Profile: Mera

Mera
First appearance: Aquaman #11, September-October 1963. While like her estranged husband, Aquaman, she too is a water-breather, she is a native of a different dimension who ended up in our world, falling in love with and marrying the Sea King.

Current status: in 2006, she led a small band of rebels and helped her husband, who was then a fugitive from Atlantis.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: after the death of her son at the hands of the mercenary Black Manta, she was driven insane, and later left her husband. For a time, she was stuck in an awful dimension called Netherworld but later returned. Later on, she was turned into an air-breather by the Sorcery Elite.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Still another needless case of a woman being driven insane, and unable to cope with reality. The story in which Black Manta murdered her son, by the way, when it was originally written in 1977 in Adventure Comics #452, was one of the most abominably scripted pieces of slop ever seen in its time, containing ludicrous tones of racism, and I certainly hope that since Crisis on Infinite Earths, it was reworked so that it wasn’t so offensive as it was implausible.

Was there anything good to come out of this? Mera has since regained her full water-breathing abilities, and while she and Aquaman may still be estranged, they’ve since reconciled.