By Mel Dyer
"Myrina, a queen of the Amazons. According to Diodorus Siculus,[1] she led a military expedition in Libya and won a victory over the people known as the Atlantians, destroying their city Cerne; but was less successful fighting the Gorgons (who are described by Diodorus as a warlike nation residing in close proximity to the Atlantians), failing to burn down their forests. During a later campaign, she struck a treaty of peace with Horus, ruler of Egypt, conquered several peoples, including the Syrians, the Arabians, and the Cilicians (but granted freedom to those of the latter who gave in to her of their own will). She also took possession of Greater Phrygia, from the Taurus Mountains to the Caicus River, and several Aegean islands, including Lesbos; she was also said to be the first to land on the previously uninhabited island which she named Samothrace, building the temple there. The cities of Myrina (in Lemnos),[2] possibly another Myrina in Mysia, Mytilene, Cyme, Pitane, and Priene were believed to have been founded by her, and named after herself, her sister Mytilene, and the commanders in her army..." from Myrina (mythology), on Wikipedia.com.
Villainous Lex Luthor stalked Superman out of World War II and into superhero comics' Silver Age, just as the Joker of the Fifties clown-danced the Batman into the infamous, camp-crazed Sixties, ..and a groovy Green Goblin bedeviled Spider-Man into the Bronze Age Seventies. All the while, Wonder Woman, trailed by a caravan of bizarre, rainbow-colored and deservedly obscure baddies, since the Golden Age of comics - that's World War II - remained terminally nemesis-less.
That was the deal, until DC Comics movie producer and comic writer/editor, Geoff Johns, gave us the multi-comic crossover event, Darkseid War!
Enter Myrina Black. According to Wikipedia, she is a mythical Amazon and a historical personage, from real-world, classical literature. She has a lair. [A lair!]
Want to KNOW WONDER WOMAN, the way I know Wonder Woman? You've got to get ALL THE WAY down to the... STAR-SPANGLED PANTIES!
Like Wonder Woman, Myrina is a quirky genre-mix of heroic fantasy magic and sci-fi strange - a superhumanly strong, physical match, tailor-made for scraps with the Amazing Amazon! More obsessive, than malevolent, she checks the classic super-villain box, in that her ambitions threaten what is most important to Wonder Woman, ..and that's the universal freedom of all sentient things! While she doesn't come off, as evil personified, the introduction and retconning in (created, as if she'd been there, all along) of Myrina Black into the stories solves a problem, ..filling the decades-deep vacuum of editorial waste, that has left the WW comic, without a proper archenemy.
Wild-eyed, griffin-riding Myrina Black, with her bloody lair, is that archenemy. She's a female Magneto!
Once the Amazons' chief assassin, world-weary, renegade Myrina believes her immortal sisters have abandoned the mission they were given by the Greek gods, ..to conquer warmongering Man's World, with loving submission to the Amazons - to save it, from destroying itself. Deducing that Darkseid, a demonic space giant, would one day enslave all of the Earth's inhabitants, she secretly conceives a daughter with him, ..hoping to turn their child into a weapon, which she, herself, could use to destroy him. Understanding that her Darkseid War will cost billions of innocent lives, she coldly avows that Darkseid must die, at any price, and, like the ride-or-die Amazon she is, ..carries on, with her war! With that fanatical pledge, DC Comics' Johns plugs Myrina into Wonder Woman comic continuity, as if she'd been there, all along - a doom-obsessed, mass-murdering Magneto to Diana's heroic, one-woman X-Men - and it worked.
It worked, almost well enough to make us forget Cheetah. Oh, how I'd like to forget Cheetah.
For better or worse, Cheetah, a colorfully costumed, World War II hold-over, with no clear and consistent motivation for evil-doing, has been the Amazon angel's go-to badguy, onscreen and in comics, ever since The Super Friends TV cartoon, way back in the Seventies! Wonder Woman's multimedia/TV show and comic, a historic low-seller, since the late Forties, somersaulted through the camp and cheese of the 1970s - Cheetah leading a parade of badly costumed, knock-off Nora Desmonds, ..boring us all to death! Had there been some way to switch out screwy Cheetah, with a self-justifying megalomaniac, like Myrina Black, the comic might have, at least, drifted into the indulgent pretensions to complexity of the 1980s, ..with a modicum of style.
Did I mention that Myrina Black comes with her own funky, supervillain lair, ..the kind that badass, classic supervillains, like Lex Luthor and Doctor Doom, used to rock? Her own lair! That's style.
As I see it, Myrina Black, is the Wonder Woman comic's answer to Magneto! [Yes--freakin' Magneto!] This comic needs that, ..badly. The crafting of a long, retconned-in enmity, with the star-spangled leading lady, as though she had been there, all along, ..would be a cool fix to Wonder Woman's chronic, arch-villain problem.
Look alive, kangaliers!
[Third Edition]
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.
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