Circe

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866 BCE - Circe is born to a tribe of sorceresses favored by Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft.
851 BCE - 15-year-old Circe becomes a priestess of Hecate.
842 BCE - 24-year-old Circe becomes the high priestess of Hecate & begins to grow past the teachings of her tribe.
839 BCE - 27-year-old Circe abandons her tribe & her mortality, accepting the soul of Hecate and taking her island home.
723 BCE - Circe is outwitted by Jason & The Argonauts.  She bears Jason's son before he kills her.  Her soul is sent to the Well of Souls.
580 BCE - Circe becomes one of the original Amazons, keeping her identity secret.
576 BCE - Circe is among the Amazons that follow Hippolyta, joining her on Themyscira.  She uses her sorcery to build the earliest foundations of Amazonian Magic.
225 - Circe escapes from Themyscira and returns to her own secret island.
396 - Circe is defeated by Merlin and trapped on her Island.
12 years ago - Circe's island is discovered and Ares align's man's armies to against Her. The amazons send their champion Wonder Woman to halt the violence.  
7 years ago - Circe frees Klarion from his banishment to cast the relevant summoning spells to manipulate the various pantheons of earth against each other, initiating the Godwar. She usurps the power of several gods, taking control of Billy Batson until Kent Nelson & Diana Prince are able to call Manitou Raven & Dawn from the Stony Path to work the magic to free him outside the touch of the Gods. Felix Faust attempts to use the Godwar as a ploy to amass demonic power, and she stops him herself. She takes Argentinean millionare Sebastian Ballesteros as a lover to manipulate him and his patron god.
6 years ago - Circe has an affair with Ares & gives birth to his daughter, Lyta.
3 years ago - Circe joins Lex Luthor's Injustice Gang, but soon abandons the team for her own purposes. 
1 year ago - Circe helps free Hunter Zolomon from his temporal prison. 
In much the same way that Wonder Woman has always been considered part of DC's central trinity of Heroes, Circe has long been regarded as one of DC's most important villains.  The overall story of these two female characters has been rebuilt and reimaged many times over the years, but even as their look or backstory might be a little bit different, their importance to the world of DC is still unquestioned.  We deliberately made a few small changes to Circe's story to solidify her place in Wonder Woman's mythology, but no matter how she looks or appears in the story she will always be a core part of the larger story.

Circe's Comic History

Circe appeared for the first time in 1949 during the original run of Wonder Woman, a few years into the series.  She is, of course, based on a character from Greek Mythology, and is therefore technically public domain, so there were a few other characters named Circe that have cropped up over those early years, most notably over in the pages of another character that mined antiquity for plot ideas: Captain Marvel. 

The notion of a sexualized villainous sorceress is a fairly well established archetype, and over time the character of Circe came to be DC's main expression of it.  She was continually repurposed and redesigned, sometimes even retroactively having her name applied to other existing depictions of the archetype.

​As Wonder Woman's story was reimagined over the years Circe was also rebuilt, giving us a variety of different takes on the character.  Even as she is rebuilt over the years she remains a firm part of Wonder Woman's story and a major part of DC's pantheon of villains.

Our Circe Story

Much of Wonder Woman's early mythology was rooted deeply in actual Greek mythology, and Circe was no different.  She was the classic sorceress from Homer's epic poem, having survived into modern times.  She's been used a number of different ways in the various versions of Wonder Woman's story, but the best versions of her always keep close to those original stories.  We've made her a foil and victim of Jason & The Argonauts rather than Homer as that seems to fit into a world of superheros a little bit better, but we've also added the idea that, as a victim of Jason, she was delivered into the Well of Souls along with other female victims of male cruelty across history, and became one of the original Amazons.  It's never been a part of Wonder Woman's story that Circe had any real ties to the Amazons beyond simply being a female sorceress in the world, but this makes her an actual wayward Amazon.  This binds the villain closer to the hero, making their connection more functional. We also created the idea that Circe plays a role in the original conflict that causes Diana to become Wonder Woman.   

We've picked out a few of our favorite Circe stories to focus on, like her creation of the Godwar and her affair with Ares that makes her a mother to an infant Demigod.  Eventually, she breaks away from her role as a mischevious sorceress and becomes a more traditional supervillain, but even then she continues to work towards her own ends.  Circe is one of those characters that can actually single-handedly drive a storyline, and that makes her a real asset to the larger Wonder Woman mythology.

Circe's Look

Circe has had a truely staggering number of looks, and they really stand out because they vary from each other so much.  Wonder Woman has had her overally mythology reimagined more than a few times, and each new version of her story brings new versions of her most prominent villains.

Circe's modern incarnations are all loosely based on the armored look created by Terry Dodson in the initial issues of 2006 series.  These looks tend to favor red or purple hair and some version of her new armor.  This look is just fine and works very well for her more recent appearances, but Personally I am a huge fan of the look she sported during George Perez's run; the tied-up brunette hair and long, flowing, over-sexualized green dress all seemed to really evoke the character's origins as the sorceress from Greek Mythology.  We are deliberately altering her backstory to better include those origins, and so we really like that look for her.  

Moving forward, though... after she becomes the mother to Ares child and actually tried her hand at actual Supervillainy by joining the Injustice Gang, the armored look actually works.  

Circe's Future

There are two core elements of Circe's story that will dictate how we use her moving forward. First, she is moving away from her role as a subtle antagonist working in the shadows to manipulate events surrounding Wonder Woman, and instead stepping up as a true archnemesis.  This means we will actually see her starting to actually directly effect both Diana and her sisters, and her level of power is such that she can actually threaten entire teams of superheroes.  

Second, Circe is now the mother of a Demigod.  Her daughter Lyta is the daughter of Ares, and as of the end of our current timeline she is 8 years old.  This makes her an ideal age to some day be a major character in DC as the other children of our current heroes start becoming heroes themselves.  Will Lyta be as much a villain as her mother?  or will she actually rebell against her parents and be more of a hero?  I have no idea, but the stories told with Circe now will be the bedrock of this major character in the future.

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Wonder Woman Villains