Wire has been summed up as a “fiercely independent, bold, headstrong, steel-willed, bounty hunting biker babe who takes crap from nobody and always stays at least two steps ahead of the game”. She has lightning reflexes and panther-like speed and agility, is very strong for her size, and has remarkable talent and accuracy with guns, large motorbikes, strikes-heavy martial arts and muscle cars, among other things. She is also an experienced and successful manhunter and bounty hunter, concentrating on the toughest skippers, and a pretty good acrobat.

One secondary source indicates that Barb has a unique knack when it comes to learning how to use weapons and vehicles, and can become a master of any such piece of gear within less than an hour. It may well be true - at one point she determines how to operate a strange piece of vehicle-mounted artillery and fires it with precision within less than a minute of seeing it. This has been modelled as a blanket Familiarity.

Barb can knock out or at least Stun even a big guy with just one punch or kick, and can beat up even four or five very muscular, tough street fighters at once. She is attractive, charismatic, streetwise, highly focused even in the most chaotic fights and has a strong personality, all traits that contribute to making her popular with her allies in Steel Harbor - and she has numerous such allies.

Wire is not just a rough-and-tumble fighter - she’s pretty smart and crafty, and is good at deviously planning ahead. Most people tend to underestimate those traits (perhaps it’s tied with her being a bouncy blonde), which is quite unwise.

The listed Connections are for Barb at her height - after the new Hammerhead opens she wrecks most of those, especially with the Machine, Hunter, Charlie and the SHPD with her crappy attitude. It is strongly hinted that she has rebuilt them since, though.

Also, her Wealth increases to 006 after the new Hammerhead starts operating and becomes a source of revenue rather than a constant drain.

History

Barbara Kopetski, aka Barb Wire, is the daughter of a Marine father (who fought in Korea) and a cop mother. Between her parents and the particularly tough atmosphere of her home town, little Barbara thus became very tough, well-trained and got an attitude very early. Part of that attitude was a love for the traditional values of big motorbikes, fast cars, high-caliber guns and hard rock. Though Steel Harbor was insolently prosperous - even booming - when Barb was a little girl, the situation soon soured and was already pretty dire when she became a teenager. Apparently she briefly tried to live in the “mainstream” world during her late teens or early twenties, but that did not work out and she came back to the Harbor’s concrete jungle.

Her two main activities then became running a big bar, the Hammerhead… and being an extra-tough bounty hunter, which also allowed her to keep the Hammerhead running despite the perpetually-depressed economy in Steel Harbor. Inevitably, Barb Wire got involved in the high-powered gang warfare that dominates the embattled town ; one of her earliest known cases was nabbing Ignition I, a psychotic pyrokinetic working for the Prime Movers. Though nobody else dared to confront Ignition and his entourage, Barb Wire felled him with a non-lethal rocket-propelled grenade.

This landed her in significant trouble - she had underestimated the wealth and pull of the Movers, and Ignition was back on the street within less than an hour and looking for revenge. Her friend the Machine helped repulse the attack, and Barb Wire tracked Ignition to his hideout, watching the Movers’s leader Mace Blitzkrieg discipline Ignition. Mace also mentioned that he would soon make a major move to conquer the whole town. Knowing he would start with the Wolf Gang, she came to warn her ally Hunter, leader of the Wolf Gang. However, superhuman Wolf Gang members who did not know her slowed her down and by the time she could deliver her warning, the Movers were practically there. Despite their superhuman OGs and heavy firepower, the Wolf Gang and the neighbourhood were taking a murderous pounding. At that the other bouncer of the Hammerhead, Frank Fletcher aka Motorhead, came looking for Barb.

Fletcher’s previously hidden, massive telekinetic powers had reached a new power plateau, and he easily dispatched the entire roster of the Prime Movers. He then asked Barb, who had just fired him due to his repeated absences (caused by massive headaches, themselves caused by Frank’s reemerging powers), if he could have his job back, and they worked something out. After another serious clash with the Prime Movers to defend Barb and the Wolf Gang, however, Fletcher had to leave the town as his tremendous power made a normal life impossible and threatened to turn the Hammerhead and Barb into targets for even more powerful agencies.

Barb Wire then attempted to collect a bounty on a minor superhuman biker leader calling himself Fearless, who 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 decided to use his fear-suppressing touch on himself and overwhelmed Barb, who 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, an assassin who was piggy-backing on her manhunting skills to find and kill his targets. She expertly turned the tables on him, though Deathcard managed to escape. Some time after that, Mace Blitzkrieg learned that Fletcher had left and 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, who had started to suffer from a severe psychological breakdown and was seeing his power level concurrently increase, left Golden City to work for the US gov’t. Titan could defeat the Prime Movers, but also gained the hostility of the Wolf Gang. Though the Wolf gangbangers were no match for Titan, a friend of their leader Hunter, the corporate security man Counterstrike, managed to hold his own for a while. Eventually the catastrophic situation was halted by Barb’s friend Motorhead, who came back to Steel Harbor after hearing about the earlier bombings.

Some time later, the government project behind the transformation of Avram Roman into the Machine tracked him down to the Hammerhead. Though the Machine wanted to face the situation alone to protect the only persons who were not treating him like a monster (the Kopetski siblings), Barb investigated and joined the conflict, arresting the Federal agent hunting down the Machine. Knowing he was ineluctably becoming less human with each passing day, the Machine eventually decided to leave and asked Barb to tell his father, who had gotten wind of his survival, that he was dead.

During a subsequent case she got careless, nearly getting killed by a common punk and having to spend more money than she made from the bounty from the bondsman. In reaction, Barb Wire decided to concentrate on running the Hammerhead full-time and drop the whole skip-tracing gig. She invested to renovate the bar and organise events and gigs for local bands, and even started wearing dresses and being Ms. Kopetski. The financial situation of the Hammerhead was not good, however. Barb managed to make some improvements in her cash flow by working full-time on developing the bar for a while, but it remained too vulnerable to strokes of bad luck. Furthermore, she started missing the adrenaline and spent an increasing amount of time at the gym.  Gradually, she spent less time at the Hammerhead - until her bouncer and bartender felt betrayed by her inability to keep her word about her involvement with the bar. After a verbal fight, the bouncer quit.

Things came to a head when Maureen Skach, the new Ignition, came to the Hammerhead to avenge the first Ignition by killing Barb Wire. Since Barb was away, Skach grabbed Charlie and some of his gear. Barb quickly found her brother, but was outmatched by the powerful Ignition II. Fighting for keeps, she killed her opponent’s psychotic and heavily armed sidekick and eventually managed to take Ignition down by rigging up a taser staff hooked up on a large generator.

Barb Wire returned to occasional bounty hunting and skip-tracing to stay in the money. One of her few known cases occurred when the Mask came to Steel Harbor, right when the Machine, apparently feeling better, was visiting the Hammerhead’s boss. The powerful and nigh-indestructible Mask found his match in the Machine, and he and Barb energetically took the green-faced psychotic nuisance down, with Barb finishing the Mask with a solid kick to the testicles with her steel-shod cowgirl boots on.

A more grounded case (heh) happened when she rode to Arcadia to get a superhuman with electrical powers, named or nicknamed Reddy Kilowatt - on which a presumably interesting bounty was available. When she found him and took him down, she was helped by local supernatural vigilante Ghost, who had just drawn Reddy and his lowlives into a trap by pretending to be an attractive, helpless stranded motorist. Perceptively understanding that Ghost wanted to talk to somebody (though the spectral avenger denied it) Barb gave the white-clad apparition the card for her current hotel and told her to visit if she wanted to.

Ghost eventually came to visit Barb after she went back to Steel Harbour, as she needed to track down a runaway girl from her former life. The runaway had left a message on her answering machine - and felt she could trust the blonde manhunter. Barb tracked down the person looking for Ghost within days. However, when the two women found her, the runaway turned into some sort of feral monster and begged Ghost to kill her after managing to give her some enigmatic warnings. Ghost left ; with her deeply cynical and wary nature, she was struggling to understand how Barb Wire had so easily extended her hand in friendship to help a brooding, spectral, dead person. During that encounter Barb Wire was working on an Electra Glide in some Steel Harbour garage - why she wasn’t working in the basement of the Hammerhead is unknown (perhaps that was when she was moving between the new and the old Hammerhead).

Ace of spades

As the gangs in Steel Harbour declared a truce and the truce held, Steel Harbor became somewhat more peaceful and Barb attempted to develop the bar again. Perhaps due to the town’s new sense of cautious optimism (or new hires Barb made after her previous failure at seriously running her bar, such as her assistant, the punk-chic Lacy), things worked out this time. Barb soon opened a brand new Hammerhead Bar and Grille which took up 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, drawing rather sizeable and mixed crowds and being treated as a DMZ by the SHPD.

Though the bar was thriving (and Barb even started appearing in TV commercials for the Hammerhead on local channels), Barb grew frustrated with the huge workload and constant management necessary to run it. She was particularly annoyed at having to play nice hostess for wealthy and influential local people who now came to slum in her bar. Furthermore, she felt that the inevitable return to explosive violence led by superhuman gangsters would occur at her place now that it was ground zero for local wheeling and dealing. As business boomed and her temper got worse, she gradually alienated every single one of her friends by being blatantly self-centred and just using people.

This alienation happened to play very well in the mysterious plans of an unrevealed interest, who sent in a new Deathcard (this one a female) as its agent. The actions of Deathcard II expertly set every power player in Steel Harbor against all the others, with most everybody being convinced that Barb Wire had always been a double agent on their enemies’ payroll. The brutally re-ignited gang war and the rampage of Deathcard II left dozen of corpses lying across town, seriously damaged the Hammerhead and left Barb Wire to realise that for once she hadn’t been the one who was two steps ahead of the opposition - and, worse, that she had lost sight of her own better human qualities.

Unknown legend

Coincidentally, in Arcadia, Ghost was also having a rough time and decided to leave and forget about her worries for a while. She contacted Barb Wire, hoping to talk, and to her surprise Barb seized the occasion and bought her a bike so they could go on a road trip and get a change of air. Things worked fine until a group of bikers viciously attacked them, triggering a brutal fight and dragging Ghost back toward her previous mood when it became apparent that the men were the servants of an enemy of her.

Though she was much less self-centered and exploitative, Barb was still businesslike and decided to investigate a mystery in Black Heart, Nebraska, which looked creepy and supernatural and thus right up Ghost’s alley. The town turned out to be some sort of trap laid by an infernal opponent of Ghost, and soon became a complete nightmare which they attempted to flee. When it became evident that the horrific and gory events were exploiting Ghost’s serious psychiatric issues about men/women power imbalances and relationships, she realised she could disrupt the spell going on by stepping outside of the male-female duality. This resulted into a big long kiss to a completely flabbergasted Barb Wire (toward whom Ghost actually seems to be attracted on some level), which indeed disrupted the abominable enchantment. Though this saved the day, this left both women in a very awkward situation as to their friendship, and they rode away in separate directions.

Ghost and Barb decided to rendezvous some months later, but Barb did not show up and Ghost soon determined she had been captured by the syndicate of one mister Borazzon, 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 and send him and his flunkies to Hell while rescuing Barb. This put the two friends in an awkward position again, though - Barb hated being helpless and having to be rescued, was creeped out by the supernatural horrors unleashed by Ghost to defeat Borazzon, and there still was a hint of sexual tension on Ghost’s part. They again had little choice but to part ways after a brief and uncomfortable silence.

Description

Barb is a very attractive young woman with long blonde hair. Being a biker, she dresses in jeans and leather, with cowboy boots and a low-cut black top (or a black leather bra). She always wears big black shades and racing gloves. She is a left hander, with a barb wire tattoo on her left upper arm.

Though she’s usually drawn like a standard comic book female, Barb Wire seems to actually be a serious body builder - though she’s not bulky and somehow retains a well-above average butt and bust, she is visibly built and has excellent muscle definition.

Barb expressed disappointment at her voice not being deeper and at “sounding like a girl”, which I assume means she has a normal voice.

After the movie was released, Barb started markedly resembling Pamela Anderson Lee.

As it turns out, the illustrations are roughly in reverse chronological order (more modern near the top, oldest near the bottom).

Personality

Barb is a rough and direct bounty hunter. She’s tough, independent and strong-willed ; every single aspect of her behaviour is there to convey that she’s every bit as tough as she’s hot, and she enjoys flaunting both qualities — ’cause she was born, born to be wild. Barb usually dislikes being called by her birth name and aggressively prefers “Barb” or “Barb Wire”, using it pretty much as if it were her real name.

Though she definitely has a temper and can easily come on strong when annoyed, Barb’s friends normally tend to be very loyal toward her - she is quite charismatic, and she genuinely cares about and help people she considers to be friends. She thinks nothing of entering combat against superior forces to help her friends. Being fearless, reasonably open-minded and a good judge of character, she treats characters that terrify anybody else, such as the Machine, Ghost or Motorhead, just like people and friends - which they greatly appreciate.

Barb Wire has a bit of an addiction to adrenaline ; if she does not see action in too long, she’ll gradually ramp up her training and sparring time and start subconsciously take risks and get into trouble.

Another shortcoming is that she is very goal-oriented and somewhat self-centered and has come to regard her brother more as support personnel, employee and frustrating weirdo than as a person, which annoys him - and her, whenever she realises she has been sliding back into that habit again. According to her brother’s (somewhat unfair but not devoid of truth) accusation, Barb divides the world in three kinds of people - employees, customers and Barb Wire. At one point, after opening the new Hammerhead, she became quite self-centred and treated all of her friends as means to an end without quite realising it, basically butchering her Buddy Advantage and many of her Connections.

Barb Wire is often reluctant to tackle on superhumans unless the pay is very good - she has found that even low-level supers can be very dangerous, though she will take on one from time to time. And she feels out of her league and creeped out against the kind of supernatural foes and psionic weirdness her friend Ghost fights ; these cannot be shot or punched by mere mortals, and normally do not bring any tangible reward.

Though she does the big action guns-and-ammo thing with gusto, Barb does not follow the usual macho, emotionally repressed ethos. She thus has been known to be open about her emotions and to come across as sensitive and generous when she senses somebody needs it - especially people cast into a very alienating and unusual situation, such as the Machine or Ghost. Barb is aware that people in such situations make most people quite afraid, and that the only friendship they are likely to get is from somebody as tough, strong-willed and fearless as she is. This ability of her to relate and care gradually atrophied after she opened the new Hammerhead, and she leveraged her charisma to just use people and boss employees around. She hopefully has regained it since.

Barb famously hates being called “babe” or “honey” or “chick” or “chiquita” or anything along those lines, and will react threateningly to those.

DC Universe History

Barb could have operated for years in Blüdhaven, which has a feel that is not too dissimilar to Steel Harbor — and she would have fitted very well within the Nightwing solo series in the late 1990s.