Royal Flush Queen
49 years ago - Mona Wayland is born, the daughter of Carter Wayland, the current King of the Royal Flush Gang.
32 years ago - 17-year-old Mona meets Joe Carny, the new Jack of the Royal Flush Gang.
28 years ago - 21-year old Mona's father dies. She marries Joe Carny & they become the new King & Queen of the Royal Flush Gang.
13 years ago - 36-year-old Mona begins training her daughter Melanie Wayland to become the new Royal Flush Gang's 10 of Spades.
10 years ago - 39-year-old Mona recruits Derek Reston, whose technology revolutionizes the Royal Flush Gang, instantly advancing him to the new Jack.
7 years ago - 42-year-old Mona & the Royal Flush Gang fight Green Arrow. She watches Joe Carny & Derek Reston openly fight over their new heightened profile.
4 years ago - 45-year-old Mona & the Royal Flush Gang battle the Justice League. They escape by abandoning Derek Reston, severely undermining Joe Carny's authority & costing him any respect from Mona.
2 years ago - 47-year-old Mona Wayland takes Derek Reston as a lover when he returns, kills her husband Joe Carny, is rejected by her daughter Melanie Wayland, and becomes the new King of the Royal Flush Gang. They are betrayed by Mel, and taken down by Green Arrow.
As we built our version of the Royal Flush Gang and tried to infuse it with a certain internal tale of betrayal and familial conflict, we wound up using the Queen quite a bit, making her the secret catalyst of a lot of their conflict. We hope it comes across that we're setting her up as a sort of cross between Katey Segal's Gemma from Sons of Anarchy and Lena Heady's Cersi from Game of Thrones.
Our Royal Flush Queen's StoryIn the original 1966 version of the Gang, the characters didn't have complete names, but we did learn at one point that each member of the Gang's first names all started with the first letter of their Card-identity. In the Queen's case? Her name was "Queenie." Comics, ladies and gentlemen.
In 1982, when the new version of the Gang is coming together and we meet all the new members, the Queen has, in my opinion, the most clever origin; She's Mona Taylor, the former "Queen" of the Broadway Stage, whose career had come apart because of her alcoholism. She is invited to become the Queen of Spades, and her tech allows her to regularly take the form of every superhero's girlfriend to distract them. This is actually a really clever set of powers for her to have, and gives her a specific role to play as they fight the Justice League. While the Batman Beyond Queen is Donna Walker, we've already chosen to make the Ten of Spades Melanie Wayland, and we imagine that she would have actually taken her mother's name since that's the side of her family associated with the Gang, so that means that our Queen is going to be Mona Wayland. Within the context of our story, she might actually be the evilist member; she's born into the Gang and marries Joe Carny's Jack to make him King, but she then goes on to bring in Derek Reston entirely because his technology elevates the Gang, and later, when Derek has actually killed her husband and is rejected by her daughter... she takes him as a lover to make him the new King. That is COLD... but it's also VERY villainous. |