Publisher DC Comics Alter ego Rita Lopez Abilities shapeshifting | Created by Dan Raspler
Dev Madan Team affiliations Young Heroes | |
First appearance Young Heroes in Love #1 (1997) | ||
Monstergirl (AKA Rita Lopez) is a DC Comics superheroine. She was created by Dan Raspler and Dev Madan. She is a former member of the Young Heroes.
Contents
Fictional character biography
Monstergirl was raised by Hector and Elena Lopez, whom she believed to be her parents. She was really an alien, of the race Farfarmniflatch, but she did not learn this until she was an adult. She joined the Young Heroes with her childhood friend/ sometime lover/ lackey, Thunderhead. Monstergirl has occasionally appeared in other DC Comics titles including Wonder Woman and Young Justice.
Monstergirl was somewhat unusual for a superhero in that she was very Machiavellian. Over the course of Young Heroes in Love she attempted to seduce a number of her teammates and also exhibited a rather cold, selfish personality.
For a while, she was mainly romantically involved with her teammate Hardrive. After he left, she assumed more of a leadership role.
She has faced down the Scarecrow, a skyscraper sized Amazonian monster and helped protect an elementary school from a protection racket.
Later in the series, she was confronted by her uncle, who forced her into a life and death fight all aliens of her age went through. She subdued the entity with help from friends and allies. Her uncle went away impressed, because she had used more than just skills to fight him, she had used her friends, battlefield obstacles and resources. She then goes to work for Hard Drive, now the governor of Connecticut.
Powers and abilities
Monstergirl has the ability to shapeshift into bizarre animals, such as scaly dragon-like wolves, or bat-like birds (often covered with bony spikes). She can also assume human forms (such as when she shapeshifted into Bonfire.) She has expressed confusion over the full extent of her own powers.