Big Barda

1726 - Big Barda is born on Apokolips, and taken from her mother Big Breeda to be raised in Granny Goodness's Terror Orphanages.

1744 - Barda and Stompa are selected to join the Female Furies, becoming lifelong rivals. She trains with Lashina.

1748 - Barda becomes the new field leader of the Female Furies.

60 years ago - Barda arrives early to the raid on Himon's sanctuary to pull Auralie out before she's found.

58 years ago - Barda and Orion race to recover a newly discovered artifact, but Barda is able to defeat him and escape. As a reward, Granny Goodness assigns Big Barda to the X-pit, giving her the task of breaking Scott Free of his will to escape.

9 years ago - Barda and the Female Furies are brought to watch as Granny Goodness makes Auralie dance in High Voltage Shock Boots until she immolates herself. Heartbroken, she finds Himon, who gives her a motherbox. She tells Scott Free of Auralie's death and helps him escape the X-pit, not yet ready to free herself.

7 years ago - Barda and the Female Furies are sent to Earth by Granny Goodness to recapture Scott Free. She switches sides, helping him defeat them and staying with him.

6 years ago - Barda and Scott Free are found on Earth by Forager, who brings them to New Genesis to stop Glorious Godfrey, bringing the Justice League with them. Forager is killed, but Highfather and the Gods of New Genesis descend from Supertown to assist them, raising Forager to Godhood. She and Scott are married by Highfather, and they choose to retire back on Earth together.

4 years ago - Barda and Scott Free join the fight against the Parademon wave invasion, where Barda defeats the Female Furies. When the Gods of New Genesis arrive, Highfather forges a new non-aggression pact, with the stipulation that Barda & Scott can return to Apokolips and win their freedom in combat. Darkseid gives them an impossible opponent, Brimstone. Scott uses a series of lasers to disrupt Brimstone's magnetic field so Barda can destroy the techno seed within.

2 years ago - Barda and Orion join the Watchtower at the request of Highfather of New Genesis to help prepare for the coming of Mageddon.

1 year ago - Barda battles Mageddon alongside the Watchtower. She gives birth to her son, Shilo Free. Her duty to the Watchtower completed, she joins the Justice League along with Scott Free.

Barda is awesome. She is exactly as hardcore as Wonder Woman, but without the scrutiny of being the only long-running female superhero in the world, which means she gets to actually deliver on her rampant badassery. She is a Death Metal album cover, a punk rock middle finger pointed straight at the patriarchy. When she is written correctly, she goes off like an atom bomb. You have to be careful with the New Gods because they can be too overpowered to interact with the less Kirby-tastic characters, but certain characters are absolutely worth the effort. I just want to say it one more time; Barda is awesome.

Barda's Comic History

Big Barda first appeared in the pages of Mister Miracle in 1971, one of the new series depicting Jack Kirby's revolutionary Fourth World. She was evidently visually based on actress and recent playboy playmate Lainie Kazan, who I know as the mom from My Big Fat Greek Wedding. She was a foil and eventual romantic interest of the hero Scott Free, their interaction supposedly based on Kirby's relationship with his wife Roz, which really makes me want to know more about their relationship.

Barda was definitely conceived as a supporting character for Mister Miracle, and perhaps that was part of what allowed her to be SO cool. She's clearly a deliberate reversal of traditional female character stereotypes, but that probably wouldn't have been permitted if she was being asked to carry the narrative herself. Even when Mister Miracle joined various incarnations of the Justice League, Barda was never really considered a full member herself. She was still a supporting character, no more an actual active member of the League than Elongated Man's wife Sue Dibny. The fact that she would regularly suit up and fight alongside the team didn't really change that fact.

She finally actually joined a Justice League team in the pages of Grant Morrison's JLA when they were building an allegory for the Greek pantheon. We finally saw just how lucky we were that she had been a more peripheral character for so long because once she was finally up front with the big guns she totally stole the show. She continues to be a side character in the current continuity, but whenever she shows up you know that literally everything is getting punched real soon.

Our Big Barda Story

We try to tread carefully when adding certain characters from the canon of the New Gods. Kirby's Fourth World has always seemed oddly distinct from the rest of DC. It's meant to be a self-contained story, and to use them too much very much undermines the power levels of the Earth-based heroes. At first we even considered not touching them at all, but you can't not use Barda. Barda rules.

We tried our best to be very careful with just how and when we included her, which went on to inform the way we used any other New God characters. Her story unfolds much like the comics. She grows up in Granny Goodness's Terror Orphanages where she was given a name meant to insult her that she turned into a badge of awesomeness. We tried out best to emulate the beats of Ngozi Ukazu's phenomenal graphic novel Barda to show her journey of self discovery as she learns to hope and open herself to love, helps Scott escape, and ultimately rejects her brutal upbringing to fight alongside the man she loves.

We only used a few of her adventures on Earth, mostly showing them attempting to live a normal life, but ultimately the call to adventure is just too much. She joins the Watchtower at the behest of Highfather to prepare Earth for the arrival of Mageddon. What we invented here is her inclusion as a member of our new, original Justice League team. The idea of trying to assemble a totally new group of heroes and not taking advantage of this incredibly likeable, powerful, empowering hero was just impossible.

Barda & Scott Free

This is a great example of just how awesome comics can be given the opportunity. The relationship between these two characters is born out of a wild, galaxy spanning adventure... but at the same time their romance blossomed from a very human, very true-to-life place. Watching them fall in love was believable. It felt real. They are one of the best couples in FICTION, let alone comics, because the devotion they feel for each other is palpable. The visual of them together, with Barda towering over her totally-cool-with-it husband is one of those iconic images that define the stories of these characters.

Of course, while lots of "future" timelines that have been depicted in comics have featured a child of Barda & Scott, we've decided to pull the trigger and actually make them parents. Comics, like a lot of fiction, really delight in depicting disfunction, but this couple has always stood out in the way they make their partnership work despite the challenges they face. Depicting this sort of functional couple actually succeed in parenting while both serving on the new Justice League is a really great and refreshing new story idea.

Barda's Costume

Barda 's battle armor is incredibly iconic. One of the best parts of the New Gods is the fact that it feels like Jack Kirby's imagination completely run amok, and Barda might be one of the best examples of that. It's one of those great designs that any artist can put their own spin on while still maintaining what makes her such a unique, unmistakable presence.

Now, Kirby actually designed her two looks. When she wasn't wearing her full armor, she would wear a red... battle-bikini? Crazy, right?

As blocky and bombastic as Kirby's art always was, don't forget this is the man that pioneered romance comics with Joe Simon. He really understood how to draw beautiful women even in his style, and because Barda was always so unbelievably badass no matter WHAT she wore, even this look managed to be exactly as awesome even when she was being played for sex appeal.

Still, you have to love her full battle armor. How could it you not? It's one of the coolest superhero costumes in existence.

Barda's Future

Barda has always been one of the most visible of the New Gods; actually living on Earth with her husband. The DeMattis & Giffen era Justice League liked to show her trying to live a very domestic life; I actually own a trading card that features her vacuuming a carpet with a framed photo of her in her costume in the background. It's funny, I guess, but what a massive waste of one of the single coolest characters comics have ever created.

Barda HAD to be in the Justice League. This is a character that should be in four comics every month. She should be on lunchboxes and have a dozen movies with a new actress playing her every few years. We should never, ever get enough of her. She was a member of the Watchtower briefly, but that team is incredibly distant from humanity. Her new status as part of the new Earth-based Hall of Justice League puts her front and center in the superheroic community; she is going to be on the front lines of every major battle, fighting alongside the best of the best. Where she SHOULD be.

Moving forward, we get to watch her and Scott as parents. She's always been this fantastic juxtaposition of what women are expected to be vs just how powerful and awesome they actually ARE, and watching her absolutely crush motherhood is going to rock.

Related Characters

Orion