INDEX
      
Count Nefaria

Real Name: Count Luchino Nefaria

Occupation: Former head of the Nefaria "Family" of the Maggia, Nobleman, criminal financier and would-be world conqueror.

Identity: Publicly known.

Legal Status: Citizen of Italy with a criminal record in the United States.

Known Aliases: The Dream Maker, the Dream Master and Stox

Place of Birth: Rome, Italy

Marital Status: Widower.

Known Relatives: Renata (Wife, Deceased). Countess Giulietta Nefaria, alias Whitney Frost alias Madam Masque. (Daughter.), Vittorio Silvani (relative, his exact relation to Count Nefaria is Unrevealed.)

Known Allies: (all Former) The Maggia, Morgan Stark, Plantman 1, Unicorn 1(presumed Deceased), Eel 1 (Deceased), Scarecrow, Porcupine (Deceased), Original Ani-Men (Deceased), Lethal Legion 2, Professor Kenneth Sturdy (Deceased), Madam Masque, Wonder Man, Atlas

Major Enemies: The Avengers, Iron Man, the X-Men, Captain America, Wonder Man, Atlas, Thunderbolts

Group Affiliation: Former leader of the Nefaria "Family" of the Maggia and unofficial leader of entire Maggia organization, former employer of the original Ani-Men, former leader of the second Lethal Legion, Former member of the third and fourth Legion of the Unliving.

Base of Operations: Ancestral castle in Italy later relocated and reconstructed atop the New Jersey Palisades and then much later moved to the Livingstone Range of the Rocky Mountains above the small town of Blaircrest, Alberta, Canada. Various hidden bases hidden throughout the United States and Europe.
History: Count Luchino Nefaria was the descendant of a long line of Italian noblemen, and had inherited a vast fortune.

Nefaria is a man of contradictions. He is conservative in many of his tastes and attitudes, and therefore dressed in the fashions Italian noblemen wore much earlier in the century. On the other hand, Nefaria is fascinated with technological advances, and throughout his life commissioned scientists to create inventions that were far in advance of contemporary science.

Nefaria also greatly valued his family tradition of respectability, yet his lust for forever greater wealth and power led him to making himself a powerful figure in the Maggia, the notorious international crime syndicate that has its origins in Southern Europe, but included no noblemen.

As a young man, Nefaria quickly made himself a powerful force in the Maggia. Through offering large sums of money to establish Maggiosi to work for him, through financing major criminal operations for the Maggia in return for shares of power, through advanced weaponry his scientists devised for him and through his own immense talent for criminal strategy.

The Maggia men who left their own "families" to work for Nefaria became the basis of his own "family." The other European Maggia leaders allowed Nefaria's "family" to remain within the Maggia, for fear that if his organization severed all ties with them; it would become a formidable opponent.

Nefaria married a woman named Renata, and hoped she would bear him a son who would carry on the Nefaria line. However Renata died giving birth to their only child, a daughter, Giulietta.

Nefaria had been so cunning, that until his exposure at the hands of the Avengers years later, virtually no one outside the upper echelons of the Maggia knew of his involvement in crime. However, Nefaria feared that one day his criminality would become public knowledge and that one of the Maggia leaders who resented his power might attempt to strike at him through his child.

Therefore, Nefaria forced a Wall Street financier named Byron Frost, who owed him a very large debt, to raise Giulietta as his own daughter. So Giulietta grew to adulthood under the name of Whitney Frost, not knowing her true name or parentage.

The Nefaria "Family" established inroads into the United States over the decades and controlled to a certain extent various other Maggia "Families" operations there. The newly formed Avengers spent much of their time in the early history of the group in capturing Maggia criminals and causing the shutdown of many profitable operations. Count Nefaria decided to take matters into his own hands and

deal with the Avengers himself.

Having planned to relocate to the United States of America anyway, Count Nefaria had his ancestral home in Italy disassembled and moved brick by brick to and reassembled it atop the New Jersey Palisades. Once it was finished, Count Nefaria announced to the public that he would open the castle as a tourist attraction and donate all proceeds to charity. As part of his plan, Nefaria invited the Avengers to the Opening Day Ceremonies, which they accepted.

Once inside the castle, Nefaria trapped the Avengers with the so-called “Time-Transcender beams, which, in effect, put the Avengers into suspended animation. Once the Avengers were immobile, Nefaria created life-size “hard light” hologram images of the team and had the images cause havok and openly announce they were going to seize control of the United States by force, thus committing treason.

As a result, once the Avengers were set free from the castle, they found themselves in conflict with the United States Army. Despite this, the Avengers discovered Nefaria’s plot against them and managed to finally defeat him. Once defeated, Nefaria confessed his guilt in framing the Avengers. The Avengers were cleared of treason while Nefaria was publicly exposed as a criminal, and deported to Italy.
Due to this revelation, many of Nefaria’s legitimate and criminal associates abandoned him, thus reducing his organization to just another “family” in the Maggia and Count Nefaria as just another head of a small crime family rather than the leader of a criminal empire.

Sometime after Nefaria’s defeat at the Avengers hands, Byron Frost died and Nefaria revealed to Whitney Frost that he was her real father and intended to train her to become his eventual successor as head of his criminal organization. Horrified, Whitney refused but Nefaria threatened to publicly expose her as his real daughter, thereby causing her to lose all her respectable friends if she remained adamant on her decision.

Whitney went to her fiancée about what was happening and after telling him her story; he coldly ended their engagement and never wanted to see her again.

Heartbroken Whitney went into despair and months later finally succumbed to her father’s will and began her training to be his successor. After training for some time, Whitney managed to rise up through the ranks of the organization and become Nefaria’s second-in-command.

During this time, Nefaria had a machine constructed that could project highly realistic illusions into the minds of his intended victims, even over distances of a thousand miles. Dubbing it The Nightmare Machine, Nefaria planned to use it to attack the Avengers for his defeat and humiliation. The machine’s illusions were so real that the human body would react to whatever it did to a person’s mind, so if a person died in their dream, they would also die in real life.

As a test, Nefaria targeted Iron Man and had him battle an army of his oldest enemies. Despite the overwhelming odds against him, Iron Man’s mind overcame the illusions. Nefaria, in a fit of rage over Iron Man’s overcoming his illusions, caused the machine to short circuit and explode. Nefaria abandoned the Nightmare Machine as a failure and never bothered to repair or rebuild it.

Soon thereafter, Count Nefaria enlisted Morgan Stark, Anthony Stark’s shady cousin, in a scheme to destroy Anthony’s reputation, but this scheme failed as well.

Count Nefaria then embarked on an ambitious yet odd blackmail scheme against the United States government. Nefaria created an enormous dome that cut off Washington D.C. from the rest of the world. The dome was made of an unknown material that couldn’t be penetrated by any conventional means except through secret methods that Nefaria used that would not endanger the people within nor compromise the integrity of the dome’s strength.

Nefaria demanded that if he were not paid his ransom, he would extract all of the oxygen from the dome suffocating everyone within its enclosure. The original X-Men opposed Nefaria and defeated him ruining his scheme. Thanks to the outlaw band of mutants Washington D.C. was saved, the dome was destroyed and Nefaria was sent to prison. Since her father was sent to prison, Whitney Frost assumed control of their Maggia “family.”

Sometime later, Count Nefaria was broke out of jail by men loyal to him, but because of his very public failures, Nefaria was ousted from the Maggia and was forced to work independently of them, including his own “family” which was still run by his daughter.

Count Nefaria decided to try another grand scale blackmail scheme. With the aid of the criminal team called the Ani-Men, Count Nefaria took control of the North American Air Defense Command center at Valhalla Mountain in Colorado. Nefaria threatened that if an enormous ransom from each nation on Earth were not paid to him, then he would use the center’s Doomsmith Command System to target and launch nuclear missiles at their nations and cause a nuclear disaster.

The new X-Men opposed Count Nefaria on their second mission halted his schemes and defeated the Ani-Men. Nefaria tried to escape in a Harrier jet, but the X-Man codenamed Thunderbird leaped atop his jet despite warnings not to and began pummeling it with his superhuman strength until it exploded, killing Thunderbird but Nefaria teleported away to safety right before the explosion happened.

By now, Nefaria was virtually destitute and decided that in order to make his schemes work he himself would need superhuman powers greater than any other superhero to combat those that repeatedly defeated him and ruined his plans.

Forming the second group called the Lethal Legion consisting of the Living Laser, the original criminal Power Man and Whirlwind. Count Nefaria then had Kenneth (Klaus) Sturdy, former chief assistant to Baron Heinrich Zemo, increase the trio of criminals powers to immense levels for roughly an hour and sent them to battle their old enemies, the Avengers.

But, during the process to boost the criminal’s powers, Sturdy and his assistants had analyzed the trio’s cellular and genetic structures and used their findings to duplicate their powers in Count Nefaria but magnified them a hundredfold. Once empowered, Nefaria viciously mortally wounded Sturdy so that he could never give equal powers to someone else.

But, the dying Sturdy revealed to Count Nefaria that due to the power

transfer process; Nefaria was now aging at an incredible rate and would be dead in approximately two days.

Sturdy went on to explain that only he knew how to halt the ageing process, but thanks to Nefaria’s treachery, he would not live long enough to stop it. (Sturdy was either lying or miscalculated the amount of time Count Nefaria had to live, since he lived past the two day time limit.)

Crazed with fear and rage, Nefaria attempted to destroy New York City before his condition could kill him, but Nefaria was stopped and captured by the Avengers after considerable effort on their part. Nefaria had quickly became an enfeebled wizened old man and had to be kept alive by special life support systems. The Avengers took custody of their old foe while attempting to find a cure for his condition

Whitney Frost, now known as Madam Masque, believed that her father would not receive the proper care at Avengers Mansion. She hired the four original Ani-Men to break into the Mansion and bring Nefaria to her. Nefaria demanded that his daughter send the Ani-Men to kidnap Anthony Stark, who was secretly Iron Man, in order to persuade Stark into finding a cure for him.

Madam Masque knew Stark was secretly Iron Man and loved him very

much, and agreed reluctantly to obey her father’s demand that Stark be kidnapped, but only if he was not harmed. Nefaria accepted his daughter’s terms, but had no intention of keeping his word. Stark, as Iron Man ended up fighting the Ani-Men in his own study.

During the battle, Madam Masque fled with her father into one of Stark’s massive laboratories, which housed the Jupiter Landing Vehicle, a giant vehicle developed by Stark Industries to land on and explore the harsh environments on the Planet Jupiter. Heartbroken over having to choose between her lover and her duty to her father, Madam Masque decided to compromise and activated the massive Jupiter Lander and sent it to keep Iron Man at bay until her and her father could escape.

Iron Man’s fight against the runaway vehicle caused the massive machine to topple so that it not only destroyed Nefaria’s life support, but also crushed Nefaria himself beneath its immense weight. Iron Man hadn’t intended to cause Count Nefaria’s death but nonetheless Madam Masque was traumatized witnessing her father’s death through her lover’s actions. She escaped and returned to leadership of the Nefaria Maggia “Family.”

But this was not the end of Count Luchino Nefaria. Due to the ionic energies used in the process that granted him superhuman powers, Nefaria revived but was now dependent on sources of ionic energy to sustain his life force, thus making him an ionic energy vampire.

For years, while he was thought dead, Count Nefaria gained power and wealth again through various criminal means by his relative Vittorio Silvani. Through the funds Vittorio was able to secure through these criminal means, Nefaria was able to manufacture the equipment necessary to return him to a state of physical power and youth and was also able to regain his ancestral estate.

After Iron Man returned to earth after spending a year on counter earth with many of his fellow heroes, Count Nefaria decided to have a hit put out on his old enemy hiring mercenaries and contract killers to attack him in both his Iron Man and Tony Stark identities.

While these various hits were taking place, Nefaria busied himself gaining more power by sucking the ionic energy out of various living and deceased beings that had been imbued with ionic energy at one time or another. Iron Man, concerned for the well being of other ionic powered individuals, contacted Project Pegasus and set out to warn others such as Wonder Man and Atlas of the energy vampire unaware that he was being spied upon by agents of Nefaria.

The Death Squad, Whiplash and Nitro, all of whom were used in the previous attacks against him by Nefaria, then

ambushed Iron Man at the gravesite of the deceased criminal Aries. Iron Man with the help of S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jenna Carlisle was able to defeat the villains and follow them to a castle located in Sicily where he defeated them.

Battered from the long battle, Iron Man was caught off guard by Vittorio Silvani who used a mechanism in the ground to deliver an ionic shock to Iron Man’s computer systems. Vittorio gloated over the helpless Iron Man too long giving the armored Avenger enough time to reboot his computers, blinding Vittorio with his chest spotlight and then knocking him down with a low yield repulsor beam.

Realizing Vittorio couldn’t have possibly masterminded all the attacks on him, Iron Man tries to get Vittorio to talk, but Vittorio refuses. Iron Man is then shocked when Count Luchino Nefaria strides out of the shadows and reveals it was his doing all along.

Nefaria, as powerful as ever, attacks Iron Man smashing him out of the castle and into the ocean where Nefaria then lifted and dropped an entire oil tanker on the weakened hero nearly crushing him to death. Nefaria then ignited the tanker’s oil causing an explosion that ripped apart the tanker and damaged Iron

Man even further. Nefaria then lifted a huge chunk of a mountain off an island and prepared to smash Iron Man with it, but Iron Man with the last ounce of energy available in his armor’s system hit Nefaria with a repulsor beam causing him to drop the large chunk of island on himself and not Iron Man.

Weakened by the over exertion of his powers, Nefaria attempted to make it back to his castle to recharge, but was apprehended by Jenna Carlisle and her SHIELD team. Nefaria was taken into custody but almost immediately escaped. Returning to his castle, it was revealed Nefaria feeds off the ionic spider being called Therak, who has apparently been one of his power sources for some time.

After the battle with Iron Man, Nefaria considered hunting down ionic beings like himself to feed on was too much of burden and realized he would need a much bigger supply of living ionic beings to feed off of in order to sustain his powers at maximum levels. Nefaria decided to set out to the Savage Land where he conceived a plan to create a race of ionic beings from which he could constantly feed on. This way he would have a never-ending supply of ionic energy beings to feed him anytime he wanted.

Disguised as a powerful witchdoctor named Stox, Count Nefaria captured many of the various dinosaur species in order to make clones of them for his experiments. Nefaria experimented on large numbers of clones killing many but also succeeding in creating a race

of ionicly powered Dinosaur Men. Nefaria also captured and cloned Kevin Plunder a.k.a. Ka-Zar and his family and made clones of them as well. The clones of Ka-Zar and his wife aged rapidly until they became feeble but their son Matthew’s clone aged to maturity and had the athletic strength and prowess of the real Ka-Zar and escaped with his aged parents into the jungle.

One of the Dinosaur Men also escaped Stox and managed to get help from SHIELD agent Sharon Carter. Captain America followed

the Dinosaur Man and Carter into the jungles of the Savage Land. There they teamed up with the Matthew Plunder clone and eventually revealed that Stox was really Count Nefaria in disguise. Captain America managed to defeat Nefaria in combat due to the Count’s vastly weakened state at the time.

Captain America then freed the real Ka-Zar and family from their stasis and Ka-Zar demanded that Count Nefaria be left in the Savage Land to face trial for his atrocities. Captain America relented and left Nefaria to his fate. Nefaria somehow gained enough power to escape and return home after Captain America and Sharon Carter left the Savage land.

Count Nefaria then set out on his most ambitious scheme to date. Nefaria attacked Wonder Man who was returning to New York after a trip to Los Angeles and through his ionic sapping ability made Wonder Man his slave. Nefaria then had Wonder Man attack Atlas of the Thunderbolts and bring him to their base where Nefaria then made him a slave as well.

Controlling two of the most powerful ionic beings on the planet, Count Nefaria then hired the Grim Reaper to ferret his daughter, Madam Masque out of hiding. Nefaria also hired the criminal Cyclone to steal a disk containing information on Baron Heinrich Zemo’s ion experiments from the Nazi scientist’s old base in South America and deliver them to the Maggia.

At the base, Cyclone, accompanied by a small platoon of Protoids (humans genetically mutated by Arnim Zola into animal-like humanoids), battled the Thunderbolts who had arrived there. The Thunderbolts managed to defeat the Protoids and change them back to their human forms. Unable to stop Cyclone’s

escape the T-Bolts apprehended one of the scientists helping him, Doctor Karl Malus, a master criminal scientist and one of the few living experts on Ionic energy and it’s effects.

 

Meanwhile, the Grim Reaper and his Steelskulls ferreted out Madam Masque’s secret base, disguised as a massive butte in the Nevada desert, and attacked it. The Avengers arrived and began fighting the Reaper and his men when Count Nefaria arrived suddenly with the enslaved Atlas and Wonder Man.

Madam Masque used her butte’s defenses to blast Nefaria with sustained beta cannon fire which does absolutely nothing to harm him. Convinced this is her real father, Masque prepares to enact what she refers to as The Nefaria Protocols, but before Nefaria orders Atlas and Wonder Man to destroy her compound. Madam Masque attempts to escape using an emergency subway system but Nefaria hears it moving and punches through the desert floor and rips her out of her escape shuttle. The Avengers attack him and Triathlon manages to grab Madam Masque and run her to safety.

Nefaria slaps the Avengers away ordering Atlas and Wonder Man to catch Triathlon, but before they can, the Vision drops on them with his density at maximum, knocking them out. Realizing there’s really no point in continuing the battle, Nefaria grabs Wonder Man and Atlas and flies off with them.

The Thunderbolts contact the Avengers when they realize that Nefaria was gathering information on ionic energy to develop an ionic bomb that will saturate the planet with ionic energy that will transform people into batteries for him to feed off of and make them all his slaves. Realizing the threat that this poses to everyone, Madam Masque decided to help the Avengers defeat her father. With Doctor Malus help, Madam Masque built a gun she dubbed the Ionic Lock. The gun’s rays freeze the ionic energy production in ionicly powered beings, thus rendering them powerless. Unknown to them, the paranoid Madam Masque gave the teams an incomplete Ionic Lock and then built a complete one for herself.

Armed with this new weapon, the Avengers and Thunderbolts decide their best course of action is to work together and attack Count Nefaria on two fronts. Discovering Count Nefaria moved his castle to the Livingstone Range of the Rocky Mountains above the small town of Blaircrest, Alberta, Canada. Both teams attacked on two fronts. One group draws out Atlas and Wonder Man into a battle, while another sneaks into the castle trying to find the Ionic Bomb. The team not only finds the bomb, but Nefaria waiting for them as well. Wonder Man and Atlas are rendered unconscious by Mach-2 using the Ionic Lock as Nefaria deploys the massive Ionic Bomb. Mach-2 blasts Nefaria with the Ionic Lock, but it has no effect as Nefaria floats between the assembled heroes and the titanic bomb.

Desperate, the heroes en masse attacked Count Nefaria only to have him swat them away and demolish the entire cliff side they were standing on. The heroes saved themselves and stopped the town of Blaircrest and it’s civilians from being harmed. Nefaria, used this to his advantage to keep the heroes too busy trying the save the town to attempt to stop his bomb from launching. Over and over again the Avengers and Thunderbolts tried to stop Nefaria only to have him shrug off their attempts. Madam Masque arrived in secret with her completely functioning Ionic Lock and watched the battle take place waiting for Nefaria to kill them off so she could step in and kill him thus destroying all her enemies.

Atlas and Wonder Man awoke in time to see the giant ionic bomb launch into space. No longer under Count Nefaria’s control, the two ionic heroes flew off after the bomb and tried to diffuse it. Nefaria witnessed them fly off and was shocked that they were no longer under his command. Before he could fly after them to stop their interference, the heroes rallied under Hawkeye’s command and kept attacking the ionic vampire, keeping him off balance and unable to pursue Wonder Man and Atlas.

Madam Masque, still in the shadows watched the heroes being beaten unmercifully by her father when she was confronted by her surviving clone Masque, a former honorary Avenger. Masque begged her creator to get involved and save the Avengers but Madam Masque was still unsure and confused as to who she could really trust. Masque grabbed the true ionic lock off her creator and dove into the open in an attempt to shoot Count Nefaria, but before she could pull the trigger he obliterated her with his eyebeams, bringing the free for all with the other heroes to a standstill. Iron

Man cried Madam Masque’s name out in anguish as Nefaria gloated in triumph. In that brief moment, Madam Masque realized her error in thinking all of them were her enemies and dove into the open grabbing the Ionic Lock and firing the weapon point blank at her stunned father.

When the energy cleared from the blast Nefaria laughed that it didn’t work when he saw his finger was leaking ionic energy. Realizing that they need to put more pressure on Nefaria to make him leak energy faster, both teams converged in a massive onslaught on the would-be world conqueror pummeling him with their combined powers. Nefaria manages to burst through their ranks and ripped apart the town’s water tower in an attempt to drown the heroes in the deluge. Count Nefaria now leaking energy from his eyes and mouth and declared to the weary heroes that he wouldn’t be defeated by their weapons and that he still had enough power within him to destroy them all.

Meanwhile Wonder Man and Atlas reached the bomb in orbit and Wondy realized there was no real way to diffuse it before it exploded. Atlas says their one chance is to remain with the bomb and absorb it’s energy when it blows up. The bomb went off while on earth the heroes looked on in horror at the explosion. Nefaria laughed in triumph when he and the heroes watched the explosion begin to expand. Suddenly the bomb burst halted, and then started to shrink back into itself. Wonder Man and Atlas, through sheer willpower commanded the massive amounts of energy released by the bomb to collect into themselves.

Count Nefaria’s mind snapped witnessing this and he refused to be defeated yet again. Enraged he flew off into the sky in an attempt to reach the two ionic heroes in space. As he climbed, his body hemorrhaged more and more ionic energy until it literally exploded, dissipating into nothingness, seemingly destroying his threat forever.

It remains to be seen if this was truly the final fate of Count Nefaria or if he will, like a few ionicly powered beings, be reconstituted and return to life.


Height: 6 2”
Weight: 230 pounds (As an old man, 140)
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Black, white at temples (As an old man, none)

Other distinguishing features: Before gaining superhuman powers, Nefaria wore a monocle over his right eye.

When he was aged into an enfeebled old man, all of Nefaria’s hair, including his facial hair, had fallen out.

Strength Level: In his prime Count Nefaria possessed the normal human strength of a man of his age, height and build who engaged in moderate regular exercise. Due to professor Sturdy’s treatment, Nefaria briefly possessed strength that was never measured but was allegedly more than Thor and even the Hulk. When enfeebled, Nefaria possessed no body strength whatsoever and needed complicated life support systems just to keep him alive.

After becoming an ionic vampire, Nefaria possessed in excess of class 100 strength when at full power and less so the longer he went without feeding in between periods of intense activity. Thus his strength could actually be worn down to the strength of normal human beings who engaged in normal or intensive regular exercise.

Known Superhuman Powers:
For the majority of his life Count Nefaria possessed no superhuman powers. However after Professor Sturdy put him through his process, Nefaria possessed the laser powers of the Living Laser, the ionic powers of Power Man 1 and the mutant speed powers of the Whirlwind but multiplied 100 times the original criminal who possess these powers. Note: The powers of the Living Laser were those of his before becoming a being composed wholly of energy and those of Power Man’s were before he became infused with Pym particles enabling him to change size.

Besides Superhuman strength, Nefaria possessed superhuman resistance to injury and was able to survive direct blows from Thor’s enchanted hammer without harm. Due to Professor Sturdy’s treatment, Nefaria could project laser beams from his eyes. Unlike the Living Laser at that time, Nefaria needed no artificial or mechanical devices to create and project laser energy since Sturdy’s process altered his body to the point that it could generate this energy on its own. The limit at which Nefaria could produce these laser beams is unknown.

After being revived as an ionic vampire, Count Nefaria was still able to produce laser beams from his eyes, but they did not seem to be traditional eye beams so much as ionic energy beams. The limits of these beams are unknown, but they were able to reduce a human being to smoldering ash within a millisecond of contact at full intensity.

Sturdy’s treatment allowed the count to move at superhuman speeds, but unlike the Whirlwind, Nefaria didn’t need to spin in circles to accomplish this. Theoretically, Nefaria could run up to 5000 miles in a strait line for 30 minutes without tiring appreciably. Sturdy altered Nefaria’s body to withstand the adverse effects of movement at superhuman speeds.

Although Nefaria seemed to be able to fly after Sturdy’s process, he could not do so. Instead he was able to leap to great heights and distances much like the Hulk. The height and distance these leaps could cover at maximum have not been measured.

After Count Nefaria’s revival as an ionic vampire, Count Nefaria possessed the ability to fly under his own power. The limits of which are unknown, but Count Nefaria could now fly by tapping and releasing the by-products of the ionic energy interactions within his body unidirectionaly through his skin. This process resembled the workings of a noiseless nuclear

powered jet engine. It is unknown what the top speed at which Count Nefaria could fly, but he could theoretically reach escape velocity with ease and journey into outer space under his own power.

Count Nefaria possessed superhuman strength, speed, durability, reflexes and stamina. The tissue and bone of his entire body have been augmented in strength and to a certain extent supplanted by an unknown substance during the ionic process that gave him his powers.
Count Nefaria’s stamina enabled him to exert himself at peak levels for up to an hour and a half before fatigue poisons build up in his blood, causing him to tire. Count Nefaria’s skin and tissue was hard enough to resist temperature extremes from the cold vacuum of space to the extreme temperatures generated at ground zero of a nuclear bomb without any harm.
Count Nefaria no longer required food, water or oxygen since the energy that gives him life is far more efficient and self-sustaining than the biochemical processes that sustain normal, ordinary human life. But, unlike most ionicly powered beings, Count Nefaria’s body doesn’t produce the energy in the way that Wonder Man’s does and Nefaria needed to replenish his internal supply of ionic energy in order to maintain his superhuman powers at peak levels. Thus Count Nefaria needed to feed off the energy of other beings empowered by ionic energy the way a vampire feeds off the blood of humans.
Nefaria must be in very close proximity of his victims or in physical contact with them in order to absorb their ionic energy. Nefaria can even feed off the residual ionic energy of ionic being’s corpses or drain an ionic being to the point of killing them, leaving them a desiccated, mummified state.
By only consuming some and not all of any ionic being’s energy, Count Nefaria can enthrall and impose his will over those he had partially fed off of making them his willing slaves. His hold over them was total and was so far only been broken by having the internal ionic processes of the beings under his control disrupted by the Ionic Lock. Count Nefaria could extend his will over them verbally or mentally over long distances.
Count Nefaria could also tap his ionic energies to enhance the speed of any of his physical action, giving him a practical reaction time hundreds of times faster than an ordinary human being.
Despite these various powers, Count Nefaria could still theoretically be hurt or rendered unconscious by a sufficiently powerful force, but was shown to be significantly harder to hurt as an ionic vampire than when he was simply enhanced by Professor Sturdy’s process.
Count Nefaria still possessed nerve endings that allowed him to feel pain to a certain degree but it took a tremendous amount of force for him to feel any sort of pain or even discomfort. Because of the ionic energy in his body, Count Nefaria presumably no longer physically aged and was functionally immortal.

Special Limitations: As a result of Professor Sturdy’s process, Count Nefaria aged rapidly into an enfeebled state to the point where he needed special life support systems to keep him alive. As an ionic vampire, Nefaria was susceptible to the Ionic Lock weapon developed by his daughter. Despite his immense powers Count Nefaria was still limited by his need to feed off of other ionic energy beings in order to remain at his peak power. Without it he would weaken to the point of becoming a powerless being of normal human strength, speed and abilities. It is unknown if he would weaken to the point of death if unable to feed at all.

Special Skills and Abilities: Count Nefaria is a skilled fencer, master strategist and organizer.

Transportation: Count Nefaria formerly used a specially designed personal airship equipped with a personal teleportation device. He later wore a miniaturized version of the teleportation device on his person. He apparently stopped using these devices once he became enhanced with superhuman powers.

Weaponry: Count Nefaria formerly relied on many technological weapons made by unnamed Maggia scientists. They include: A Viso-Projector (A device that produced and broadcasted realistic visual and aural illusions) and a miniaturized version of the same. Count Nefaria also used advanced force-field technology. A “Nightmare Machine” that enabled him to project realistic illusions into his victim’s minds as they slept.

Note: Count Nefaria should not be confused with the deceased criminal Lloyd Bloch, the costumed madman known as Nefarius who wore a replica of Count Nefaria’s black and white costume.
     
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