History
Lissette Orlova was a brilliant scientist from Latveria with an intellect to rival that of Mr. Fantastic. After Reed Richards decided to hand over leadership of The Fantastic Four to Namor (who joined The Fantastic Four in this universe instead of becoming their enemy) and go back to being a simple scientist, he sent out an ad for a lab assistant that could meet his nearly insane requirements. Doctor Doom, seeing this as a perfect opportunity to get revenge on Richards, captured Lissette’s parents and blackmailed her into taking the job. The idea Doom had in mind involved Lissette getting as close enough to Reed to the point where he would feel comfortable lowering his guard around her.
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Lissette followed Doom’s orders to the letter but as she got closer and closer to Reed, she found herself falling deeply in love with the completely oblivious scientist, which made it harder and harder for her to betray him. Despite her great love for him, the metaphorical guillotine Doom held over her parents head, she had no other choice but to do just that. It was revealed that during the entire time they’d spent together, Lissette had been drugging Reed’s drinks with small doses of a neurotoxin that would allowed Doom to easily control Reed.
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The small doses eventually added together just enough to paralyze Reed and knock him unconscious. Lissette then contacted Doom, who brought them both back to an underground laboratory in the Latverian Embassy building and explained his plan to a helpless Reed. Lissette tried to apologize for betraying Reed, but was cut off by Doom, who ordered Reed to allow him access to the Four Freedoms Plaza so that he could slaughter all of Reed’s friends while he watched.
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Later, Reed managed to break free of Doom’s trance and tried defeating him on his own, only to end up seriously injured. Doom was eventually driven off by Namor, The Thing and The Human Torch who found The Invisible Woman cradling Reed’s dying body. Lissette rushed in quickly afterward, exclaiming that she was a doctor and began frantically stitching up Reed while confessing her love to him.Â
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After managing to get Reed safely to the hospital and learning that Lissette’s parents had been freed by S.H.I.E.L.D., she was filled with joy when Reed reciprocated her feelings for him and the two were eventually married. Lissette later became pregnant around the time The Invisible Woman gave birth to hers and Namor’s son, Leonard. Lissette gave birth to a baby girl, whose name remains unknown even to this day, and lived a long and happy life with Reed.
A Unique Existence
Though she is a normal human being with an intellect to rival the greatest minds in the Marvel Universe, Lissette shares a unique quality with entities such as The Living Tribunal: she has no other counterparts in the entire Marvel Multiverse, unlike the Tribunal, however, she is not omnipresent. The most likely explanation for this is that Ron Marz, the writer who created her, planned only to use her in that one single issue of What If? and had no intention of using her again be it Earth-917’s Lissette or another version of her.