Cygnus

[Joshua]

Honor Holt was the one female member of the galactic rangers in a 1933 serial. (Published a full 3 months before that Flash Gordon fellow, but well after Buck Rogers...) She was one of the more popular characters, although, due to the code about females not being able to be in positions of power, she was often underutilized. About halfway through the first year of publication, Honor was fatally injured and sucked into an unknown gravity-well. Her corpse was found by an unmanned probe from a group of anti-matter aliens, who repaired her injuries. These granted her the ability to... well... the serial never really explained. As stated, as a female character in the 30's, as powerful as she became, as many spaceships as she could take out, she melted into the arms of the male lead and was saved from one plot contrivance after another.

While the other members of the serial were forgotten, in the 1940's, the creators tried to cash in on the newly released Wonder Woman and brought Honor back in a limited run comic book. In this incarnation, she was injured when her space rocket exploded, and was repaired by dark-matter aliens. (Not that the writers has any idea what dark matter was.) The mixture of dark and light matter in her replacement heart generated powerful gravity and density fluctuations. She became a strong flying brick, able to manipulate her own gravity as well as make herself as dense and invulnerable as diamond. (The writers didn't really understand density either.)

In the 1972, Cygnus X-1 was found to be a black hole. Because of the renewed interest, Honor's superhero identity was renamed Cygnus. There was a relaunch of the title, featuring Honor as a more 'realistic' astronaut who was doing a deep exploration beyond the solar system when her space-ship was sabotaged. (Again, the writers had no idea about actual astronomical distances. This ended up a little more like Lost in Space...) The aliens were still dark-matter aliens, only the quantum heart they used to repair Honor's injuries fused into a tiny black hole in her chest. (No idea how her blood kept circulating.)

Powers:

• Density Control: Cygnus can be as solid as almost any material, allowing her to punch with the force of a comet, hold her ground like an alien obelisk, and shrug off nearly any attack. Conversely, she can decrease her density to reduce her weight, or become intangible.
• Gravity Control: Due to the link between mass and gravity, Cygnus can fly. She has also used her enhanced density to make herself the center of gravity. This was mostly used during her space missions to pull objects to her.
• Space Adaptation: It is unclear if this is a separate power, but Cygnus does not need to breathe and is unaffected by vacuum or high pressure. in the 30's, the serial didn't include this, because, ya-know, space has normal air.
• Massive Hand-to-Hand combat power. Cygnus is a flying brick on par with the most powerful super-beings in the galaxy. Several times, she has been stated to be the most powerful in this comic universe.

[Joshua]

Doctor Adam Mann: In the 70's, when Cygnus started dealing with more terrestrial threats, she found her counterpart in Mann. To counter the forward-thinking character Cygnus, they decided to give Dr. Mann the male killer instinct and male intellect. He's a scientist, who uses a complicated set of powered armor and robotics to make super-powered adversaries for Cygnus. He's well known for his Gravity-ray which can cancel Cygnus' gravity powers (if it hits), and for always attempting to talk over her monologues.

A number of internet memes use his lectures in the comics to demonstrate mansplaining.

In the massive Justice Nocturne storyline in the late 70's, he provided the science which caused an extended meteor bombardment of the secret Justice Lair. This used a variation of his gravity-ray to pull meteors from the 'nearby' belt into the atmosphere. (Seriously, the writers had no idea how astronomical distances worked.)

[Joshua]

Negatron: Anti-matter alien overlord Negatron has been at war with the dark-matter aliens for some time in the comics. Originally holding just a few planets in his empire, later plot-lines expanded on this by stating he's from an anti-matter universe that is already completely under his domination.

Defeating his space armada was the final plot-line before Cygnus returned to Earth to become a more traditional hero. However, this merely pushed Negatron to attempt new dimensional breeches on Earth, so that he could restart the conquering of this universe.

His powers included wielding the Negascepter, a techno-mystical device that controls anti-matter in the way that the Galactic Choir's force rings control normal matter. As the writers had no idea how anti-matter and matter should or even might interact, anti-matter in this comic was extremely dense, energy resistant (except to nega-energy) and packed a lot more of a wallop than expected.
Most of the rest would be what you'd expect from fanciful sci-fi neo-renaissance: Anti-gravity boots, force shields, energy swords. His troops preferred the pistol and sword style of fighting, mostly because Cygnus was resistant to basic energy blasts and only the swords were a real threat.
Without any of that, Negatron was merely highly intelligent and strong (since he was made out of said anti-matter.)

Sometime in the 90's, the term anti-matter was quietly swapped out for nega-matter.

One note of this villain was the in-comic decision of Cygnus vs. Negatron where Justice United (headed in this case by Cygnus) sued to acquire custody of Negatron's Negiathan* warship citing that the police were unable to properly defend it from the dimensional invader. Negatron, who was in custody at the time, ultimately ruined his own defense when his operatives stole the warship during the trial. The actual ruling is thus: Confiscated hyper-tech MAY be remanded to the registered superteam for safe-keeping and analysis if it can be shown that the impound lot either cannot adequately contain it or if it can be shown that an analysis of said hyper-tech will prevent crime in the future.

*: Leviathan, with the first syllable changed

[Joshua]

Dr. Tectonic

Apparently, some readers didn't quite get that Dr. Mann was a parody, not a recommendation of how to treat feminists. To emphasize that, he was eventually given a daughter, Samatha (Sometimes, Samantha Andreas). Just as corrupt, power-hungry and intelligent as her father, she more actively calls him out on his misogyny. Occasionally, she has sided with Cygnus against him, but only for an issue or two.

Her inventions and plans have a stronger focus, almost always involving earthquakes and massive destruction. She sometimes does it for blackmail and other times revenge. Occasionally, she's done it as a distraction to cover for one of her father's schemes. Commonly, she'll make him ask nicely, or insist on her dad calling her Doctor when he asks.

She has minor kinetic powers of inconsistent origin (some were Dr. Mann experimenting on his pregnant wife, some were the wife having powers, some involved a lab accident during one of her father's schemes). Often, she uses herself as the power source for her inventions, allowing them to amplify her natural abilities and allowing her to "do it herself."