Barbarella (comics)

History

Characters

• Barbarella: a young woman who travels from planet to planet and has numerous adventures, often involving sex. The aliens she meets often seduce her, and she also experiments with a "machine excessive" or "orgasmatron"..
• Professor Ping: a one-eyed old man who helps Barbarella.
• Pygar: a blind 'angel' guided by Barbarella, he is the last of the ornithanthropes.
• La Reine noire : a villainess who reigns in the town of Sogo, surrounded by a maze, on the planet Lythion.
• Lio: a brown-haired teenage girl saved by Barbarella who must save the town governed by her father in Les Colères du mange-minutes.
• Mado: a sex worker fembot whose "breakdown" Barbarella repairs.
• Narval: an "aiguiote" who comes from Citerne IV to complete his scientific research in Les Colères du mange-minutes.
• L'artiste: a self-portrait of Jean-Claude Forest. Named Browningwell in Semble Lune, he and Barbarella have a child together.

  Adaptations

• A Barbarella film adaptation was made in 1968, directed by Roger Vadim and starring Jane Fonda. Several remakes were considered with Bridget Fonda, Drew Barrymore, Sherilyn Fenn and Rose McGowan, the most recent of which was abandoned in 2009.
• A Barbarella musical based on the film was produced in 2004.
• A Barbarella TV series is in development with writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, and Martha De Laurentiis, widow of the film's producer Dino De Laurentiis, are all involved. In May 2013, Refn said to Vulture that they are still writing and are going back to the original comics. As of May 2013, no one has been cast for the series yet.
• Written by Mike Carey with art by Kenan Yarar, a new Barbarella comic book series has been released by Dynamite Entertainment as of December 2017, in conjunction with Barbarella's 55th anniversary. Jean-Marc Lofficier - longtime custodian of the Barbarella character - joins Carey as supervisor on the project.

  In popular culture

• 1980s British pop band Duran Duran takes its name from a character in the 1968 film Barbarella: Barbarella's mission in the film is to find a scientist named Durand Durand. In addition, the band's first single from 1997's Medazzaland is entitled "Electric Barbarella."
• Belgian pop singer and actress Lio took this stage name from a character in the Barbarella comic books.
• American rock band Clutch details a meet-up between the singer and Barbarella in which a Motel 6 is destroyed, among other exploits, in their song In Walks Barbarella.
• Scott Weiland's only single from his debut album 12 Bar Blues is titled Barbarella as an homage to the iconic character.