THE FIVE GREATEST WONDER WOMAN VILLAINS NO ONE EVER TALKS ABOUT

By Mel Dyer

If you were a well-known comic book, with a Galactus-like bad guy at your disposal – a comic that’s rarely a hair’s breadth from total cancellation – what would you do with him?  What if such a comic had another super-villain, who was like a female Doctor Doom or Darth Vader ..and another, like a cross between the Borg Queen and the Xenomorphs from the Aliens films?  What if such a comic had still another fantastic character, who was like a cross between the Batman comic’s Bane and the Kurgan from the Highlander films?

Well, ..if your title is Wonder Woman, the answer is easy…

Absolutely nothing.

When it comes to knowing what to do with a potentially GREAT super-villain, no comic book has historically been more infuriatingly clueless or outright wasteful, than Wonder Woman.  Who knows why?  Here’s a few Wonder-villains that have seemingly been on lock-down, since they hit the page, starting with…

DOCTOR CYBER

Doctor Cyber, easily a female Darth Vader, wore an armored suit that enabled her to fight Wonder Woman, nearly to a stand-still – enhancing her physical strength and stamina, while also allowing her to redirect any energy, used to attack the suit. Yes…including Wondy’s!  With laser pistols, mind-control, rocket sleds and an army of robot assassins, and a backstory that reads like a James Bond film, Cyber – not the Cheetah – is the uncelebrated queen of the Amazon’s rogues gallery, ..and most of us’ve never heard of her!

Where is she?  Doing the Cheetah’s laundry?  Seriously…WHERE is she?!

The FIRST BORN

The First Born is Wonder Woman’s evil, older half-brother and natural enemy – a giant god so feared by his father, Zeus, that he ordered him put to death, as soon, as he was born.  Wikipedia says he “…was imprisoned in the center of the Earth by Zeus after failing to unseat the Olympian gods. Clawing his way through the planet’s crust for seven thousand years, the First Born returned to a world where Zeus had erased all knowledge of him from human memory. When he is freed him from the Arctic ice…he and his hyena-men conquer London, with plans to attack Mount Olympus…”

Like Highlander’s the Kurgan…a real cut-up.  The Wonder Woman comic has its own Kurgan!  So, where is he?

Starting to see a pattern here?

The ADJUDICATOR

The Adjudicator, the Galactus-level bad guy I mentioned, is a godlike, alien giant, who once favored turning us Earthfolk into solid crystal statues, ..after finding us undeserving to exist!  Judge, jury, and executioner of all worlds he finds unworthy, the Jude has never seen one he didn’t want to annihilate, and he’s got more than enough scary, wrath-o’God-kinda’ power to get the job done.  In a comic that’s been up to its neck in hydras, krakens and ghosts in Roman armor, for DECADES, he’s as godlike as any of them, ..without actually being a card-carrying, toga-clad pretention to classicism.

The Adjudicator is an original, who lifts Wonder Woman out of its moldy, predictable, myth-inspired wheelhouse into dark, uncharted skies.  So, where is he? Where?!

TERMITE QUEEN

The Termite Queen, a weird, insectoid, alien badgirl from Wonder Woman’s World War II days just got a nasty, cinematic upgrade and intriguing new backstory in the comic, ..engineered by comic creator super-couple, David and Meredith Finch.  She is, hands-down, one of the most original and interesting female villains, the Amazon has ever faced ..and certainly one of the most movie-adaptable ones.  Just the same, with so many witches and cheetah-women for Wondy to fight, you will likely never see the Termite Queen (simply called ‘the Queen’, in her new adventure) or hear mention of her, ever again.

With the ink barely dry on another Cheetah story that just wrapped, last week, ..where is she?  [Keep reading.]

BUSHMASTER

The Bushmaster is basically Boba Fett, with a voodoo fetish.  While he prefers to fight his opponents with the innocent people, he turns into mindless, superhumanly strong zombies, ..he’s also a kickass, armored up, assassin/bounty hunter type, covered in hi-tech weapons, with superhuman agility and endurance.

Seriously – with World War Z, the Walking Dead, Zombieland, 28 Days Later, Dawn Of The Dead, Sean Of The Dead, Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, two Pet Semetary flicks, seven [SEVEN!] Resident Evil films, I Am Legend, ..the 2012 Republican National Convention (where Clint Eastwood had a conversation with a CHAIR) – the Wonder Woman comic has a badass, black, Boba-Fettish, zombie-making super-assassin…and where is he?

Look at him.  The Bushmaster’s resemblance to Will Smith’s Deadshot in the upcoming and much anticipated Suicide Squad flick is as undeniable, as it is uncanny.

So, what’s this comic that’s been narrowly escaping cancellation, every year, since World War II, doing with him?  Nothing, ..of course.

Nothing. Pattern?

Wonder Woman is one of those rare comics, with a GREAT rogues gallery that stands on par with any other superhero comic’s and superior to more than a few, ..that it historically has had absolutely NO IDEA what to do with.  It might be the only major comic with FIVE seriously kickass super-villains – any of who might be top-tier bad guys in Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Avengers and X-Men comics – that it keeps out, in the backyard, covered in bird crap and squandered potential, ..on cinderblocks.  Cinderblocks made outta’ mothballs! Why?!

Until it answers that question for us, Wonder Woman’s struggle to justify its place on our shelves and in our cineplexes, in spite of our affection for the Avenging Amazon, ..will be richly deserved.

Originally published here:

https://thecomixeurblog.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/the-five-greatest-wonder-woman-villains-no-one-ever-talks-about

Mel Dyer, without his fine, coyote-hatin' Goldiweiller, Kirby (now moved on to that big, coyote-hatin' hate group in the Sky) continues a somewhat bleaker, dogless existence in the Capitol Hill area of Washington, DC. He has been an active member of the Latino Culture Council of the Capitol Area (El Consejo de Cultura Latina – La Zona del Capitolio) and the Kiwanis Club of Capitol Hill.