Mother of Champions
38 years ago - Wu Mei-Xing is born to a wealthy Shanghai family.
24 years ago - 14-year-old Wu Mei-Xing attends Party School.
19 years ago - 19-year-old Wu Mei-Xing attends University.
15 years ago - 23-year-old Wu Mei-Xing goes to grad school.
13 years ago - 25-year-old Wu Mei-Xing begins her doctoral work.
12 years ago - 26-year-old Wu Mei-Xing is married.
10 years ago - 28-year-old Wu Mei-Xing earns her doctorate in particle physics for her prototype particle accelerator designs.
9 years ago - 29-year-old Wu Mei-Xing is momentarily exposed to a theoretical god particle during the activation of her accelerator. Her husband leaves her when it appears that she is infertile. She focused on her research.
7 years ago - 31-year-old Wu Mei-Xing becomes pregnant, giving birth to a litter of 25 rapid-aging super soldiers. She becomes the Super-Functionary Mother of Champions, joining the Great Ten.
The Great Ten represent one of my all-time favorite Grant Morrison creations. They did more than just build a new team of original Superheroes (Or Super-Functionaries, in this case), but they built a whole history around them, giving each character a truly unique story and sense of place, and structured it all around the history and politics and culture of a very real-world take on China and all it's complexity. It's an incredible piece of worldbuilding, and while it's tragic that they don't have that many appearances, it's also very understandable, because they are such an intricately woven tapestry, I can see why it would be difficult for other writers to pick them up.
Wu Mei-Xing's StoryPerhaps the strangest of the Super Functionaries of the Great Ten, Mother of Champions does not go out and fight bad-guys. She has one very particular power, and to be honest we almost chose to not include her because she represents some VERY hard-to-understand ideas about the roles of duty vs personal choice, but ultimately that's what she's meant to do; we're supposed to see her and the role she fills and feel strange about it.
Mother of Champions gives birth. When she becomes pregnant, she carries her children to term in days, gives birth to whole litters of children, far more than she could possibly actually carry. Her children mature to adulthood within days, all have superhuman strength, endurance and stamina, and are easily trained as soldiers... but they die of old age in a matter of weeks. She would have children at the onset of a crisis, breeding with an army volunteer, all in service of her country. Honestly, the allegory at play here is almost TOO aggressive. I understand that just like the rest of the Great Ten Mother of Champions is an observation of Chinese culture, and that this is a reflection on the Marxist concept of 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'. I can also say that the inclusion of Mother of Champions does a lot to color the whole idea of the Great Ten and the role they play in the world. |
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