YJ2: Little Barda

...OK, before I go on, I have to say that this poor girl has got to have the WORST superhero name ever. Seriously. Even if it was used for an absolutely hilarious joke.

Anyway, while I was rummaging around the DCUs fridge looking for G'nort, I found this spitfire-and-a-half, Little Barda. Introduced during the awesome mini-series "52," she is one of the "One-Year Gap" Teen Titans, a group of gratuitous and often obviously parody-based teen counterparts to existing DCU heroes (seriously, one was named "Young Frankenstein"...and he STILL kicked ass, too) that joined and quit the Teen Titans during the year after "Infinite Crisis." Little Barda and her best bro Powerboy (yes, a teenage Rule 63'd version of Power Girl, complete with hole in the chest of his costume to show of his hairy pecs) were a pair of refugees from Apokalips who came to Earth for different reasons, LB to follow in her namesake Big Barda's footsteps ("I am Little Barda, but someday I will be BIG"...this said by a girl who's 6'3', 400 lbs of solid muscle, armor, and DD boobs AS A TEENAGER) and Powerboy to creepily stalk Supergirl and get a Kryptonian nut-shot for his troubles. Disenchanted with how Beast Boy was running the team at the time, they left, not to be seen again until the "Titans East" one-shot as members of Cyborg's new team, along with fellow TT dropouts Anima, Hawk and Dove, Son of Vulcan, and Lagoon Boy.

They didn't even last the issue...Hell, Powerboy ended up burnt to death and impaled to a tree by mystery attackers (revealed MONTH LATER IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FUCKING COMIC BOOK) during their first training session. The rest of the team were promptly pummeled into comas shortly thereafter, save Vic who was sent scurrying back to the all-Caucasian west coast team (OK, so Starfire is technically orange), and placed into the ICU until they would miraculously recover in time to be brutally murdered for shock value (so far Hawk got her heart ripped out by her Black Lantern predecessor, who was then brought back to life and shoehorned with his former partner into "Birds of Prey"; DOve was brought back as a pointless plot device in the same story and is now falling in love with the guy who killed her sister and once killed her too; and Anima was brought out of her coma just in time to be ripped in half between two dimensions in a tie-in to the horrible "Cry For Justice" mini).

So, why care about an obvious one-joke parody character destined to die already when there's a former "Young Justice" member and a character so awesome he already has his own rogues' gallery in the next beds over? Well, see, in the time between the "Titans East" one-shot and the present day, a little mini-series penned by cosmic god-writer Jim Starlin and called "The Death of the New Gods" came out, wherein an insane Infinity Man BRUTALLY MURDERED EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IN JACK KIRBY'S FOURTH WORLD, from Darkseid through the Forever People and all points in-between.

Except her.

Yep, as of right now, Little Barda, one-joke parody character and current coma ward inhabitant, is the Last of the New Gods. SO, you can imagine how the idea of a young war-goddess from a cosmic pantheon far beyond any of Earth, not even sure enough of herself to forge an identity of her own, waking up from a four-year coma to find that every one and every thing she ever knew, loved, hated, or even remotely cared about was now DEAD, would appeal to me...I mean, seriously, why give us this story when we can read about Superman walking around America, Wonder Woman being ret-conned as a homeless street fighter, or Batman's latest foreign outsourcing projects?

Fuck you, Didio. In the urethra.

...anyways...since I've been toying with a revamp of "Young Justice" initially centering around the new Impulse, Iris West (daughter of Wally West, the Flash since "Crisis on Infinite Earths"), I thought I'd give LB here a little TLC since Primus only knows when DC ever will. I toyed with her overall look since her original "Big Barda Lite" look somehow managed to be needlessly complicated AND yawningly generic AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME, but I think I may have made her look too young in the process...not to mention I was at a complete loss as to what the Hell that cudgel thing (I call it a "Collapsible Apokalyptian Beat Stick") is actually good for other than smacking Powerboy around.

It's my hope that drawing her might prompt some love for the poor kid-god, but, knowing my luck, all I've done is put her back in the DC editorial staff's gunsights.