The Red Queen: Respect the Drip
Greetings, researchers and scoundrels.
We continue our exploration of the villains of Posthuman: Guardians vs PSION with a morally ambiguous, “neutral” woman dubbed
The Red Queen
This lady isn’t an easter egg; she’s a straightforward homage and expie. Selena Manara, named after the X-Men’s Black Queen and the erotic comics artist Milo Manara, is every bit her namesake. As a posthuman, there’s more than a little of the Red Queen hypothesis to her ideology, but she’s also a Catholic school girl deep down inside. Perhaps that’s why she’s everything that the nuns warned her she’d become.
Selena Manara is haemokinetic: she has complete telekinetic control over her own blood, and she has a never ending supply of it. If she were to level up her powers any further, she’d likely be able to control the blood of others, which would make her absolutely terrifying. As a direct homage to Emma Frost and Selene Gallio, she wears only red, and she doesn’t wear much.
I’ve always been fascinated by haemokinesis. There are so few Western comics characters with this ability. There’s Carnage (Marvel), although his powers originate from a klyntar symbiote, just like Venom’s, but, um, red. Some minor villain named Bloodwork over at DC. Haemokinesis is much more common in manga, anime, and East Asian-origin video games like the Mortal Kombat series.
Visually, the Red Queen is heavily inspired by Marvel’s Black Queen (Selene) and White Queen (Emma Frost), as well as by the real historical Blood Countess Erzebet Bathory. And you know there’s some of Jaz Sinclair’s performance as Marie Moreau in Gen V / The Boys. When she uses her powers, I picture something akin to Medusa’s (Marvel) hair-eography. And I’d be remiss not to mention Mathilda May’s perpetually naked performance as the space vampire in Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce.
Once a fierce and fearsome member of the Posthuman Supremacy International Organized Network, the Red Queen was in charge of training and educating the young posthumans who found their way into PSION’s ranks. After the Posthuman War which claimed so many of her friends and students, the Red Queen has retired to Sanctuary Island and remains politically neutral in the struggle for posthuman power. She’s still a royal bitch, of course.
To meet and interact with the Red Queen, you’ll have to choose the option to stay on Sanctuary Island and become a neutral resident at the end of Chapter 8 of Posthuman: Guardians vs PSION.