Mindmstress

"What would you do if you were the smartest, most intelligent being on Earth? Would you revolutionize technology? Would you cure AIDS or cancer? Or would you devise a special battlesuit and tackle professional, dangerous criminals? Yeah, I know. But I have my reasons."

- Mindmistress

Mindmistress is a webcomic created by Al Schroeder.

Lorelei Lyons is the mentally challenged daughter of millionaire Ezekiel Lyons. Her mother was a scientist who was working on enhancing the human intellect. Experiments were a partial success - lab animals became as smart as humans, but after two weeks, they all died from rapidly growing brain tumors. One year after the death of Lorelei's mother, her last gift is delivered to Lorelei: a necklace with the intellect-upgrading device. Lorelei initially refuses to use it on herself, but when the bus on which she is riding crashes, she must use the necklace in order to save innocent lives.

With an intellect boosted far beyond the smartest human, she not only solves the immediate problem, but finds a way to counter the tumors by regularly changing back into Lorelei. She starts to live two lives, as the mentally challenged Lorelei and as her super genius self. When her father is kidnapped, Lorelei transforms and rescues him with her technology, and assumes the name of Mindmistress. From this moment Mindmistress uses her intelligence as a force for good.

Mindmistress also takes a part in The Crossoverlord. And, since there's no link on the site to go to the first page, follow this elegant and finely crafted link to get there.


 * Alternate Universe: Mindmistress is one of the few webcomics characters able to travel between them.
 * Anti-Hero: As a rule Mindmistress only gets involved when she's curious or for her own interests. She is willing to use lethal force on occasion, though doesn't make a habit of it. While not overtly altruistic, she's not incapable of empathy, and her killing of the child kidnapper was an either or situation. Then again, she's perfectly happy to mind rape good people if it suits her as both Ant and Lightbringer find out, and has even erased an enemy's mind on at least one occasion, roughly totaling her out as a Type IV.
 * Art Evolution
 * Batman Gambit: Many of them
 * Brainy Brunette
 * Bullet Dodges You: Mindmistress does it with her forcefield.
 * The Chessmaster: Mindmistress
 * Comes Great Insanity:
 * Crossover: With Magellan, Crossover Wars and The Crossoverlord
 * Deadly Upgrade: Mindmistress' origin
 * Dumb Blonde: Brutally deconstructed with mentally challenged Lorelei, who suffers from being seen as such by "normal people".
 * Eldritch Abomination: Sisters of Twilight.
 * Evil Overlord List: Lampshaded once.
 * The Gwen Stacy: Poor.
 * Hair of Gold: Lorelei
 * I Have Many Names: Mindmistress maintains multiple personae on various message boards so as to disguise her dialogue as that of multiple talented people rather than one supergenius. She also has alternate identities for when she interacts with the regular world as a regular professional.
 * It's Personal: Between Mindmistress and Bloodlust.
 * Murder, Inc.: Vengeance Inc.
 * My Skull Runneth Over: Mindmistress' origin, again.
 * No Fourth Wall: Subverted. Every time MM meets somebody aware that she's a webcomics character (like in Crossover Wars), she points out reasons why this is impossible.
 * Out-Gambitted: Happens a lot.
 * Papa Wolf: "When you're a parent, even a momentary childish scream as you're getting out of your car, brings you running"
 * The Plan: Mindmistress is good at this, see Chessmaster.
 * Reed Richards Is Useless: Justified. Mindmistress is afraid that her technology could change our society for worse. And most times she tries to help somebody in non-superhero ways, something bad happens.
 * It's also averted with.
 * Just to drive the point home, MM is involuntarily taken to visit an alternate universe where her now-dead parallel self released all of her super-tech into the hands of the rest of humanity. The global economy is imploding and every nutjob on the planet has access to horrible new weaponry.
 * Self-Deprecation: On at least one occasion, Schroeder has openly admitted that his art style is somewhat... limited.
 * Shared Universe: With Zebra Girl. However, Word of God says it can be her alternate counterpart, not the real one.
 * Shoot the Dog:
 * Space Master: MM used a spatial distortion shield as a defense against magic.
 * Sticks to the Back: A recent costume upgrade has let her do this with her Psyche-Staff.
 * Super Intelligence
 * Take That: One whole chapter full of take that's aimed at Rob Liefeld, Stripperiffic Outfits, Frank Miller, retcons, Marvel Zombies, Naughty Tentacles, Beware the Superman trope, and even webcomics. There's Self-Deprecation too.
 * Time Abyss: When the Elder Gods were born, the Sisters of Twillight were already vastly old. And considering that Elder Gods are Time Abysses themselves, thinking about how old those two must be is Nightmare Fuel.
 * They can even be older than some Outer Gods, if what they said about knowing Yog-Sothoth as a young god is true. And they said it in a way suggesting that they were already old back then. Which has interesting implications, considering Yog-Sothoth is eternal (it has always existed and will always exist). Then again, due to existing outside time and being able to freely move in it, Yog-Sothoth can indeed have been born at some point and have always existed (as nothing stopped it from appearing in time before it was born).