Yeah, I liked Ultra-Humanite better as a straightforward Golden-Age evil genius who was the first to be any sort of match for Superman. Not every villain needs a backstory.
And what's up with this Satanna person wearing an angrypunk cutoff t-shirt in a university lab? Is it meant to show that she and U-H have complete disdain for rules and authority? I'd think that point is established with, y'know, their experiments. Geez, while they were at it, why didn't the artists stick a swastika tattoo on her forehead and show her cooking up smack in a spoon over the bunsen burner? Y'know, just in case we drooling moron readers didn't get that she and UH were evil.