Watch out boy she’ll chew you up!

Whoa here she comes. The Baroness. 

The GI Joe movie prequel about the Baroness was a treat to draw, well, actually two treats. The Baroness was a sort of sexual awakening for a lot of guys in their pre-teens back in the early 80s. After all, she was an emotionally strong female character, in a management position over  a huge terrorist organization, hot, but still bookish with those librarian glasses. Seriously! What other cartoon aimed at 10 year old boys had the cahones to put a major character in a skimpy bikini for a 30 minute cartoon! Here, she’s all vamped up being Destro’s Bi—, er, lovely companion. 

  

In one scene she almost ends up wrestling in a pond of butterscotch with Lady J! (I need a moment) If that wasn’t enough, they even had her rolling around on the ground fighting a Joe. Why? So we can get a close up of those South Korean animated “guns”!

 She’s visually inspired, I suspect, by Betty Page the famous pin-up from the 50s. With the black latex/leather outfit, the high heeled FMBs (that only she could have run in), and the sexy euro accent, added all together it explains so much.

For me though, the story was a conundrum, as this was a movie tie-in, it had to be based on the actress from the film. She’s not built in the way I had imagined for the Baroness, based on the years of comic and cartoon watching as a kid. I expected Betty, but what I got was someone built like a cast member of “Friends”. I had to decide what to do- keep it real, or go the route I knew was more popular in comics. I mean look at the fanboy “girl” artist faves… the King has to be Adam Hughes, and his heir (but w/ his own style) Frank Cho (all of this is debatable, but that’s not the point here). The thing these guys have in common is that their ladies are gorgeous, but their women also have some meat on them! Which brings me back to Betty, as most things do. Solution? Actress head, Betty body.

You might think this is just me taking the initiative, but I was told by my editor to “make her hot”. So for this intro shot of her on page 3, I tried to pull out all the stops. The script by Mr. Chuck Dixon called for a full body shot, so… I tried to put the “body” in full body shot in this thumbnail of the page.

But when I actually did the page, it seemed to lack a little something. 

I thought about it for a while, looking at the page over and over, then I decided it was the face. The Baroness is a power hungry bi— er, woman. In this she doesn’t seem in control so much as her mood implies a sense of “oh whatever”. It’s all in her eyes…

So I went back to the drawing board (ha ha- cause literally I did) and changed her face. I wanted her to have the look of being in control, and of being the dominatrix that (even as a 10 year old) I knew she was. Rowr!

I mean look in her eyes. She knows she’s a man-eater. 

With that I hope I took the Baroness from Cobra agent, to total Succubus. 

I mean look at this face- would you trust her? Ah, hell no.