Vera Webster

Vera Webster is one of the main antagonist in the 1983 film Superman III. She is portrayed by Annie Ross, who also portrayed Loretta Creswood in the 1990 film Pump Up the Volume.

Vera Webster was the sister of Ross Webster, the unscrupulous owner of Webscoe Industries and the boss of Gus Gorman, who was hired for his ability to program computers. When Ross discovered that Gorman was embezzling money from the company through the use of his computer skills, he decided to have Gorman become part of his evil schemes to control the world markets and even blackmailed him to do so. Gorman was first assigned to reprogram the Vulcan weather-reporting satellite in order to create destructive weather that would ruin the South American coffee crops market.

However, when Ross discovered that Superman has foiled that attempt, he assigned Gorman with the task of recreating Kryptonite, the only substance known to be able to harm Superman. While Gorman failed in his attempt to recreate Kryptonite when he substituted the "unknown element" with tar, the synthetic Kryptonite did affect Superman in changing his moral behaviors, allowing Ross more leeway for his criminal world market schemes and even to fulfill Gorman's plan to build the most powerful supercomputer. When Superman regained his true heroic form, Ross and his sister Vera lured Superman toward the site of what was called the Ultimate Computer, attempting to stop the Man of Steel with a barrage of missiles and even trapping him in an energy bubble that would suffocate him, then finally hitting him with a beam of pure Kryptonite energy.

When Ross congratulated Gorman as being the man who killed Superman, Gorman turned against his boss and attempted to shut down the computer manually. However, the computer came back to life by powering itself through absorption of energy from the nation's power grids, causing blackouts nationwide, and used its power to turn Ross' sister Vera into a cyborg zombie, striking down Ross and keeping his assistant Lorelei Ambrosia trapped by its power. Superman eventually destroyed the computer by bringing a canister of chemicals that became acidic when overheated into the computer's core, which freed Ross, Vera, Ambrosia, and Gorman from its control. Vera was then turned over to the authorities along with Lorelei.