Lady Vic

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comic_color=background:#8080ff
character_name=Lady Vic
real_name=Lady Elaine Marsh-Morton
publisher=DC Comics
debut="Nightwing" #4 (January 1997)
creators=Chuck Dixon
Scott McDaniel
alliance_color=background:#cccccc
alliances=Tartarus Injustice League
powers=master martial artist and acrobat; proficient with variety of edged weapons and firearms

Lady Elaine Marsh-Morton, a.k.a. “Lady Vic” is a fictional character in the DC Comics universe. She is an English noblewoman who works secretly as an assassin, bounty hunter, and mercenary. She is employed on a semi-regular basis by Roland Desmond, a.k.a. Blockbuster, and appears most frequently as an antagonist of Nightwing (Dick Grayson).

Her sobriquet “Lady Vic” is short for "Lady Victim," referring to any of her possible targets.

Fictional character biography

Lady Elaine is descended from a long line of British soldiers and mercenaries, and a genuine English aristocrat. The money she earns from her secret career helps prevent foreclosure on her impoverished family estate.

She first appeared in "Nightwing #4"; having completed an assignment for Blüdhaven gang boss Antonio “Angel” Marin, she returned to Blüdhaven to collect her fee, and was upset to find Marin missing. She tracked down Marin’s lawyer, and threatened to kill his young daughter if she wasn’t paid – a threat she definitely would have carried out, if Nightwing had not intervened. Dudley Soames informed her that Marin had been replaced by Blockbuster, and offered to pay her fee, with a retainer to continue working for him. Since then, she has clashed repeatedly with Nightwing.

Elaine was one of several of Blockbuster’s hirelings tasked with tracking down Oracle. When Blockbuster was dying of heart failure, Elaine was the one entrusted with locating Gorilla City in Africa, and finding him a replacement heart.

Lady Vic is later sent to eliminate Tarantula, Blockbuster's latest ally, when Blockbuster learns Tarantula had disobeyed his orders. Tarantula defeats Lady Vic, shooting her in the stomach (Nightwing 95).

One Year Later

Lady Vic is hired by Doctor Psycho and Cheshire in an attempt to destroy the Secret Six. Together with Double Dare she faces Deadshot in a park with his wife and child, who run away once the attackers appear. Unarmed, Deadshot is easily defeated by Double Dare, and is about to be executed by Lady Vic when his wife throws him a gun, allowing him to get the upper hand. Deadshot considers killing his would-be assassins but allows them to escape, not wanting to shoot them in front of his daughter.

When not on a job, she rests easy in the company of her hulking manservant, Bivens. Her drink of choice is Darjeeling tea. Most recently, she as seen among the new Injustice League and is one of the villains featured in "Salvation Run".

Powers and Abilities

"Talks like Jane Seymour, fights like Bruce Lee." - Nightwing

Elaine is a highly skilled martial artist and athlete, and equally skilled with firearms. She has a sentimental preference for a collection of antique weapons handed down by her ancestors, souvenirs of their colonial exploits: a matched pair of Bundi daggers, a Japanese katana, a Thuggee strangling cloth, a Maasai javelin, and a Webley revolver.

Of the mercenaries regularly employed by Blockbuster, Elaine is one of the most skilled, certainly more skilled than Brutale, Stallion, or Electrocutioner, though not on the level of opponents such as Nightwing or Batman. When Blockbuster decided to test Shrike’s abilities by pitting him against all of his regular assassins at once, Elaine lasted the longest, and was the only one to actually inflict a wound on him before being knocked out.

Lady Vic also has qualities of determination and ruthlessness that set her apart from the others. Possibly this is because she desperately needs the money she earns, for the sake of her family’s continued standing and honor. As mentioned above, she was more than willing to kill a young girl to get paid; during the "Hunt for Oracle" storyline, when Black Canary escaped from a plane in which she was being held prisoner, Lady Vic astonished her by leaping into the sky after her, without a parachute.