Who is DC’s Queen Bee Zazzala?

There are several Queen Bee’s in the DC Universe but there’s only one Zazzala of Korll. Queen Bee was a mostly forgotten Silver Age Justice League villain until Grant Morrison brought her back in the pages of his run on JLA.

Created by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky, her first appearance was in Justice League of America #23.  Queen Zazzala hides a machine in the core of the Earth and threatens to blow up the planet unless the League helps her acquire an elixir of immortality (blackmailing the JLA into helping was a fairly common trope in those early days of comics). They don’t have a choice, so they agree to become “drone-workers” and help the villain. The team locates the vial but before handing it over Green Lantern secretly uses his power ring so she’ll never be able to open it (this is a questionable plan).

Nope. Couldn’t possibly be opened.

Turns out Per Kazz, a Korll scientist, had researched “green energy beams” and discovered they had a weakness to the color yellow. Zazzala was able to use this discovery to open the bottle of immortality. Unfortunately, it turns out immortality comes with eventual immobility.

Zazzala would go on to have a handful of additional adventures battling the League, including a single issue stint as head of a supervillain organization called the Anti-Justice League.

The Queen would make a brief appearance during Crisis on Infinite Earths but wouldn’t be seen again until Morrison dusted her off in JLA. Lex Luthor enlisted Zazzala as a member of the newly formed Injustice Gang.

After an epic battle, Morrison gives Queen Bee an exhilarating send-off when Big Barda throws her into a boom tube sending her and her army back to Korll. She’d turn up a handful of times as a member of the Secret Society of Super-Villains and as leader of H.I.V.E.

We last saw Queen Bee in action during Gail Simone’s Plastic Man miniseries. She turns up as a member of a ridiculously fun “cabal” of villains. Her teammates include Hugo Strange, Amazo, Doctor Psycho, and Per Degaton.

Her most recent and briefest appearance is in a panel of Morrison’s The Green Lantern issue #3. She appears in the third panel of the issue along with a cadre of DC galactic supervillains. She’s number 18 in the image below (I’ll have more on the rest of the characters when I publish my deep dive into The Green Lantern #3 later this month).