Doctor Poison is a fictional character appearing in DC Comics publications and related media, commonly as a recurring adversary of the superhero Wonder Woman.

[1] As the narrative continuity of Wonder Woman comics has been adjusted by different writers and artists throughout the years, various versions of Doctor Poison have been presented, usually as perversely cruel toxicologists of Japanese descent.

In her first appearance, Doctor Poison is presented as an ostensibly male figure in a hooded green surgical gown and black domino mask.

Depicted with an eerie wide-eyed gaze and unsettling grimace, the character was an Axis scientist and mastermind who headed both the fictional Nazi Poison Division and the chemical research branch of the Japanese army.

After DC Comics rebooted its continuity in 1985 (in a publication event known as the Crisis on Infinite Earths), Wonder Woman, her supporting characters and many of her foes were re-imagined and reintroduced.

Now the unstable granddaughter of the original Princess Maru, she is attired in a still-androgynous dark green leather trench and cowl, paying homage to her grandmother's Golden Age surgical gown.

[4] After several clashes with Wonder Woman, Doctor Poison joined Villainy Inc. and attempted to abet Queen Clea, and later the sentient computer virus Trinity, in taking over the other-dimensional realm of Skartaris.

A year later, as part of DC Comics' Rebirth continuity reboot, yet another version of the character was introduced, this time as the Japanese-American mercenary Colonel Marina Maru, a for-hire operative of Veronica Cale.

The Saturnian slaver Eviless banded these rebellious super-villains together under the name Villainy Inc. Maru returned to her Doctor Poison disguise and tricked Queen Hippolyta into believing men had invaded Paradise Island.

Doctor Poison then joined Eviless, Blue Snowman, and Cheetah on a boat with the captive Wonder Woman, plotting to imprison the Amazon on Transformation Island for revenge.

[8] After the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Doctor Poison was a founding member of Villainy Inc., but the team was created by Queen Clea instead of Eviless.

[9] It was later revealed by her granddaughter that she had died after creating the Reverso drug, as she accidentally reversed her own growth patterns and had forgotten the antidote by becoming too young too fast, eventually reverting to a fetus and then nothing.

[12] During Wonder Woman's first few months in the United States, she discovers a group of men infected with the Maru Virus, a poison that drives its victims to rage-induced murder.

The Princess Maru incarnation of Doctor Poison makes a non-speaking cameo appearance in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Joker: The Vile and the Villainous!"