CLEOPATRA
Real Name: Cleopatra VII
Identity/Class: Human (Macedonian) (69-30 BC)
Occupation: Monarch
Group Membership: Venus' handmaidens (including Bilitis, Du Barry, Circe, Helen of Troy, Isolde, Juliet, Liti, Psyche, Salome, unidentified others), the House of Ptolemy
Affiliations: Marc Antony, Julius Caesar (including the time an alien possessed his corpse), Clea, "Lance Curtiss", Doctor Strange (Stephen Strange), Minnie Geels, Iron Man (Tony Stark), Alec Jones, Maria Storm, Michael Templar, Dr. Karl Veblin, Venus
Enemies: Mad Pharaoh (Hatap), Zota
Known Relatives: Ptolemy Auletes XI (father, deceased), Cleopatra VI (mother), Cesarion (son by Julius Caesar, alias Ptolemy XIV), Ptolemy XII, Ptolemy XIII (brothers/husbands, deceased), Alexander Helios, Cleopatra Selene, Ptolemy Philadelphus (children by Marc Antony, deceased), Ptolemy I (Fifth Century BC ancestor, deceased)
Aliases: Queen of the Nile, Siren of the Nile
Base of Operations: Alexandria, Egypt and Rome (now part of Modern Italy)
First Appearance: Ideal#1/1 (July, 1948)
Powers/Abilities: Possessing no superhuman powers, Cleopatra had the normal human strength of a woman of her size, height and build who engaged in extensive regular exercises. She was a shrewd and wily monarch of great ability and boundless ambition, who often used her feminine wiles to get what she desired.
Height: Unrevealed (5'7"; by approximation)
Weight: Unrevealed
Eyes: Unrevealed
Hair: Black
History:
(Historical) - Cleopatra was the third and eldest daughter
of Ptolemy XI, Pharaoh and King of Egypt of the Thirty-First Dynasty,
which ruled from the Late Third Century BC to the First Century BC. Upon
her father's death in 51 BC, Cleopatra, at seventeen years old, and her
brother Ptolemy XII, at the age of twelve, succeeded jointly to the
throne with the provision that they should marry. In the third year of
their reign, his viziers advised Ptolemy to remove Cleopatra from the
throne, and he claimed sole control after sending her into exile.
Cleopatra gathered an army in Syria, but was unable to assert her claim
to the throne until Gaius Julius Caesar, the Roman General and statesman
who had arrived at Alexandra in 48 BC, backed her. According to
tradition, she was smuggled into Caesar's presence by his servants, but
this may be historically inaccurate. At Alexandria, they reportedly
became lovers, which espoused their cause. Rallying together their
forces, they pressed their soldiers against the Egyptian armies. With
the death of Ptolemy XII, Caesar placed Cleopatra on the throne. She
followed him to Rome as his guest, but returned to Egypt to secure her
position as Queen of Egypt.
(Historical / Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme#33) - By custom, Cleopatra was forced to marry her younger brother, Ptolemy XIII, who at the time was only eleven years old. After securing their joint rule, she gave birth to Caesar's son, Cesarion, who became Ptolemy XIV. Around 44 BC, Cleopatra and Caesar encountered the Twentieth Century Sorcerer Supreme, Dr. Strange and his confidante, Clea, who had been transported through time. Cleopatra mentioned that the sorcerer Zota opposed her and Caesar.
(Historical / Ideal#1/1) - After Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, Cleopatra refused to take sides in the civil war that resulted after his death. Roman General Marc Antony came to Cleopatra for an explanation of her conduct, but she took him to bed with her and made him one of her lovers as well--she would conceive him two sons. Marc Antony later returned to Rome, where he married Octavia, the sister of Caesar's heir apparent, Octavian Augustus Caesar.
(Strange Tales I#124/2) - <37 BC> Zota placed Cleopatra under a spell which left her immobile and cast her into the far future so that he could usurp her and Antony's rule, but she was found by Dr. Strange, who journeyed to the past and defeated Zota, then lifted the spell from Cleopatra and sent her back to her own time.
(Historical / Ideal#1/1) - <36 BC> Marc Antony led an expedition against the Parthians in the Middle East and sent for Cleopatra to join him at Antioch, where they married. After their successful campaign in 34 BC, he celebrated his triumph with her at Alexandria, where he continued to reside. In 34 BC, Octavian declared war against Egypt for his sister's honor, and Antony divorced Octavia.
(Fantastic Four I#212 (fb)) - The immortal Sphinx (Anath-Na Mut) witnessed the romance of Cleopatra and Marc Antony during his centuries-long life.
(Tales of Suspense I#44/1 (fb)) - Cleopatra was opposed by the sorcerer Hatap, who seemingly perished in battle. However, Hatap was actually in a state of suspended animation.
(Tales of Suspense I#44/1) - Reviving in the modern era, Hatap kidnapped Tony Stark and brought him back in time with him to ca. 31 BC, where he intended to resume his battle against Cleopatra. However, Stark became Iron Man and helped Cleopatra against Hatap and the Roman forces. After Hatap's death in battle, Cleopatra offered to make Iron Man her new king, but he was drawn back to his own time.
(Historical / Battlefront#24/3) - Cleopatra insisted on taking part in the campaign, and at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, she believed Marc Antony's defeat to be inevitable and withdrew her fleets, withdrawing with Antony to Alexandria. Upon the approach of Octavian, Antony was deceived by false reports of Cleopatra's suicide and took his own life with his knife. Cleopatra had created the deception out of her fascination for Octavian, ready to betray Antony for power. Hearing that Octavian vowed to put her on exhibit in Rome, Cleopatra took her life as well by poison--traditional legends later claimed she lost her life by the bite of an asp. Her sons, the last remaining members of the Ptolemy dynasty, were put to death by Octavian, and Egypt was seized as a Roman Province.
(Venus#1/2) - <During the 1950s> To prove her worth as an editor to Whitney Hammond, Venus recruited ten of her handmaidens---including Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, and Salome---to come to Earth as part of a Beauty magazine project focusing on beautiful women, thus beating the line-up in their rival publication Lovely Lady magazine.
(Venus#9/5) - Venus summoned at least 14 of her handmaidens--including Cleopatra, Juliet, Du Barry, Helen of Troy, Isolde and Circe--to Earth to answer letters sent to Beauty magazine by women in search for their own beauty. Cleopatra answered numerous letters according to her own experience except for one, which she handed over to Venus. The next morning, after a long night of work, the handmaidens returned to the home of the gods.
(Venus#9/6) - Venus summoned the handmaidens once again to help her with Minnie Geels, a woman Marvin Klee found for Della Mason to discredit Venus and her "Beauty for Everyone" method. Minnie was not interested to improve her beauty, which made her an impossible case that could ruin Venus, but Cleopatra realized that Minnie would want to be more beautiful for the man she loved. The handmaidens improved Minnie by transferring some of their charm and beauty to her. Cleopatra gave Minnie some her charming personality to win the heart of Marvin Klee, whom Minnie was infatuated with. The handmaidens' spirits later watched Venus kiss Whitney Hammond before they returned to Olympus.
(Venus#11/1) - When Michael Templar's machine threatened to plunge Earth into the sun, Cleopatra was among Venus' handmaidens who bestowed their beauty to Templar's lab assistant, the plain Maria Storm; upon seeing the transformed Maria, Templar fell in love with her and reversed the machine, thus sparing the world.
(Adventures into Weird Worlds#24) - A writer named Alec Jones was given a special elixir by his friend, Dr. Karl Veblin, that was able to resurrect the dead. Having writer's block, Jones decided to travel to Egypt with his elixir; he purchased the mummy of Cleopatra to use her knowledge of love and war for use in a book. Injecting the mummy with the elixir restored the fabled beauty to life, but as instantly as she was resurrected, she quickly fell to ground, once again dead as before. Puzzled by this outcome, Jones reached for her dead body and was quickly bitten by an asp, and he succumbed to its poison. The elixir had worked all too well, as it had also resurrected the asp that had originally killed Cleopatra.
(Mystery Tales#26/3) - Three archaeologists made their way through a newly-discovered entrance to an inner chamber in a pyramid and discovered a woman they immediately identified as Cleopatra. Even though they knew that she had apparently been killed thousands of years ago by an asp, she confirmed the surprised men's belief. She claimed that her death was just a ruse to trick the Romans, who wanted to capture her. She had actually been alive and hidden in this chamber by the High Priests of Egypt, who used secret Egyptian methods to keep her alive. She claimed to have waited for a man to claim and protect her from her enemies and according to legend it would be a man from the West that would take her as his wife and free her from the pyramid, but it could only be one of them. While two of the archaeologists thought that everything they saw was some kind of trick to turn them against each other, the third was keen to do what was needed to take Cleopatra as his wife. Garson killed his colleagues brutally with a knife and Cleopatra led him to another secret chamber to finalize their marriage in a ritual. They then left the pyramid through another special exit only Cleopatra knew about. Garson stepped outside holding Cleopatra's hand, but the local authorities were already waiting to arrest him for the murder of his two colleagues. Garson tried to explain that he did it for Cleopatra, but the woman whose hand he was holding was gone and had turned to dust. (see comments)
(Tales to Astonish I#31/2) - The artist "Lance Curtiss", who received an extraterrestrial pencil which could bring anything he drew to life, used its power to bring Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and Davy Crockett back to life; however, the effects of the pencil were eventually undone.
Comments: Adapted by unidentified creators.
Historically, Cleopatra is always portrayed as one of the most sexual and romantic figures in history, alongside figures like Salome and Mata Hari, but these are actually modern additions to her legend. She was a shrewd and intelligent woman who enticed men by their base natures to get what she wanted, but there is no historical evidence that she was a great beauty.*
Contrary to belief, Cleopatra was not Egyptian; she was Macedonian by birth.
It is unclear if Cleopatra was yanked from time by Venus, or if she was granted divine nature by her when she reappeared in Venus#1.
Cleopatra apparently also has an appearance in Mystery Tales#26/3 "I Married Cleopatra" (February, 1955), but the details of this story are unknown.
Cleopatra is one of the great celebrity figures of history; "celebrity" in that she is often featured in time-traveling stories, such as the TV series Voyagers! and The Time Tunnel as well as in Marvel and DC Comics.
The life of Cleopatra has been the basis of numerous literary works, often with some distortion of the historical facts. The most notable of mention is the play Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, Cleopatra by Samuel David, All For Love by the playwright John Dryden, and Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw. Elizabeth Taylor portrayed her in the 1963 motion picture Cleopatra, which initially tanked at the box office, but later went on to become one of the most famous movies ever made.
Resource material for this bio: Funk and Wagnall's New Encyclopedia #6 (Cleopatra), American People's Encyclopedia #5 (Cleopatra) and Egypt: It's Land, It's People, It's History by the Editors of National Geographic.
Thanks to AvatarWarlord72 for adding Cleopatra's appearance in Adventures into Weird Worlds. Thanks to Ron Fredricks for adding Battlefront#24, Venus#11 and adding the handmaidens image. Thanks to Gammatotem for pointing out her appearance in Venus#9 (and Markus Raymond for adding it). Thanks to Angelo Mammone for providing scans for Mystery Tales#26/3.
The problem with the story in Mystery Tales#26 is that you can't have both. She can't have her spirit be part of Venus' haindmaidens and have her mummy get resurrected in Adventures into Weird Worlds#24 while Mystery Tales claims that she had never died. Either the Mystery Tales story took place on an alternate Earth or the woman seen in the story is not actually Cleopatra, but some kind of demon or maybe a vampire (she did turn to dust in the end).
Profile by Prime Eternal (Marvel Info) and Will U (Historical Data).
CLARIFICATIONS:
Cleopatra should not be confused with:
images: (without ads)
Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme#33, p11, pan3 (main image - Cleopatra)
Tales of Suspense I#44/1, p11, pan4 (headshot - Cleopatra, speaking to Iron Man)
Strange Tales I#124, p23, pan4 (temporarily in the present)
Battlefront#24/3, p5, pan6 (Cleopatra, bitten by asp)
Venus#11/1, p10, pan3 (Cleopatra, with Venus' other handmaidens)
Mystery Tales#26/3, p1, pan3 ("Cleopatra")
Appearances:
Ideal#1/1 (July, 1948) - unidentified creators
Venus#1/2 (August, 1948) - unidentified creators, Stan Lee (editor)
Venus#9/5-6 (May, 1950) - unidentified writer, Werner Roth (pencils), Stan Lee (editor)
Venus#11/1 (November, 1950) - unidentified writer, Werner Roth (artist), Stan Lee (editor)
Adventures into Weird Worlds#24/1 (December, 1953) - Paul Reinman (pencils/inks), Stan Lee (editor)
Battlefront#24/3 (October, 1954) - unidentified writer, Mort Lawrence (pencils/inks), Stan Lee (editor)
Mystery Tales#26/3 (February, 1955) - Jay Scott Pike (artist), Stan Lee (editor)
Tales to Astonish I#31/2 (May, 1962) - Stan Lee (writer/editor), Jack Kirby (pencils), Dick Ayers (inks)
Tales of Suspense I#44/1 (August, 1963) - Stan Lee (plot/editor), Robert Bernstein (script), Don Heck (pencils/inks)
Strange Tales I#124/2 (September, 1964) - Stan Lee (writer/editor), Steve Ditko (pencils),George Roussos (inks)
Fantastic Four I#212 (November, 1979) - Marv Wolfman (writer/editor), John Byrne (pencils), Joe Sinnott (inks)
Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme#33 (September, 1991) - Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas (writers), Chris Marrinan (pencils), Mark McKenna (inks), Mike Rockwitz (editor)
First posted: 12/19/2007
Last updated: 05/22/2024
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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