UPDATE: Jason Aaron has responded to the reactions with the following apology and statement.
“In KING CONAN #3, I made the ill-considered decision to give a character the name of Matoaka, a name most closely associated with the real-life Native American figure, Pocahontas. This new character is a supernatural, thousand-year-old princess of a cursed island within a world of pastiche and dark fantasy and was never intended to be based on anyone from history. I should have better understood the name’s true meaning and resonance and recognized it wasn’t appropriate to use it. I understand the outrage expressed by those who hold the true Matoaka’s legacy dear, and for all of this and the distress it’s caused, I apologize. As part of that apology, I’ve already taken what I was paid for the issue and donated it to the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center. The character’s name and appearance will be adjusted for the rest of this mini-series and in all digital and collected editions.â€
Jason Aaron, the current writer of King Conan, has become the target of criticism after he and artist Mahmud Asrar introduced a femme fatale who appears to be inspired by Native American culture and shares the real name of the woman known as Pocahontas.
The character, Princess Matoaka, appears in King Conan #3, where she greets Conan after the Cimmerian is trapped on an island. Before trying to seduce the barbarian king, Matoaka reveals she hails from a "land of plenty, farther west across the many waters, where her people lived in great numbers, in grand cities built to the sun gods." There, Matoaka fell in love with an explorer from the land of Acheron and showed him the location of her city's grandest treasures. The explorer and his people ransacked Matoaka's home, and the princess was forced to kill her beloved. This was not enough for her father, however, who exiled Matoaka from her home and cursed her to live on the island with heaps of gold that would forever lure would-be colonizers astray.
In the wake of Princess Matoaka's debut, readers have criticized the character's sultry appearance and pointed out that she bears the real name of Pocahontas, the Powhatan woman who lived from 1596 to 1617 and came to be more commonly known by her childhood nickname, an Algonquian phrase that translates to "playful one."
Princess Matoaka's backstory is similar to the mythologized account of Pocahontas falling in love with Virginia Captain John Smith, a story popularized in Disney's 1995 animated movie, Pocahontas, further hammering home that the character is meant to be a take on the historical figure. Multiple Twitter users pointed out that the real-life Pocahontas was only 12 or 13 years old when she interacted with Smith and was later taken captive by colonists and raped, according to Native American oral accounts.
Pocahontas'Â real history was far darker than her portrayals in popular media. While most historians agree that she befriended John Smith, the two never fell in love, and whether she actually saved Smith's life from her father is a matter up for debate. Pocahontas eventually married tobacco planter John Rolfe, moved to England, and was paraded around London as an example of a Native American who had converted to Christianity. She died at the age of 20 or 21.
Aaron has not responded to the criticism of King Conan. The writer is well known for his Marvel work on the likes of Ghost Rider, Thor and The Avengers, as well as creator-owned efforts such as Image Comics' Southern Bastards and Scalped, a 60-issue Vertigo series about crime on a Native American reservation in South Dakota.
Source: Twitter