Barb Wire's History
Barbara �??Barb Wire�?� Kopetski�??s father is a former steelworker and U.S. Marine. He reportedly fought in Korea, but is now bed-ridden and suffers from Alzheimer�??s. Barb�??s mother was a cop, who died in unknown circumstances. Barb was also close to her babciu (grandmother), who took her bowling.
Between her parents and her tough home town, little Barbara grew up an all-American fighter. She also inherited such traditional tastes as big chromed motorbikes, fast cars, high-caliber guns, and heavy metal.
While Steel Harbor was prosperous �?? even booming �?? when Barb was a little girl, the situation soon soured. By the time she was a teenager, the town was already in dire shape.
Apparently, she briefly tried to live in the outside world during her late teens or early 20s. But that did not work out and she came back to the Harbor. One suspects that she spent a year or two at a college outside of Steel Harbor.
Brazen youth
After dropping out of college, a young Barb came to work for the aging Michael O�??Brien, the most reputed bounty hunter in town. This apprenticeship worked well, but O�??Brien was an alcoholic with wandering hands. As a result, Kopetski beat him up and became a skip tracer on her own. She was assisted by Alonzo, then a teenager.
During that time Barb was also Hunter (Wolf Ferrell)�??s lover. Hunter was already a noted gang leader, with remarkably disciplined troops. But he presumably yet had to recruit his superhuman lieutenants. While Kopetski seemed proud of being with the handsome, smart and feared Hunter, they eventually broke up in violent circumstances.
The very first contract the Barb closed solo was locating one Avram Roman, who would later become the Machine. With information from Hunter, a fair bit of luck and a lot of guts, Barb did capture the superhuman Roman. However, Mick O�??Brien and his crew came after her to get Avram, and the situation degenerated.
Barb had Alonzo call Hunter just in time. Though Avram and Kopetski were captured by the O�??Brien crew, the bounty hunters were surrounded in turn by the Wolf Gang. After the skip tracers left, Barb let Avram leave. They had saved each other�??s lives during the fighting, so she couldn�??t apprehend him in good conscience.
Gaining in stature
Barb Wire became Steel Harbor�??s #1 skip tracer, displacing O�??Brien. Two friends proved to be key assets in this. After their breakup, she rebuilt professional bridges with Hunter. And the mysterious Machine often sent her information about the most elusive skips.
She also took to running a large bar, the Hammerhead. The bounty payments kept the Hammerhead running despite the perpetually-depressed economy in Steel Harbor.
(Why Barb runs the Hammerhead is never explained. But it may have belonged to her dad before his Alzheimer made him unable to manage it. It�??s just a No-Prize Hypothesis, though.)
Martial manhuntress
Inevitably, Barb Wire got involved in the high-powered gang warfare that dominates the embattled town.
Her first documented job was nabbing Ignition, a psychotic pyrokinetic working for the Prime Movers. Nobody else dared to confront Ignition and his entourage. But Barb Wire felled them with a non-lethal rocket-propelled grenade built by Charlie.
But she had underestimated the wealth and pull of the Movers. Ignition was back on the street within less than an hour and looking for revenge. Barb�??s friend the Machine helped repulse the attack, and the bounty huntress tracked Ignition to his hideout. There she spied on Mace Blitzkrieg disciplining Ignition.
Mace also mentioned that he would soon conquer the whole town. Deducing that he would start with the Wolf Gang, Barb Wire rode to warn them. However, superhuman Wolf Gang members who did not know he tried to stop her. By the time she could reach her ex, the Movers were practically there and the Wolf Gang was overrun.
1993 gang war
Despite their superhuman OGs and heavy firepower, the Wolf Gang and the neighborhood were taking a murderous pounding. At that point, the other bouncer of the Hammerhead Bar and Grille, Frank Fletcher aka Motorhead, came looking for Barb.
Fletcher�??s frequent absences had recently led Kopetski to fire him. Frank�??s no-shows were caused by massive telekinetic powers swelling within him, resulting in crippling migraines. His power enhanced by the latest painful episodes, �??Motorhead�?� Fletcher dispersed the Prime Movers. He then asked for his job back, and he and Barb worked something out.
After another major clash with the Prime Movers to defend Barb and the Wolf Gang, Motorhead had to leave town. His tremendous power made normal life impossible and threatened to turn the Hammerhead and Barb into targets for even more powerful parties.
Barb Wire then attempted to collect a bounty on a minor superhuman biker leader. Calling himself Fearless, he had the power to remove fear from people for a short while through his touch. Barb got rid of his suicidally fearless one-percenters and cornered her prey.
Fearless used his fear-suppressing touch on himself and overwhelmed Barb. She was forced to exploit his fearless state to dare him to do a suicidal jump. Fearless was killed in the fall, costing Barb the bounty but saving her life.
Born to be wild
Barb then got into trouble caused by Deathcard. This assassin was piggy-backing on her manhunting skills to find and kill his targets.�??She expertly turned the tables on him, though Deathcard escaped.
Sometime after that, Mace Blitzkrieg learned that Fletcher had left. Mace launched a major terrorist campaign in Steel Harbor, razing several police precincts with car bombs and putting the police in a state of siege.
The situation worsened when Titan was sent in by the Federal government. Titan was beginning to suffer from a major nervous breakdown, which also increased his immense power. He thus got into a pointless fight with the Wolf Gang. Their leader Hunter called Counterstrike, a superhuman friend who had gone corporate. Counterstrike held his own for a while but was eventually overcome.
The catastrophically escalating situation was halted by Motorhead, who came back to Steel Harbor after hearing about the earlier bombings.
Welcome to the Machine
Sometime later, the government project behind the transformation of Avram Roman into the Machine tracked him down to the Hammerhead. The Machine wanted to face them alone to protect the Kopetski siblings �?? the only persons treating him like a man.
Barb nevertheless investigated and joined the conflict. She arrested the Federal agent hunting down the Machine.
Knowing he was ineluctably becoming less human with each passing day, the Machine eventually left. He asked Barb to tell his father, who had gotten wind of his survival, that he was dead.
Hard liquors and fire do not mix
During a subsequent case, Barb got careless. She nearly got killed by a common punk, which cost her more than she made from the bondsman.
She decided to concentrate on running the Hammerhead full-time and drop the whole skip-tracing business. She had the bar renovated, set up events and gigs for local bands. She even started wearing dresses and being �??Ms. Kopetski�?�. The Hammerhead remained in the red, though.
A Steel Harbor street and Barb Wire
Barb improved the cash flow by working full-time on developing the bar for a while. Yet the financials remained sickly. Furthermore, she craved adrenaline and spent more and more time at the gym. Feeling betrayed by her inability to stick with the bar, some of the staff angrily left.
Things came to a head when Maureen Skach, the new Ignition, came to the Hammerhead to avenge the first Ignition. Since Barb was away, Skach grabbed Charlie instead.
Barb quickly found her brother but was outmatched by the powerful Ignition. The bounty huntress nevertheless killed Skach�??s psychotic and heavily armed sidekick. She then managed to take Ignition down by rigging up a taser staff hooked up on a large generator.
Skip tracer
Barb Wire returned to occasional bounty hunting and skip-tracing to stay in the money. During that era, the Mask came to Steel Harbor. Despite the Mask�??s sheer power, Barb and the Machine energetically took the green-faced psychotic nuisance down. Kopetski finished the Mask off with a solid kick to the testicles with her steel-shod cowgirl boots on.
Barb then tracked down the superhuman Reddy Kilowatt into the city of Arcadia. She begged him with the help of the local, supernatural vigilante Ghost (Elisa Cameron). Intuiting that the gruff Cameron felt lonely, Kopetski gave her her card as a gesture of friendship.
Ghost did contact Barb Wire when she came to Steel Harbor to locate a runaway girl. The pair eventually tracked the kid down, though she turned into a monster who begged Ghost to kill her after spouting some enigmatic warnings. Ghost left, since Barb acting friendly and ignoring her brooding and spectral behavior made her feel awkward.
Peace in our time
A truce between the super-gangs then proved lasting. Barb seized the occasion to further pivot toward running the Hammerhead. Thanks to a lasting truce between the gangs, Steel Harbor became more peaceful. Barb seized this swell of cautious optimism and had another go at developing her bar. She hired new, better staff �?? including an assistant manager, the punk-chic Lacy.�??She even shot commercials broadcast on local channels.
Barb soon moved the Hammerhead Bar and Grille to a better location, in a former industrial warehouse on Harbor Drive at Industrial Way. The new Hammerhead became the quasi-official neutral zone of the city and the premier watering hole in town. It drew in large and mixed crowds and was treated as a DMZ by the SHPD.
Ace of spades
Though her business was finally making money, Barb felt miserable. It was far too much work and took too much time. She was particularly annoyed when having to play hostess for wealthy and influential locals slumming in her bar. She also suspected that when violence would return, it would happen at the Hammerhead.
As business boomed and her temper got worse, Barb alienated every single one of her friends. She was increasingly self-centered and used people. In particular, the Machine left, never to return.
This played right into the mysterious plans of an unrevealed interest, who sent a new Deathcard (this one a woman) as its agent.�??Deathcard II expertly set every power player in Steel Harbor against all the others. She convinced most that Barb Wire had always been a double agent on their enemies�?? payroll.
The brutally re-ignited gang war. With Deathcard II stroking the flames the crisis left dozen of corpses lying across town. It also seriously damaged the Hammerhead. Barb Wire realized that for once she hadn�??t been the one who was two steps ahead of the opposition. Worse, that she had lost sight of her own better human qualities and friendships.
Unknown legend
Coincidentally, in Arcadia, Ghost was also having a rough time. She contacted Barb Wire, hoping to talk. Barb seized the occasion, bought her a bike and took her on a road trip. They eventually ran into trouble with fellow bikers. Ghost soon realized that these served one of her enemies.
Barb decided to get involved in odd events in the creepy, eerie burg of Black Heart, Nebraska. This was a trap set by a demonic foe of Ghost, and the place soon became an utter nightmare. They attempted to flee but were overwhelmed.
Ghost came to realize that these gory horrors and hallucinations had been set to exploit her weaknesses. They were magically keyed to her neuroses about men Thus, she intuitively realized that she could disrupt them by stepping outside of her own fixation on gender roles. She achieved this by giving a flabbergasted Barb Wire a big long kiss, breaking the abominable spell.
The pair was left in a particularly awkward situation. They rode away in separate directions. However, they soon got over it.
When they saw each other again, Barb Wire had been captured by Mister Borazzon�??s mob. Borazzon, one of Ghost�??s enemies, was a creepy crime lord with a medical condition and a brutally ruthless nature. Though Borazzon was amply prepared for Ghost�??s special abilities, she found a way to blow up everything. She sent him and his flunkies to Hell while rescuing Barb.
Barb felt humiliated by her capture and was creeped out by the supernatural horrors unleashed by Ghost to defeat Borazzon. They awkwardly parted ways again.
The rent is too damn high
(The 2015 series seems to take place a relatively short time after Ace of Spades (published in 1996) �?? perhaps a year or two. Yet, it's clearly the 2010s in term of tech, language, etc..)
Barb Wire continued her work and the Hammerhead inched into the black despite her so-so financial skills. She also developed more income and rep by having a camera crew film her work as a bail enforcement agent.
However, the area around the Hammerhead gentrified, and the landlord cashed out. This would likely make the rent too damn high.�??The network also wanted to see superhuman action on Barb�??s segments, as the super-gangs had been relatively quiet in recent months.
Though she hated arresting superhumans, Barb was forced by her poor finances to set her sights on one �??Wyern Stormblüd�?�. This man was a super-strong alcoholic with probable brain damage. He acted like an incoherent, bargain-basement, Thor.
Hunter provided her with information and a power-neutralizing pistol. But as it turned out, Barb had been manipulated by the super-gangs to do their dirty work. They forcibly took custody of Stormblüd right after she perilously captured him.
Mace even used part of the money to buy the block the Hammerhead was on. However, he let the bar keep on running and didn�??t raise the rent much. He also leveraged these events to order his gang not to attack Barb Wire. That was despite mounting pressure caused by her bounty-hunting activities.
Back to the Machine
The power-neutralizing pistol used to took down Stormblüd had actually been sent by the Machine via Hunter. It was a trap laid by the Machine for the Federal forces who had been hounding him for years. As he hoped, they arrested Barb Wire, threatened her with extraordinary rendition, then forced her to hunt down the Machine. Avram had Hunter leak his location to Barb.
The Machine was apparently planning to kill all pursuers to stop their efforts. But Barb Wire interfered and kidnapped the special agent in charge. This convinced the Machine to stop fighting and explain what he could do to the Federal government if they didn�??t let go of their hunt.
A deal was reached, the Machine left town again, and Barb went bowling.
