Watch Out For Doctor Poison In 'Wonder Woman'

It is a great point of intrigue to me that the Wonder Woman film features not one villain, but two, and furthermore, one of those villains appears to be a woman. The female foe in question is Wonder Woman's nemesis Doctor Poison, who is a comic book villain of the highest order. In the Wonder Woman trailers, she is seen sporting a partial face mask and analyzing the effects of a deathly gas she hopes to release all over the world; in the comics, Doctor Poison is still a woman and still a dastardly noble, although the name is a mantle picked up by different women depending on the storyline. Either way, this doctor is downright evil.

Doctor Poison was first introduced to the world of Wonder Woman in 1942 as Princess Maru. According to the DC Comics wiki, Princess Maru led a Nazi spy ring who sought to enact evil deeds against the U.S. Army and people during World War II. Those Nazi origins will no doubt be changed to fit in more neatly with the World War I setting of the Wonder Woman film, but I have no doubt Dr. Poison's still as villainous despite the time period shift.

Of interest, too, is how she is dressed in the comics and in the film. In the comics, Dr. Poison was often dressed in a similar fashion to how she is dressed in in the Wonder Woman trailer: a lab cloak which covers her head, arms, and body, as well as goggles. It is believed she dressed this way to disguise her gender, which feels right in line with how the women of Wonder Woman subvert gender stereotypes.

Her most notable invention in a deadly and poisonous gas called "Reverso," which has the power to make a person do the exact opposite of what they are told. If this is the same kind of chemical weapon she is developing with Ludendorff, her partner-in-crime in Wonder Woman, then Steve Trevor has every right to be worried AF about her evil plot. Of course, it will be doubly interesting to see if Wonder Woman is susceptible to this chemical agent in the film, although I have a feeling that the hero's god-like heritage will protect her against Dr. Poison's powerful weapon.