Roulette (DC Comics)
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Character Stats
- character name : Roulette
- publisher : DC Comics
- debut : JSA Secret Files #2 (September 2001)
- alter_ego : Veronica Sinclair
- powers : Martial Artist
Roulette is a supervillainess in the DC Comics universe.
Character biography
Roulette's grandmother was a Golden Age villain of the same name, who ran a conventional casino and fought Mister Terrific, as well as having a relationship with his brother, Ned. Both Ned and Roulette have been retconned into Mr. Terrific's history, and do not appear in the original stories. The current Roulette believes Terry Sloane to be her grandfather, rather than great-uncle, and sees the current Mister Terrific as an unworthy successor. Her casino ("The House") is a superhuman gladiatorial arena, capturing heroes with teleporter technology similar to Holt's T-Spheres, and pitting them against each other, while various supervillains bet on the outcome.
In her debut, she captured most of the current Justice Society and forced them to fight each other; Mr. Terrific and Dr. Mid-Nite were forced to play a chess game where the loser would be electrocuted, Sand and Hawkman had to reach Hawkgirl while infected with a fast-acting lethal virus (of which Kendra had enough of the cure for one) while Black Adam clashed with Atom Smasher.
However, all managed to escape their traps; Black Adam and Atom Smasher's fight lasted so long that the mind-controlling drugs used on them to heighten their hostility towards each other wore off, Sand remained in his earth form to slow the spread of the virus until another cure could be found by Dr. Mid-Nite, and Mr. Terrific and Dr. Mid-Nite managed to reach a draw in their chess game, and destroy it while the game re-set itself. Roulette teleported them away before they could capture her, however.
A wall of fallen heroes was the only indication of the many DC Comics heroes who had been killed in battle in "The House." The names include Firebrand, Impala, Maxi-Man, Ram of the New Guardians, Flyboy and the Hybrid (minus Pteradon).
Roulette and the House reappear in Formerly Known As The Justice League, in which she captures the Super Buddies. The subliminal programming which prevented heroes escaping fails to work on Fire because her native language is Portuguese, and she releases the others. When this is followed by Mary Marvel shorting out her aggressor chip due to extreme stress, Roulette decides they have won and orders them teleported away.
Post Infinite Crisis/One Year Later
More recently she has appeared in JSA Classified (#19, Jan 2007). Dr. Mid-Nite had infiltrated her current fight club location in search of information regarding purported organ-napping. She agreed to give him information only if he beat her bodyguard in a game of arm wrestling. He did so, using his knowledge of nerves and their debilitation, and though she felt he had "cheated" she gave him the name of a model who had surgically implanted wings. After Dr. Mid-Nite left, she called the owner of the surgical clinic, who later proved to be Delores Winters, and told her of the hero's investigation into the implants and operations.
Roulette also appears in The Brave and the Bold #1 (2007), with Firebug's gauntlets, attempting to destroy the fabled Book of Destiny, until an alien villain with a probability-based weapon steals it from her; it transpires she had been dating the thief of the book, and that she had read the book. This took a serious blow to her sanity, as she saw too much of the future to withstand the information.
She has not appeared since: however, her fight club was superseded by the Dark Side Club, similar in role but different in the scope: still involving metahumans brawling in front of a paying public, the new club reaps the winners to create a small metahuman army, while Roulette has never shown similar interests.
In the Justice League of America vol. 2 story Shuffle Up and Die, Roulette has a game going with Amos Fortune. They each playing cards|play with cards that represent the JLA and the Royal Flush Gang; in turn, they each bet that one can beat the other.
Powers and Abilities
Roulette has no apparent superhuman abilities, but is a genius when calculating odds and gambling winnings. Roulette has robot security dogs, automated security devices, a series of death traps, and at least one metahuman on staff who can negate super-powers.
Other Media
Television
- In Justice League Unlimited, Roulette (voiced by Academy Award nominee Virginia Madsen) debuted in the season three episode The Cat and the Canary, where she had added Wildcat to her costumed fighter vs. costumed fighter no-holds-barred tournament, Meta-Brawl. The fight ring highlighted the distrust of metahumans by civilians, as evidenced by the many paying spectators who cheered non-metas like Wildcat on and execrated the metahumans. Green Arrow and Black Canary directly confronted Roulette's Meta-Brawl (hooking up in the process). They were forced to battle other participants of Meta-Brawl, including Sportsmaster, Bloodsport, Electrocutioner, Atomic Skull, Hellgrammite, Tracer, Evil Star, and Amygdala. In the Season Five episode "Grudge Match," Roulette upgraded the premise of Meta-Brawl in the face of falling profits. She utilized Lex Luthor's Secret Society (along with the assistance of Sonar) mind-control technology to brainwash female Leaguers (including Vixen, Fire, Hawkgirl, Wonder Woman, and Black Canary) to create a re-imagined "Glamour Slam". This tournament was destroyed and the heroines rescued by a team-up between the resuscitated Canary and Huntress (in itself a first, because Huntress and Canary had been in opposition since their violent altercation in Double Date). Roulette and Sonar were arrested after that.
- Steph Song will play Roulette in the 9th season of Smallville. Based on this casting, the character will apparently be Asian in the Smallville continuity.
