Sari Tartar

Sari Tartar was a Marvel comics villain, an enemy of Namor and a sadistic would-be-snuff filmer / serial-killer.

History
Tartar was an actress famous in the 1940s for her beauty but she was permanently scarred following an unrevealed incident which ended her acting career. This turn of events caused her to grow resentful towards beautiful people.

Tartar turned to directing.

She decided to work together with Hollywood's Goliath-Major Studios representative Stanley Gordon who wanted to make a realistic horror movie.

They planned to abduct several beautiful people who they would torment on a pirate-ship while Tartar filmed their agony.

Calling the movie in progress "Pirate Harvest" they hired several ex-cons to pose as her pirate crew and slave army who would torture the kidnapped people.

Tartar had already kidnapped seven beauty contest winners by the time a New York newspaper picked up on the story and published an article on the "case of the vanishing venuses".

Since the police didn't seem to get anywhere in their investigation the Sub-Mariner, Namora and Betty Dean decided to help.

Unaware he was dealing with Namor, Namora and Dean, Stanley Gordon tricked them into doing a screentest for "Pirate Harvest".

He brought them to the pirate-ship where they were introduced to Sari Tartar

. Namor remembered reading about Tartar's accident in the papers and offered his sympathies.

Tartar would have none of it and gave them their scripts.

She then showed them to their "set" below deck where all the captured people had been chained to the oars in the boat forcing them to row.

Tartar managed to convince the heroes they were merely paper mache dolls.

However, during their screen-test Tartar had her slave crew attack the heroes who knocked them unconscious and also chained them to the oars.

Tartar then started filming her real movie as her crew whipped and tortured the people into rowing the ship, visibly taking pleasure in their misery.

Tartar had two of the girls dragged from the benches so she could personally hit them with her whip. Planning to film another torture scene with a severely weakened Namor, she had her accomplice dump a bucket of sea water on him to wake him up.

Water of course revitalized the Sub-Mariner who broke free and captured Tartar with little effort.

By that time, Namora and Betty had also freed themselves and even defeated Tartar's crew.

They joined Namor and Tartar while the Sub-Mariner also captured Gordon.

Tartar and Gordon were taken into custody by Lieutenant Byron of the United States Coast Guard.

Abilities
Sari possesses no superhuman abilities. She was a trained, but vain actress. After losing her beauty following an unrevealed incident she was left physically and mentally scarred. Growing to hate beautiful people, her mind became very twisted.

Trivia

 * this is considered one of the more controversial non-mature titles, with themes of torture and humiliation (though such things were common in earlier pulp fiction).