what they had seen. Mr. Fantastic tried to convince them to cease their isolationism and join Earth society at large. Meanwhile, Maximus retreated to an inner sanctum of the royal palace, revealing a huge, special weapon called the atmo-gun, which would vibrate the Earth's atmosphere in such a way as to kill all humans (but not Inhumans) on the planet. By using it, Maximus hoped to conquer the world upon reclaiming rule of Attilan.

It soon became clear that, though the vibrations were strong enough to knock everyone in the world briefly off balance, Maximus had miscalculated his plan. He had believed that humans were farther away genetically from Inhumans, and thereby unwittingly fired the atmo-gun at a non-fatal frequency. Black Bolt slapped Maximus to the ground, and the Seeker shamelessly submitted to the rightful king's rule. Medusa told Maximus that she would only ever give her heart to Black Bolt—but that she would wait until he had fulfilled his destiny of helping the Inhumans rejoin humanity. Enraged at his failure, Maximus reversed the charge on the atmo-gun and used it to create a thick "negative zone" around the city that forced the Fantastic Four to retreat, much to Johnny and Crystal's dismay. Black Bolt and Gorgon went on to locate Triton and confront Maximus and the Seeker. Gorgon tricked Seeker into firing an errant laser blast through Black Bolt's antenna, focusing its energy and hitting Maximus instead, causing severe psychological damage. Seeker tried to escape, but Gorgon stomped and caused a cave-in, killing him. Maximus was imprisoned once again, and Attilan returned to Black Bolt's peaceful rule.