Mordru
36 years ago - Wrynn is born the son of the Sorcerer Dark Opal in Gemworld.
32 years ago - 4-year-old Wrynn’s father Dark Opal stages a coup to take over Gemworld.
17 years ago - 19-year-old Wrynn captures Amy Winston from House Amethyst and attempts to steal her back to Dark Opal, but he is tracked by Taffy, who is able to stop him with her command of a pack of Deathhounds.
16 years ago - 20-year-old Wrynn steps down as the assult on his father Dark Opal's tower is successful, becoming the new Lord Opal, biding his time to get his revenge.
8 years ago - 27-year-old Wrynn, empowered by the waining control of Citrina, attempts his own coup in Gemworld as Lord Mordu, but is defeated by Lady Amethyst and cast from Gemworld. He usurps Nabu’s helmet from Kent Nelson but is defeated by the Justice Society and trapped in an amulet, inside which he explores distant realms and amases greater magical power.
2997 - Lord Mordu's amulet is recovered in an archeological dig, He escapes his prison, and begins amassing more magical power in the mortal realm, taking over whole planets.
2999 - Lord Mordu allies himself with the Fatal Five.
3000 - Lord Mordu begins the Mage Wars, rounding up and killing homo magi across the galaxy to take their power. He battles the Legion of Super Heroes, killing RJ Brande, taking control of Salu Digby, depowering Rokk Krinn, & killing Lyle Norg by depowering his flight ring in deep space. He is finally defeated, but causes the Legion to be disbanded, & the surviving members go their separate ways.
Any time you start looking at characters built around the Legion of Super Heroes, I think it's really important to remember that this whole world came out of the imagination of a 13-year-old kid. Jim Shooter was literally 13 when he wrote a lot of the Legion, and while he continued to write them for years and would go on to become editor-in-chief at Marvel and one of the most prolific creators of his generation, you have to imagine this particular corner of the DC universe from that perspective. All the off-the-wall worldbuilding at play in the Legion makes so much more sense when you consider where it all started, and the fact that one of the greatest villains of this team of sci-fi super-teens is a traditional Dungeons & Dragons wizard is one of the best examples of that.
Mordru's Comic HistoryMordru the Merciless appeared for the first time in Adventure Comics #369, at the height of the popularity of the Legion, when they had all but taken over the series that once were dedicated to Superboy. He was a sorcerer from the planet Zerox, who had mastered dark magic and used it to conquer his planet, and then build an army to take over the rest of the universe, even succeeding at taking control of much of it before he was slowed and imprisoned in a vault by the Legion.
This was all told in flashback, presenting Mordru as an insurmountable, undefeatable enemy that they could only run from, fleeing into the past to hide in civilian guises in Smallville before Mordru arrived, driving whole plots with his unlimited world-altering magic. The Legion was an incredibly prolific concept and appeared in anthology series all over the place for decades. Mordru continued to appear for some time, his whole concept a little bit meta because he was essentially a way the writers could spin the world in ANY direction, forcing them to confront threats of any possible dimension. |
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The 80's & 90's were a weird time for the Legion of Super Heroes, as the shifting timelines of the Crisis of Infinite Earths made establishing a future continuity spotty at best, The mainstream Legion saw it's 5-year time-jump, which actually featured some interesting if not exactly relevant revelations about Mordru, while the entire series was rebooted in 1994.
During this time, there were actually a few specific modern era series that mentioned Mordru in some interesting ways. Mindy Newell & Keith Giffen's gorgeous 1987 Amethyst series built on the ideas of the Lords of Chaos & Order, and actually created an origin for Mordru, stating that he was a child of Gemworld, influenced by the Lords of Chaos, which we'll dive into with more detail shortly. Neil Gaiman's 1990 series Books of Magic took readers on a tour of all of DC's magical realms, and included the 30th century of the Legion of Super Heroes as the last great age of magic. A younger version of Mordru was the catalyst for James Robinson's 1999 JSA series, which was one of the most reliable series for resetting characters in the modern continuity. Mordru actually appeared in this series more than any other as he wove through their timeline, working his magic and messing with the heroes of the past. |
Wrynn of GemworldThe 1987 Geffin / Newell Amethyst miniseries introduced us to Wrynn, the son of some of the original series characters, and depicts him giving control of himself to the Lords of Chaos, becoming Lord Mordru, the character we would all later know as the Legion villain. It's a very clever piece of circular world-building, and we wanted to oncorporate elements of it into our timeline.
Of course, we had to make a few small changes to him. We can't make him the son of Topaz & Turquoise, as he is in the comic, but we thought it would actually be more intriguing if we combine Wrynn with another character from the comic; the adopted son of the evil sorcerer Dark Opal, Carnelian. This is a character that features throuout the series as a constant threat to Amethyst, but if we make him Wrynn, the son of Dark Opal, we can extend that threat into the future, and eventually evolve him into an whole new character. We think this is a really fun, exciting treatment. |
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Our Mordru StorySo what are the things we want to use Mordu for? While we're not using the Lords of Chaos & Order in relation to Gemworld, we do really like the idea of starting Mordru's story there. Thanks to the fact that we made Amethyst's story happen further back in the timeline, we can actually make Mordu be the son of Amethyst's nemesis, Dark Opal. By doing this we can make him a young sorcerer in his own right. That also gives us the opportunity to make him an enemy for Doctor Fate and the Justice Society.
Of course, the main role Mordru plays is as one of the main enemies for the Legion of Super Heroes. We really want to lean into his role as one of their biggest, most dangerous villains, so the idea is that while he was trapped in an amulet in OUR world, in the distant paths beyond he was able to explore and become a more powerful magic wielder, so by the time he was released in the 30th century he's so insanely powerful he is able to not only threaten the whole galaxy like in the classic Silver Age comics, but even be the catalyst for the 80's era Legion stories where the team actually breaks up. If our far-future, space-age team of super heroes is going to have a wizard as their nemesis, then we want to do it right. |