PELE
Real Name: Pele
Occupation: Goddess of fire and volcanoes
Legal Status: Citizen of Celestial Hawaiki
Identity: The general populace of earth is unaware of Pele's existence except as a mythological character.
Other Aliases: Pere (variant name), Hine-i-Tapeka, Laholana, Risqué (imposter), Peliali (possibly)
Place of Birth: possibly Kuaihelani (modern Midway Island)
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: Tame (father); Haumea (mother); Laka, Polivah, Namaka, Tara, Hiiaka, Kapo (sisters); Kane Milohai, Kamoali, Kamapua'a (brothers), Kai-tangata (half-brother), Hina, Mahuike (half-sisters); Tangaroa, Rongo, Ku (uncles); Tawhaki (uncle/brother-in-law); Rangi (grandfather); Gaea (grandmother, alias Papa); Thor (half-uncle); The Titans (half-uncles and half-sisters); Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hades, Hestia (cousins); Maria de Guadalupe Santiago (possible daughter, alias Silverclaw)
Group
Base of Operations: Celestial Hawaiki
First Appearance: X-Force I #81
History: Pele is the daughter of Tame, Chieftain of the Polynesian Gods, and Haumea, goddess of earth and the harvest. Raised as a mortal on earth until she was worthy to join her father in the heavens, both she and her sister Namaka competed for the right to become gods; a feud acerbated by Pele who seduced her sister's lover. The two fought for many years with their fight creating the Hawaiian Islands from molten rock from deep within the earth in ancient history. Pele was killed, but her father restored her to life as a goddess. In revenge, Namaka placed spells preventing Pele from retrieving her mortal heart hidden on the island of Kilauea. The spells required warriors of noble heart to retrieve it.
In Hawaiian legend, Pele is the protective goddess of Hawaii, whose worshippers brought her worship with them when they settled the Hawaiian islands. Most of the Polynesian gods had worshippers in Hawaii, but under slightly different names, like Tame who became known as Kame or Kane.
Over several centuries, Pele looked for a person of noble heart or a worthy champion who could enter the cave where the heart was hidden. She appeared in several forms to mortals over the years as a beautiful woman, an aged crone or as a vague phantom in white. She also caused misfortune to anyone removed rocks from her volcano. According to tradition, numerous tourists who removed lava rocks from Hawaii have mailed them back to escape Pele's spells.
In recent years, Pele encountered the young mutants of X-Force and impersonated Risqué, one of their team members in order to coax the mutant heroes retrieve the heart for her. Namaka, however, used the Lava Men who lived far under the Earth's surface to slow her down, but X-Force defeated the Lava Men and returned the heart to Pele who then finally returned to the realm of the Hawaiian Gods.
Pele also has some sort of link with the Spellman family, a family of witches. Her exact connection to the family is unknown, but when Sabrina Spellman reached her eighteenth birthday to become a recognized witch, Pele appeared to her to advise her in the direction of her destiny, doing so in her form of the mother-goddess rather than her true godly form.
A few months later, a dark-skinned goddess of volcanoes calling herself Pelial was attacked and captured by the Hyborian sorcerer Kulan Gath trying to gain immortality among the gods. Pelial was subsequently rescued by the Avengers, and Gath was seized instead by the dark entities which he himself had worshipped. Whether this was Pele in a form she assumed before foreign worshippers or not has yet to be clarified.
In recent years, Pele quarreled with
Wonder
Woman, a modern champion of the
Olympian gods
on Earth. Since barred from returning to her home on Paradise Island by
Zeus,
Wonder Woman was approached by Pele's brother, Kane Milohai, one of the Hawaiian gods of rain.
Kane gave Wonder Woman the mystical means to return to Paradise Island in return
for her loyalty. Zeus subsequently confronted Kane and slew him. Pele in turn
battled Wonder Woman out of grief and forced her to admit responsibility for
Kane's death after which she once again retreated from Earth.
Height: 5' 8"
Weight: 340 lbs.
Eyes: Green
Hair: Black
Strength Level: Pele possesses superhuman strength equal to an
Olympian goddess enabling her to lift (press) 25 tons under optimal conditions.
Known Superhuman Powers: Pele possesses the conventional physical attributes of the Polynesian gods. Like all of the Kahunas, she is extremely long-lived, but she is not immortal like the Olympian Gods. She has not aged since reaching adulthood and cannot die by any conventional means. She is immune to all Earthly diseases and is resistant to conventional injury. If she were somehow wounded, her godly life force would enable her to recover with superhuman speed. It would take an injury of such magnitude that it dispersed a major portion of her bodily molecules to cause her a physical death. Even then, it might be possible for a god of extreme power, such as Tame or Rongo or for a number of Kahunas working together to revive her. Pele also possesses superhuman strength, an eternal youth enchantment and her Kahuna metabolism provides her with far greater than human endurance in all physical activities. (Kahuna flesh and bone is about three times as dense as similar human tissue, contributing to the superhuman strength and weight of the Polynesian gods.)
Pele also has mystical powers to control fire and magma (molten rock) and to generate great heat. She can also travel between dimensions such as when she moves from Earth to Celestial Hawaiki, the home of the Polynesian gods. She can also change form to appear as a beautiful woman, an old woman, a fire spirit or to resemble any person of her choosing.. She can also grow to great size at will in the presence of fire or great heat.
Abilities: Pele is also extra-ordinarily beautiful in her true form and is a extremely charismatic and beneficent goddess.
Comments: This bio describes Pele as she has appeared in Marvel Comics, DC Comics and Sabrina The Teenage Witch.
In Thor I #301, Gaea admitted to being the Mother Earth of the Norse (Jord), Mexican (Coatlique), Hindu (Aditi), Chinese (Hou-Tu), Germans (Nertha) and Polynesian (Rangi). This makes Pele a relative of their pantheons as well. However, mythologically, Rangi was actually the male sky-spirit, and Papa mother-earth. (Marvel switched their identities.)
Pele is one of the few Hawaiian gods to have appear in Marvel and DC Comics, much less any comic book, although she did appear in an episode of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, "The Good, The Bad and The Luau" (Airdate 5/21/99). She probably was behind the scenes in "The Brady Bunch" adventure in Hawaii (or Gilligan and the Skipper's experience with Kona, the Polynesian god of curses and misfortune on "Gilligan's Island").
Pele has also appeared in DC Comics with Kane Milohai, who is not to be confused with Tame, Pele's father.
Historically and archaeologically, there is a vague notion that the Polynesian Gods had some contact with the tribes of South America (just as the Chinese possibly had contact with the Aztecs and Mayans). This revelation lends credence to Pele possibly being the otherwise fictional goddess, Peliali, a Kamekeri goddess who appeared in Avengers I #28-30, but there is nothing in the Avengers story to suggest Pelial is Pele in disguise.
In the "Encyclopedia of Haunted Places," Pele is the protective spirit of the island of Oahu, cursing those who remove lava rocks from the Mauna Loa Volcano, which was sacred to her. She has also been observed as a female apparition in a red dress haunting the Hilton Hotel and several other locations in Honolulu.
Clarifications: Pele has no known connection to:
Updated: 03/12/2014