PERSUASION
Real Name: Kara Kilgrave
Former Aliases: The Purple Girl
Group Affiliation: Former member of Beta Flight
First Appearance: Alpha Flight #41
Creators: Bill Mantlo & David Ross

        Kara Kilgrave led a mostly normal life up until the time of her thirteenth birthday... when she abruptly turned purple while at a party. The young girl quite naturally panicked and ran home.

        It seems that about 14 years before, the mind-controller known as the Purple Man was in upstate New York. While there he went bar-hopping, and on a whim forced a woman named Melanie to marry him. However, in time, he came to love his hopeless slave [Sarcasm - this is Mantlo's work we're talking here - C] and released her. She rejected him, and he left, heartbroken. However, she was pregnant by that time. Melanie Kilgrave immigrated to Toronto shortly afterwords. Thirteen years after giving birth to a normal-looking pink skinned baby, Melanie had to tell Kara the truth about her father.

        Unable to cope with this abrupt change in her life, Kara ran away. She ended up attending a professional meet that was featuring the return to skiing of her idol, Jean-Paul Beaubier. While in the washroom Kilgrave manifested her mind control powers for the first time, telling a person who was banging on the door to "go jump off a cliff." Northstar saved the young lady, in the process revealing his secret i.d. to the world.

        After a number of misunderstandings with Northstar and the rest of Alpha Flight, Kara joined them as the first member of a new Beta Flight, calling herself the Purple Girl. She also became romantically involved with the next trainee to come along, Whitman Knapp. When Knapp left the team to go back to medicine, that relationship ended, although there has been evidence that Kara still cares for him deeply. [A relationship that was one of the few things I liked about the Mantlo era, as a matter of fact. - C]

        Kara at one point left the team in disgust after feeling she'd been abandoned in the West Edmonton Mall. Goblyn and Laura Dean, wanting to try "normal" life, went with her. Kara had decided to return to Alpha Flight (with a new code-name) when she got shanghaied into going after Northstar by Talisman. Kara remained a part of the Alpha organization from that point until the team was disbanded following AF v1 #130.

        Kara Kilgrave was most recently seen as a prisoner at the Neverland mutant concentration camp run by the Weapon X project. This raises a number of questions, foremost of which is: Why hasn't her mother reported her missing to Alpha Flight?

        Kara Kilgrave inheirited her father's mind-control powers. Through airborn chemicals called pheromones she can reduce a person to a near-mindless state. In this state the person becomes extremely receptive to suggestion and will follow Kilgrave's every verbal command. A side effect of the pheromones turns a victim purple.

        Kara has also shown that she can create a mindlink with Goblyn. As Kara has never been shown to produce a link with anyone else, it's my opinion that the link is more due to Goblyn than Kara.

        In the past a victim of Kara's abilities would recover almost instantly when cut off from the pheromones by distance, water, a plastic bag, etc. There was evidence though that Kara's power was getting stronger towards the end of Alpha Flight v1. It is known that her father's control could last for hours even when the Purple Man was not present. Upon recovery from Kara's power her victims usually have a splitting headache.

        Marvel lists Kara as a mutant, even though she inherited her powers from her father, who is not. As well, she is on Marvel's official list of mutants that kept their powers after M-Day.