M393--Power Princess

Power Princess

Real Name: Zarda

First Appearance: The Defenders #112 (October 1982)

Utopia persisted.  This was the way of Counter-Earth.  The island, hidden by a reality distortion field in the Counter-Mediterranean, was the control in the grand experiment.  It was populated by the Utopians, the High Evolutionary’s first creations and their favored, a lineage of women whose perfected genetics made them tower over mortal men in both size and strength.  While Counter-Earth underwent its cyclical destructions and rapid rebirths, Utopia remained constant, the standard for which each cycle would be compared to.  And the women of Utopia were content to stay safe within their borders as the world fell apart and regrew around them–save one.

When a mortal man from the most recent cycle found his way into Utopia and revealed the horrors of their dying world, Zarda, the island’s princess and mightiest of their gladiators, decided she could not stand idly by and let the world die.  Counter-Earth, plagued by villains, political corruption, and war, was far too fractured to face the end of everything head on.  Zarda believed her island, free of strife, should be the template for all humanity.  Thus did she join the ranks of the brave and the bold among the Squadron Supreme to bring all of Counter-Earth to heel under the Utopia Project–willing or unwilling.

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While Hyperion is the leader of both the Squadron Supreme and the Utopia Project, Zarda (who ends up taking the superhero moniker “Power Princess”) can be seen as the mastermind.  Her motives are altruistic but her methods are extreme.  The energy shield she wields is Utopian technology that can be conjured by either of her bracers.

Been a while since I did a Squadron Supreme character. Despite being a much later creation that the Squadron itself (she debuted twelve years after its creation, for some reason), she's a recognizable mainstay of the team these days, because how can you have a Justice League pastiche without Wonder Woman? It was fun coming up with a place for Utopia in my reimagined Counter-Earth. They're almost kinda like the High Evolutionary's own Eternals here to a point.

Zarda has a relatively inconsistent design, and because the Squadron Supreme is the closest you're going to get to me drawing DC characters it seemed pertinent to base her on the most recent incarnation of her that looks the closest to Wonder Woman. So she's pretty much purple Diana here, lol. Still got a couple references to her classic 80s look, with the one shoulder sling and her energy shield, which was fun to design (the design on it is based on an ancient Greek depiction of a lion's head). Here I imagined it as something she conjures directly from her bracers, just to make the Wonder Woman reference even more overt.