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As characters go, this time around I'm dealing with one of my least favorite characters in the DC Universe. From the beginning, I didn't like this woman. Maybe it was her too-obvious resemblance to Phoenix, or maybe it was just her motivations, I don't know, but from her first appearance to her last, Maxima needed work.
Maxima started out as a Superman villain in Action Comics #645. With her billowing red hair, her green and gold costume and her psychokinetic ability to control metal, she just smacks of a Phoenix knockoff. Her motivations bother me, mainly because they violate one of the cardinal rules of science-fiction (no matter what you've seen on Star Trek and in other space-fantasy type movies and books).
Maxima came to Earth to find a mate. She hails from some planet called Almerac, where the people are, to all appearances, human. But, she has super-powers that put her near the same class as Superman, and while Superman looks human, he simply is NOT. This is, you may have guessed, a pet peeve of mine. DC has so many pink-skinned human-looking alien races, that it destroys my ability to suspend disbelief at times.
There is a phenomenon on Earth called 'parallel evolution', in which different, but similar, species adapt in similar ways to similar conditions. Unfortunately, this is for species with common ancestors, separated by oceans or mountains, not species that evolved independently on different planets tens or hundreds or thousands of light-years apart.
This is usually the explanation given for the similarity of body-types in aliens in comics and science-fiction. It makes it easier on the artists, which is always good, but it's not scientifically accurate. However, we're stuck with the situation in the DCU, so lets work with it.
As you might imagine, I've been thinking about this for some time and I think I've worked out a partial solution. I'm willing to accept some parallel evolution in the Milky Way Galaxy, within the DCU. We will start with the assumption, risky though it is, that in many cases life will arise out of the same processes as on Earth and under similar conditions. This means that most life will be, chemically, similar. This could mean that a lot of aliens would have similar bio-chemistry to humans and possibly eat many of the same foods. It's an enormous stretch to assume that they'd be interfertile, however. On the other hand, there's genetic engineering and it might be possible to hybridize two alien species, though that's still stretching things a great deal. Also, however similar they are to Earth-born humans externally, Kryptonians, or Daxamites, Thanagarians, Rannians, or Almeracians (or whatever they're called) must be vastly different internally. Interbreeding with aliens should require heroic (no pun intended) measures.
Okay, I'm climbing down off my soap box.
So . . . Maxima.
I decided to do something with her while re-reading "The Death of Superman" TPB, a book that is so chock-full of awfulness it beggars the imagination. Maxima is one of the many heroes (working with the Justice League by that point) who gets her ass kicked by Doomsday. Obviously, she succumbed to Doomsday's intelligence sapping power like everyone else. [as an aside...it's my theory that Doomsday had a secret super power allowing him to reduce the effective intelligence of any opponent to below the level of a flatworm. This explains why so many otherwise intelligent heroes waded in to duke it out with Doomsday, even after it was obvious that it was pointless. This is also why Hal Jordan wasn't involved in the fight, because he would have stood off a couple of miles and wrapped Doomsday up in an energy bubble and lifted him into orbit, or dropped him into the great red spot on Jupiter]
I noticed how Maxima's costumes seems to combine elements of Jean Grey's Phoenix costume and her later X-men gold team costume.
So, as usual, I started looking for inspiration and found something in the Superman Animated Series, where Maxima appeared looking very different.
A very "Kirby" look, which fits with many of the animated series designs and themes. Makes her look like a refugee from Marvel's version of Asgard, circa 1979, but better than the green and gold. This helped me get ideas forming and so I opted to use a darker color scheme, less gaudy, but I didn't want to lose the sexiness of the more revealing comic version. I suppose with the dark colored bustier and heavy cape we're back to Jean Grey's Black Queen look, but with less sexual overtones.
I know from reading up on her, that Maxima is supposed to be dead, now. Of course, Superman was dead once, as well. I also know that Maxima has employed duplicate "simulacra", sort of doppelgangers, one of which might have died in her place. Makes sense, if you think about it. Maxima is royalty and would likely use any means to prevent harm to herself. Why bother to leave home at all? Send a simulacrum to do your dirty work, there's more where it came from.
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