Queen (Marvel Comics)

The Queen
Spider-Queen, Queen,  the Mutant Queen, Ana Soria,  Majesty (to her drones)
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol. 2 #15 (August 2004)
Created by	Paul Jenkins Michael Ryan
In-story information
Full name	Adriana Soria
Team affiliations	U.S. Marine Corps, Operation Crossroads, Auxiliary Women's Corps
Partnerships	Jackal
Abilities	Superhuman strength Sonic scream Telepathic control over insects, arachnids, and humans with the "insect gene" Telekinesis

Adriana "Ana" Soria (otherwise known as the Queen) is a supervillainess. Created by Paul Jenkins and Michael Ryan, she first appears in The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol. 2 #15 (August 2004).

Fictional character biography

Origin

In the early days of World War II, Adriana "Ana" Soria joined the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. Fearing that America was not powerful enough to contain Japanese and Soviet ambitions, efforts were made late in the war to resume the Super-Soldier experiments that had produced Captain America. Genetically likely candidates were selected from among U.S. ranks and drafted into a special unit of the U.S. Marines Corps as part of Operation Crossroads. Soria subsequently became the first female marine to go into combat. 

At one point, Soria's unit was lined up along the Bikini Atoll to absorb the radiation of ongoing nuclear weapons tests in the hopes it would activate any latent abilities they might possess. None of the subjects were properly informed of this before the experiment began. Most subjects soon perished from radiation poisoning, while the stress on Ana's metabolism drove her insane. Soria's abilities did not surface immediately, and the experiment was ruled a failure. She spent several years in an asylum before breaking out and going underground in the 1950s. In 1954, she kidnapped professor David Jaffe, the scientist in charge of Operation Crossroads. 

The Queen

She appeared in New York City, calling herself "The Queen" and in full command of her abilities. She occupied a Manhattan highrise as her "hive," where she surrounded herself with human drones. Captain America and Spider-Man investigated. Spider-Man had the insect gene, and could not resist Soria's control. Soria selected Spider-Man as her mate and infected him with a mutagenic enzyme through her kiss. Soria forced several of her drones to jump to their deaths in an effort to break Spider-Man's will, and S.H.I.E.L.D. launched an unsuccessful attack before Captain America caused Soria to fall from the building. 

The Queen survived, and gathered a new army of drones and built an underground laboratory in Manhattan's subway system. Meanwhile, the mutagenic enzyme gradually gave Spider-Man the form of a real spider, with four eyes, eight limbs, and fangs. Professor Jaffe was put to work building a bomb that would disrupt human cognitive processes, similar to one developed by the United States during the Cold War. The bomb would spare most lifeforms, including insects, but kill humans lacking the insect gene. When the bomb was ready, Soria issued a warning: evacuate everyone within a 600 miles radius. 

Spider-Man was instinctively drawn to the Queen, who subdued him and held him captive while he completed his transformation into a giant spider. The spider had been engineered to give birth to her offspring but died due to complications arising from the rapid metamorphosis.

In a fit of rage, Ana destroyed the laboratory with her telekinetic powers and ordered her drones to activate the bomb. Ana left before she could see the spider's husk split open, revealing a reborn Peter Parker. Parker was, for the most part, unchanged but seemed to gain additional spider-like characteristics. Spider-Man managed to disarm the bomb, and Ana seems to have been killed in an unrelated explosion when SHIELD attacked her subterranean base. 

File:Adriana Soria (Earth-616), Miles Warren (Jackal Clone 3) (Earth-616) and Kaine Parker (Earth-616) from Amazing Spider-Man Vol 1 669 001.png

The Queen returns!

Spider-Island

The Queen was the mastermind behind an infestation of spider-powers, planning to turn everyone into spiders so that she can bend them to her will. Approaching the Jackal, she provided him with a tissue sample taken from the husk left behind after Peter Parker had molted. Using this, the Jackal was able to engineer a virus that connected those infected to the Web of Life, granting them powers identical to those of Spider-Man post-metamorphosis and eventually transforming them into Man-Spiders or giant spiders, while allowing the Queen to control them using her powers. Somewhere before Spider-Island, she fought against Rogers and, with the Jackal's help, turned him into the monstrous Spider-King.

As more and more people were infected with the "Spider-Flu", the Queen's connection to the Web of Life was amplified and with it her powers. When she found out that the people at Horizon Labs were working on a cure to the mutation, she used her powers to manipulate the infected Jonah Jameson into killing Alistaire Smythe, who came up with a way to fight the epidemic.

However, she soon found out that they had already found a cure against the mutations, and had already cured Spider-King. The Jackal sent Tarantula (the mutated Kaine, Spider-Man's clone) to destroy the cure, but Spider-Man regained his spider-sense during the fight and threw him into the lake of anti-bodies, curing him in the process.

File:Mutated Spider-Queen.JPG

Mutated form

Out of anger, she killed the Jackal with her sonic scream and discovered that the same process that returned Spider-Man's spider-sense had increased her powers to god-like levels.

Later on, she fought against the cured Captain America, and almost defeated him. However, Venom managed to fatally wound her with Captain America's Shield. Suddenly, she started to mutate into a twenty-eight stories tall spider-monster, drawing power from all the mutated New Yorkers. While she was fighting off dozens of superheroes, Spider-Man used Doctor Octopus' old octo-bots to distribute the cure to the millions of New Yorkers.

With her powers decreasing rapidly because of this, Ms. Marvel threw Kaine towards the Queen. Kaine, unaffected by the Queen's sonic scream thanks to Spider-Man's stealth suit, used his stingers to fly through the back of the Queen's head. The other heroes took the opportunity to attack her and quickly caused her to explode all over the city. Iron Man performed an autopsy on her afterwards and found that this was in fact Adriana Soria and she was dead.

Legacy

Later, it was revealed by the true Jackal that the Jackal the Queen killed was only another clone. The Jackal stole one of her limbs and used her DNA to create several clones that he named the Spider-Queens. The clones were destroyed in a battle against Alpha and Spider-Man.

Powers and abilities

It was stated that one-third of the world's human population still carries the vestigial "insect gene", and Ana is the only known mutant of this subspecies, the Homo Insectus. Ana's powers were latent until they were activated by exposure of nuclear radiation. Spider-Island reveals that her powers are connected to the Web of Life and Destiny.

• Superhuman Strength: Soria can lift about 1 ton.
• Telepathy: Soria can communicate with her drones over long distances through telepathy. She utilizes her telepathy to also control the minds of insects and humans with the insect genes.
  • Insect Manipulation: Soria can command insects, as well as humans who have the "insect gene" and those infected with the Spider-Virus. She can control them telepathically via their minds or simply telekinetically control their motor functions. Drones remain aware of their surroundings, but only particularly strong-willed individuals, such as Spider-Man, can mount any resistance to her commands.
  • Psychic Attacks
• Telekinesis: Soria can psionically manipulate mass in space, i.e. raise, move, or interrupt the movement of animate and inanimate objects. She utilizes her telekinesis to control the motor functions of any insect or humans who have the insect gene.
• Mutagenic Enzyme: Soria's saliva contains a mutagenic compound, which gives spider-powers to those exposed to it, connecting them to the Web of Life and Destiny, and eventually transforming them into anthropomorphic spider-monsters. This enzyme is at least partially mystical in nature since it appears to have unique effects on those who already possess the insect gene and/or are connected to the Web of Life. Mutating people into "Homo arachnus" amplified Adriana's own connection to the Web, boosting her powers and enabling her transformation into a monstrous form.
  • Spider-Man was transformed into a giant spider, then molted into a human form with enhanced abilities and organic spinnerets. Cell samples from the husk left behind were used in the creation of the Jackal's "Spider-Flu", and granted most of the populace of New York powers identical to Spider-Man's before turning them into spider monsters.
  • Anya Corazon acquired spider powers identical to Spider-Man's enhanced ones as a result of exposure to the Spider-Flu and retained them even after exposure to the antidote.
• Sonic Scream: Soria can emit a dangerous blast of sound.
• Shape-Shifting: Soria was also able to turn herself in a monstrous spider-like creature. The power of this creature depended upon the number of arachnids she had to feed off of through the Web of Life.

In her spider-form, she was stated to be an Omega-Level Threat by airman Phillips (Captain America's pilot) and by Cap himself soon after.

She was stated to possess countless others superhuman abilities.

Trivia

• There are several holes in Ana Soria's brief history. According to her OHOTMU Spider-Man 2005 entry, Ana was exposed to radiation on the Bikini Atoll, while Ana herself recalls being irradiated in a desert in Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 2 17. The handbook only says that she was the first female Marine to see combat, while Ana recalled that most of her unit was unable to complete the rigors of their specialized training after she was drafted into the Marines from the Auxiliary Women's Corps. 
• * Ana Soria and Captain America (Steve Rogers) dated briefly circa 1945.

References

• Queen (Marvel Comics) at the Marvel Universe wiki