Lucia von Bardas

Lucia von Bardas is a fictional character, a supervillain in comic books published by Marvel Comics.

Fictional character biography

Lucia von Bardas is a Latverian woman who used to teach at the University of North Carolina in the United States. After Victor von Doom was deposed as the leader of Latveria, the Americans helped von Bardas get elected as that country's prime minister. She then began publicly mending the ties between the two countries.^[1]

In truth, von Bardas was secretly funding American technology-based supercriminals through the Tinkerer. The United Nations espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D. uncovered this, but the U.S. president did not take action, believing that relationship was relatively good and that they could simply negotiate. S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury subsequently gathered a group of superheroes consisting of the Black Widow, Captain America, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Spider-Man, and Wolverine, as well as superpowered S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Daisy Johnson, for an undercover mission to overthrow the Latverian government and assassinate von Bardas. In Latveria, Johnson used her seismic powers to take down Castle Doom, apparently killing von Bardas.^[2]

Von Bardas survived to become a deformed cyborg. A year later she attacked Cage, leaving him in a coma, and was eventually defeated once more by Johnson.

She has recently resurfaced, having regained a far less deformed-looking body, working with the Red Ghost on a plan to use KGB super-spies placed in suspended animation to frame Doctor Doom for starting a nuclear war.^[3]

Powers and abilities

Lucia von Bardas is a cyborg whose abilities include flight and generation of a force field. Prior to this, she was a skilled diplomat. While at first her cybernetic implants were mostly external, currently she sports a more organic look, with only a cybernetic eye exposed, suggesting some degree of vision enhancements.

In other media

Television

• Lucia von Bardas appears in the animated television series Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes voiced by Venus Terzo. She is an assistant to the supervillain Doctor Doom, and revealed to be an android in the episode "Doomsday Plus One". She is destroyed by Invisible Woman (due to being tired of robots) while they are confronting Doctor Doom.^[4]
• Lucia von Bardas appears in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes voiced by Kristen Potter. In the episode "The Breakout" Pt. 1, she was seen representing Doctor Doom when she meets with A.I.M. to purchase stolen Stark-based technology. The meeting was crashed by Iron Man who defeat the A.I.M. Agents and Lucia von Bardas withdraws back to Latveria. She reappears in the episode "The Private War of Doctor Doom" where she was destroyed by the Black Panther.
• Lucia von Bardas is referenced in Season 4, Episode 10 of Arrested Development by Emmett Richter in reference to a planned Fantastic Four musical directed by Tobias Fünke with Lucille Bluth cast as the role.

Video Games

• Lucia von Bardas appears in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 voiced by Lani Minella. As a main villain on the first mission during the Secret War, she has been funding Tinkerer's supplying of technology to supervillains. Nick Fury and the heroes (the same line-up of the comics continuity minus Daisy Johnson but including Iron Man, Storm, Gambit, Iceman and the Fantastic Four) confronted her in order to get her to surrender, but her castle ends up exploding due to the heroes defeating one of Tinkerer's superpowered machines. She later attacks New York as a deformed cyborg. When the heroes (helped by Ms. Marvel) attack her on a ship, she starts to activate herself as a bomb taking Diamondback, Scorcher, Shocker, and Wizard along for the ride only to be defeated and deactivated by the heroes. In the PSP, Wii and PS2 versions however, she invades the New York streets directly. This eventually culminates in the superheroes following her to Times Square where she has planted a massive bomb (that has to be destroyed within 5 minutes). Upon the bomb's destruction, she collapses lamenting her failure to Latveria.

References