Giganta

Giganta is tougher than you might think, smarter than you might think, and more interesting than you might think.

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Dr. Zeul is a brilliant doctor, medical researcher and engineer. She designs and builds her own medical instrumentation, and is a proficient technologist. This doesn’t usually play a role in her adventures, so her skills may have deteriorated.

Zeul transferred her consciousness into the body of a circus strongwoman. Though she did not maintain its impressive musculature, she remains fairly strong and healthy.

Giganta can grow to an immense size – and her maximum height increased over time. Estimating her current maximum size is difficult, but 25 stories high works out about right. That means she weighs about 700 tons at full size, assuming real-world physics. Despite her size, she has the experience to spot and catch tiny things, such as people.

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Harming Giganta when she is at maximum size is about as difficult as scoring a telling hit against Superman. Direct hits from 120mm APDS tank shells will just mean a light bruise. However, her pain tolerance is mediocre.

Encounters with Giganta thus tend to follow two paths. Those with enough firepower to harm her (Wonder Woman, Hercules, Power Girl…) will knock her out fairly easily. But for those without enough power Giganta is an unstoppable giant monster.

Giganta cannot exist under the normal laws of physics with a height of more than 3 metres or so. It has been established that her powers are magical in nature, but apparently they cannot fully suspend physics. Falling down disproportionately harms her, and her shoes have been strengthened to help her deal with her gigantic body mass.

History

(Giganta’s continuity is somewhat messy. The following is a charitable presentation that makes things look more coherent than they do in the stories. Because that’s how we do it in the WORGiverse.)

Dr. Doris Zeul was a physician and researcher based in Gateway City, USA. She suffered from an incurable blood condition, and was expected to be dead within 5 years. After exhausting all avenues from conventional research, she researched body-to-body consciousness transferral.

Her desperate attempts, using apes and monkeys as test subjects, resulted in a working prototype. But by that point she was in great pain and days away from dying.

The perfect body

The comatose Wonder Woman (Diana of Themyscira) was then brought to the hospital where Zeul worked. The Amazon had been felled by Neron, and no physician could reanimate her. With her faithful assistant Miss Bronson, Zeul quickly wheeled off the Amazonian body into a prepared room. They launched the procedure.

If this succeeded, Dr. Zeul would leave her pain-wracked, dying body for the most perfect and powerful female body on the planet.

Queen Hippolyta of Themyscira stopped this in time. Wonder Woman was returned to the coma unit, and Zeul’s inert body left on the other operating table. However, Miss Bronson realised that Dr. Zeul’s consciousness was trapped in the buffer module of the sapience transferral equipment.

The hospital was placed under police guard, but Miss Bronson obtained access so she could feed the lab animals. Short on time and short on options, she transferred Dr. Zeul’s consciousness into the largest animal in the lab, a gorilla named Giganta.

Furious and distraught, Dr. Zeul tried to kill her assistant. She then engaged young Wonder Girl (Cassandra Sandsmark) in a brawl, ranting about stealing Wonder Girl’s body. Shot by the police, the powerful she-ape eventually had to flee.

Gigantic

The fugitive Zeul eventually happened upon the Balthazar Circus. Several members of the troupe had recently been cursed by some sort of shaman. In particular the carnies couldn’t wake Olga, the strongwoman, from her magic sleep.

Somehow, Dr. Zeul switched their consciousnesses. She stole Olga’s body and trapped her consciousness in the ape body. The disoriented gorilla ran away.

As it turned out, Zeul’s new body had size-changing powers of unknown origin. Whether Olga was aware of them is unrevealed, though they may have been part of the magic curse. Dr. Zeul gradually learned to grow to immense sizes.

(No-Prize Hypothesis  – Olga was the daughter or granddaughter of the Golden Age Giganta, and the Golden Age Giganta’s abilities were actually magical. Olga’s magical heritage was size-changing, and she procured size-changing clothing to be active as a very, very minor villain until she ran into Manitou Raven who cursed her and her accomplices. End hypothesis where nothing is supported.)

Dr. Zeul now had a new muscular body, new powers and a size-changing “jungle girl” circus outfit. She joined an army of superhuman women organised by Circe to conquer New York City. She took the name Giganta. However, she was disoriented by her lack of experience with operating at giant size and was easily defeated.

Giganta was later recruited by an Atlantean – Queen Clea of Venturia. The Queen was famous for having organised the first version of Villainy, Inc. to fight Wonder Woman (Queen Hippolyta) during the 1940s. After Atlantis disappeared during the Imperiex War, Clea had her research staff explore transdimensional transportation to find it.

As a working prototype was developed, the Queen recruited a new version of Villainy, Inc.

The land of the forever sun

Giganta, Clea and the rest actually ended up in Skartaris. Undeterred, Clea set out to conquer this lost land, and the power of Villainy, Inc. was more than sufficient. Giganta was Clea’s main enforcer, trampling entire rebellious villages underfoot. She also captured scores of experimental subjects for her colleague Doctor Poison.

The team eventually stormed the capitol. Villainy Inc. member Cyborgirl then interacted with the Atlantean super-computers underneath.

Wonder Woman (Diana of Themyscira) came in and led a rebellion. Giganta and her cadre of giants made a sortie, but Diana took them all out. Zeul refocused on the rebels and started routing them, but Villainy Inc. was eventually defeated. Jennifer Morgan, the Sorceress Supreme of Skartaris, cast a spell to make the invaders tiny and unconscious so Diana could take them back to Earth.

Morgan’s transportation spell ran into a snag and Diana and her prisoners reached Earth in 1943, but after some adventures involving Nazis and dinosaurs the Villainy, Inc. members were jailed in Themyscira as planned.

One year later, President Luthor placed a huge bounty on Superman’s head. Giganta joined the horde of villains who fruitlessly attempted to claim it. Two years later she fought Wonder Woman and gained the upper hand as Diana was now blind, but the Flash intervened and Giganta lost.

Giganta was an early joiner of the Society, participating in many of their operations. She started wearing a jumpsuit that could grow as she did, replacing her circus costume.

Later stories stated that Dr. Zeul had a “long history” of fighting Wonder Woman. This likely means that there were unchronicled clashes after Giganta left her prison in Themyscira.

Post-Infinite Crisis

In 2008 Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman all disappeared. During that time Donna Troy stepped in as the new Wonder Woman. One year later, the witch Circe engineered a massive attack against Troy to smoke Diana out.

The vanguard of this attack was Giganta, Cheetah and Dr. Psycho. Steve Trevor was captured, Donna Troy defeated and Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) attacked. Giganta rampaged through Times Square whilst wearing a captured Troy as a pendant. Hercules defeated her, but Circe apparently whisked Dr. Zeul away before the NYPD could even consider how to arrest the unconscious giantess.

Giganta continued to fight alongside Circe, but she and other Wonder WOman foes were defeated and arrested by Diana and her allies.

Somehow, Dr. Zeul soon joined the faculty of Ivy Town University – an institution reputed for the brilliance of many of its researchers and its taste for the weird and unusual. Her speciality wasn’t revealed, but may have had to do with her consciousness transferral research. The University evidently did not care that their newest recruit was a supervillain.

Zeul continued to work as a super-villain on top of her academic activities, and was also touched by the weirdness going on in Ivy Town. When a war between science/order and chaos/magic happened in town, she was picked by the apparent leader of the chaos side, M‘Nagalah the cancer god. While thus possessed she enthusiastically dated Ryan Choi aka the Atom, the new professor of nuclear physics.

The Cancer God had Dr. Zeul trap Dr. Choi in a perfectly sealed capsule and swallow him. Pro-order aliens attacked Giganta to reclaim Choi, and during the fight Choi forced Zeul to vomit. Giganta’s master had her return to the fray and fight enemy giants, but the all-new Atom put an end to the war. Professor Zeul was freed from the possession of the Cancer God, and she and Choi chose to continue dating.

Alien exile

Professor Zeul then accepted a contract from Intergang to squash regional crime lord La Dama in El Paso, Texas. Hearing numerous rumours about super-villains disappearing, Giganta planned to use the money to lay low for a while. However, local hero the Blue Beetle narrowly stopped Giganta with his buddy Paco and the Peacemaker.

Injustice League Unlimited apparently sprung Giganta from prison, since she could attend their first gathering. Her presence among Luthor’s I.L.U. apparently drew Federal attention, and DMA agents came to Ivy. They asked Professor Choi to wear a mike to collect intelligence about Zeul, but he cut the mike as he realised she sincerely wanted to rehabilitate.

A third party warned Dr. Zeul about the mike, and she discovered that one of the Federal agents was Wonder Woman. Giganta flew into a rage but was defeated. However, the Atom stopped Wonder Woman and told her that Dr. Zeul wanted to reform and should be left alone. Giganta somehow disappeared, though she had apparently overheard Choi’s plea.

Giganta nevertheless participated in the first Injustice League Unlimited assault against the JLA, but was knocked out when Black Canary screamed into her ears. The defeated I.L.U. members were all dumped on a prison planet – the rumours Zeul had heard about super-criminals vanishing were true.

Dumped on an alien world with a horde of criminals, murderers and psychopaths, Giganta generally stayed at a 3 or 4 stories-tall size for protection, and stuck with other women while at normal size. When a conflict erupted between the Joker and Luthor, she sided with the Joker. Eventually, the surviving villains returned to Earth.

Anti-life, and a return to Skartaris

During the Final Crisis, Giganta was one of the 4 women brainwashed by the Anti-life Equation to become huntresses serving Darkseid. These new Female Furies were Batwoman (Kate Kane) and Catwoman (Selina Kyle), led by Giganta’s nemesis Wonder Woman. As a Fury, Zeul wore an Apokolipsian mask and was called Gigantrix. The conditioning was broken at the conclusion of that apocalyptic conflict.

In 2009, Dr. Zeul was back in Ivy Town as a professor. She was still dating Professor Choi, and had apparently let go of her animosity against Wonder Woman. When she ran into Diana, Giganta thus quickly stopped the fight by pointing out that she wasn’t doing anything special, and they ended up simply chatting.

Wonder Woman enlisted Dr. Zeul’s help to face Achilles and his Gargarean troops. Giganta did a good job at keeping Achilles’ men busy, though griffin riders managed to net her for a time. Once she returned to Ivy, Dr. Zeul learned that Dr. Choi had gone missing.

Giganta was later seen in Chicago, where she damaged several buildings. The Metal Men attempted to stop her but achieved very little until their attacks resulted in a wardrobe malfunction. Whatever Giganta was up to apparently wasn’t serious, since she agreed to surrender in exchange for Platinum and Copper forming some clothing around her.

In 2010, 4 members of the Secret Six left the team. Bane and Jeanette hired four replacement killers — Giganta, Dwarfstar (Sylbert Rundine), Lady Vic, and King Shark — to keep going. After an assassination job, the team was hired by Spy-Smasher (Katarina Armstrong).

Thus did Dr. Zeul return to Skartaris, which part of the US government wanted conquered. However, other governmental factions objected and Dr. Amanda Waller had her agent Tremor (Roshanna Chatterji) recruit the 4 dissident Secret Six members to stop Bane and Jeannette’s team. By the time this team was in, the team Giganta was with had conquered much of Skartaris, and Dr. Zeul had again been instrumental in storming the capitol.

The war was inconclusive, as the demonic Deimos returned to Skartaris. Though scared by the gigantic serpent, Giganta had little choice but to engage it to gain time. Deimos was banished, and the 2 teams from Earth agreed to just leave and drop the matter.

Amanda Waller arranged for pardons for both teams, and expressed interest in retaining a team of 6 operatives. However, she wanted to get rid of Dwarfstar – a sadist, rapist and serial murderer. She simply told the truth to Dr. Zeul – Dwarfstar had murdered the Atom (Ryan Choi) several months back.

Giganta pretended to lust after Dwarfstar, stole his size-changing belt while he was distracted, then tortured and murdered him to avenge Dr. Choi.

Description

The Olga body was originally 6’ and very muscular, but the musculature soon faded from lack of exercise and she was no longer drawn as being that tall after a few years.

According to Dr. Choi, she has a tongue piercing.

Zeul’s modern costume, which was presumably provided by the Society, has built-in protections in the knees and elbows, and reinforced shoes with shin guards and shock absorbers reinforcing the ankles. She also owns a normal-looking top and miniskirt that can grow and shrink with her – those seem tailored from leftovers of the fabric used for her jumpsuit.

Puerile jokes in several stories imply that Giganta has to operate without the benefit of underwear. One imagines that a size-changing bra would be ruinous.

Personality

Doris Zeul is after control, power, and profit – and is canny and pragmatic about it.

She seems to be completely desensitized to violence and death, and to lack inhibitions toward killing if it is a means to achieve her ends. That most other people aren’t like that sounds odd to her.

However, she’s not into wanton slaughter and cruelty, and prefers to only kill people she’s paid to. She also has a soft spot for farm animals, and is a vegetarian due to ethical opposition to cruelty against animals.

Zeul wants to be important, to be seen, to be noticed – so at least she’s got the right powers. She gets jealous of women who garner more attention than she does, such as Wonder Woman. Giganta is very proud of her gargantuan size and power, and likes boasting about how tough she is.

Other traits

Professor Zeul has considerable sexual appetites – perhaps because she so nearly died after years in the throes of a crippling, painful disease. Being brazen and attractive (and working in a college environment), her usual tactic is simply to accost good-looking guys and offer a date.

This gets her the attention she enjoys. And a woman who can use SUVs as baseballs isn’t exactly at risk when dating random guys who strike her fancy.

As Giganta she’s usually just hired to smash things. However, as Dr. Zeul she’s funny and weird. Doris is a combination of mad scientist and rampaging kaiju , with a twisted and irrational need for affection and attention.

Thus, bits of giant rampaging monster talk or mad scientist talk or needy naughty woman talk may occasionally get earnestly spouted in inappropriate situations. And there is often a hint of both sensuality and violence in her words – it can be attractive to some but it’s fairly obvious she’s not well.

Smarts

Dr. Zeul’s intelligence level is unclear. She has been described as brilliant and canny, she has been depicted as daft and barbaric. In the same storyline she has been a competent technician repairing advanced Atlantean technology and a brute obsessed with destroying her enemies.

It has been stated that her intelligence would get lower as she grew, but that isn’t supported by the stories. It was stated after the One Year Later  events that it was no longer the case anyway.

The conflicting reports might be caused by her untested consciousness transfer technology. It may have resulted in fluctuations of her intellect during her early years as Giganta.

Or perhaps it was a downside of Olga’s power, which Zeul eventually solved through scientific research.

By 2008, Giganta was definitely smart at all sizes, and personable. Choi also commented several times about her scientific brilliance.

Quotes

“Go away, bug.”

“Ha ! You poked me ! You little amateur, I’ve been shot by tanks !”

“You look like someone could show you some care, Dr. Choi. I missed you.”

(On a date) “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I often get the urge to crush you in my grip. With affection, though. Like a fatal hug, endearing and enduring. At once. Feel your bones turn to powder just a little bit. Yum.”

(Scandalised) “Do you *know* how the calves are kept in some of those veal farms ?”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: DC Universe.

Helper(s): Wikipedia (for pointing out the Black Alice bit), Adam Fuqua, Capita_Senyera, Darci, Chris Cottingham.