Wildcard
26 years ago - Melanie Wayland is born, the daughter of Joe Carny & Mona Wayland, the King & Queen of the Royal Flush Gang.
13 years ago - 13-year-old Melanie Wayland's mother Mona Wayland begins training her to be the new 10 of Spades of the Royal Flush Gang.
10 years ago - 16-year-old Melanie Wayland meets Derek Reston, the new Jack of the Royal Flush Gang. She doesn't like him.
7 years ago - 19-year-old Melanie Wayland and the Royal Flush Gang fight Green Arrow. She watches her father Joe Carny & Derek Reston openly fight over their new heightened profile.
4 years ago - 22-year-old Melanie Wayland and the Royal Flush Gang fight the Justice League. They escape by abandoning Derek Reston.
3 years ago - 23-year-old Melanie Wayland befriends Connor Hawke.
2 years ago - 24-year-old Melanie Wayland rejects the advances of Derek Reston after he kills her father Joe Carny to become the new King. She runs and helps Connor Hawke take down the Royal Flush Gang. She takes a job at Queen Enterprises, sometimes working as Wildcard.
Because we're drawing on the Batman Beyond version of the Royal Flush Gang, the Ten of Spades winds up being a pretty important character. We're not basing the story we're telling here on a star-crossed romance, but rather more on the internal struggle of the Gang, but even in this case, we wind up with a pretty interesting subplot here, and in the end we actually get a pretty cool, unique character out of it.
Ten of Spade's Comic HistoryIn the earliest appearances of the Royal Flush Gang going back to 1966, the Ten of Spades was another guy; the only woman in the gang was the Queen. They didn't have a lot of appearances in the intervening decades, but it wasn't until 1982, when a new version of the Gang was assembled, this time all with actual identities outside their card personas. Ten was Wanda Wayland, a former test pilot. These new characterizations for the Gang didn't mean much outside this one story, but nonetheless, the Ten of Spades continued to at least look like Wanda going forward.
One innovation actually did crop up somewhere around 1990 in the pages of the New Titans; the addition of a small army of other cards as members of the Gang. In this story, there were a group of misused teens that had to be saved from the Gang, but even after this story, the idea continued to at least be available that the Gang had other members to call on. This is relevant to Ten, because in the New Titans story leading and controlling the rest of the cards was specifically her power and responsibility. |
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Our Wildcard StoryIn the Batman Beyond Royal Flush Gang, the story largely revolves around their Ten of Spades; Melanie Walker. This version of the Gang is a family, which means that their daughter Melanie has been born into this life of crime. In their civilian identities, Batman Terry McGinnis and Melanie have an undeniable attraction to each other, but Terry is torn when he discovers that she's also his enemy. Their relationship mirrors Bruce & Selina, which is even mentioned in the episode. as the series goes on, Melanie eventually turns on her family and attempts to go straight.
As we're using a lot of the animated series crime-family drama to develop the story of our Royal Flush Gang, that means our version of Ten is absolutely going to be Melanie, although we used the name Wayland instead of Walker, as it's a little more unique. The drama of our Gang is rooted in the introduction of Derek Reston's technology and how the other members of the Gang handle it, but there's also a sub-plot where it's implied that as the new Jack, Reston is in line to someday marry the daughter of the King & Queen... and Melanie is not having it. This sets her up to eventually turn on the gang, and we thought a good direction for her is to be a supporting character for the new Green Arrow Connor Hawke, and even give her a new identity she could sometimes use; 'Wildcard'. We're pretty proud of this take on Melanie. |