Baroness

Origin

Anastasia was born into an aristocratic family, she was raised as a spoiled child in a luxurious environment. Her brother was interested in humanitarian causes which eventually led to his murder. This event provided the motivation for Anastasia to change her outlook from bitter student radical to international terrorist. How she joined Cobra has never been explained, but upon joining the group she quickly progressed through the ranks, eventually making it to second-in-command behind Cobra Commander.

Creation

Baroness was created by Larry Hama and Don Perlin.The character was originally created as the primary female antagonist in the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero comic book series by Marvel, which was created to promote the similarly-named toy line from Hasbro, which Hama had a great deal of input in developing. Baroness appeared in the first issue in 1982.

Character Evolution

She has consistently been portrayed as one of the more ambivalent members of Cobra. She is rumoured to be one of the few people to actually know Cobra Commander true identity.

Major Story Arcs

One of her first missions for Cobra was to kidnap Dr. Adele Burkhart. Burkhart is a nuclear physicist and peace activist, known to some as Lady Doomsday. This brought Cobra into conflict with G.I. Joe for the first time. Not long after James McCullen Destro came into contact with Cobra for the first time, and a long standing partnership between the two took place as Destro’s Military Armaments Research Systems (MARS) corporation became the main supplier for Cobra’s need for military grade weapons.

A relationship soon developed between the two. She was later severely burned in a Cobra night attack on Washington D.C. though she would receive plastic surgery to return to her regular appearance.

Skills and Abilities

Baroness is skilled in a number of firearms and is also a skilled pilot both in the air and on the ground. She is also a cunning tactician who is responsible for many of the planned atrocities by Cobra.

Other Versions

Battle Action Force

In the Battle Action Force continuity, Anna Von Stromberg was born into a wealthy family, but was disenchanted with her aristocratic family’s capitalistic lifestyle. She joined a small terrorist group and led several attacks, including some on her family’s own holdings, but this was just to gain enough of a reputation to join Cobra. She took on the name The Baroness.

Danger Girl/G.I. Joe

After the acquisition of the Danger Girl characters by IDW it was decided to first launch the characters under the IDW banner with a crossover with one of the major properties at IDW, G.I. Joe (as they are owned by the same company it seems possible that these characters exist in the same continuity, though this is never confirmed.) The series starts off with a dog chase involving Scarlett and Flint and they are soon shot down. It is revealed that they were providing escort for a shipment of rediscovered missiles with great destructive power.

They are soon shot down though and the missiles are taken by Cobra , who also take the two prisoners. Once in Cobra custody they come across Abbey Chase who is acting undercover, though the two members of G.I. Joe do not know this. Elsewhere the American president arrives to the USS Flagg and informs the Joe team to stand down and to not seek to free their teammates. General Flag orders them to stand down. The remaining female members. (Cover Girl, Lady Jaye and Jinx) come up with a plan where they will contact the Danger Girl team (Cover Girl had previously met Johnny Barracuda).

The team shows up and exposes the U.S. president as Zarana in disguise. Soon enough it is revealed that the Danger Girl team already has an operative in place and she informs them of the plan. Firefly is to head to Moscow and detonate one of the missiles while Major Bludd is to go to Beijing to detonate another. Three teams head out, one to each of the two cities and the third to the Cobra base. By now Abbey is under suspicion of Baroness, Cobra Commander and Destro and is captured by Zartan when she attempts to free Scarlett and Flint.

While they are trying to escape a team of Low Light , Snake Eyes and Stalker arrive to free them. Meanwhile in Beijing a team of Jinx, Johnny Barracuda and Sonya Savage stop Major Bludd while a team of Sydney Savage , Cover Girl and Roadblock stop Firefly. It is soon revealed that there is another missile which is headed for the homing beacon which Zarana has placed on the USS Flagg. Silicon Valerie , Duke and Lady Jaye quickly deal with it. Meanwhile at the Cobra base Storm Shadow has arrived to stop the Joes and he engages Snake-Eyes in combat. Eventually this group is also able to escape, while blowing up the base and they are all reunited on the USS Flagg.

Other Media

Baroness has shown up in numerous forms of media, though generally speaking her appearances there are based off of the generic base G.I. Joe character and not the comic book version. In G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra she was played by Sienna Miller.