16/02/2024
“Though we cannot deny cultural impact of Queen Of Death (famously one of the first superheroines to be used in the anti-corporate comics of Harold G’s ‘70s comic series) we must question the origins of this heroine. Her description as “originally a goddess of life until she was ashamed and left to became a goddess of the underworld” and her ambiguously “tropical island” origins led many critics to connect her to the Māori goddess Hine-nui-te-pō. At the same time, most of her “spirit form” depictions seem to take clear inspiration from La Catrina of Mexico. Already there is a confused mixture of references, made only more obscure when we consider that Harold G utilized infamous “Grand Plagiarizing Technology” of the ‘70s to compose his comics, an early printing automaton trained on undisclosed artworks. (Of course, we must also note that Harold was neither Maori or Mexican.)
The ‘70s The Queen of Death’s origins comics were a statement against exploitive mineral extraction. The plot is well-known (more often from its ties to Tech Runner’s early comics): A powerful company from the global economic center enters an unnamed island country in the global south and learns how to mine “spiritual energy” from it, until the mines manifest themselves into the tropical underworld. Then, the Queen of Death fights back, she fails, and her spirit is tragically trapped back into the mortal world (where she is reborn as a spunky rollerblader). This version of the story still serves as a statement against the dangers exploitative industries abroad.
But in the decades that followed, this classic story has been commercialized to the point of no longer speaking against these extractive practices, but normalizing their reality as necessary beginnings. The proliferation of Queen of Death action figures, video games, dolls and cartoons have simply numbed and placated children to the reality of the extractive industry. No longer are mines a monster to be rallied against, they are a normalized structure where fantastic heroes are born.”
-Sylvester Thorne, Cultural Critic