Each Friday, we'll be letting a different DC.com writer share what they'll be reading over the weekend and why you might want to check it out. Here's this week's suggestion for a perfect Weekend Escape! 
 

It’s the weekend, baby, which means it’s time for a DC vacation. We’ve done Metropolis, Gotham, Atlantis and even Paradise. Now hear me out: have you considered, perhaps, the worst place in the universe? Because Apokolips has never looked better than it does in Ngozi Ukazu’s Barda. For this Weekend Escape, look to the greatest escape artist among the gods—and, more importantly, his colossus of a wife. It’s time to make like Rihanna and find love in a hopeless place.
 

THE PREMISE:

Barda is the story we never got to see in Jack Kirby’s Mister Miracle, but one every fan of his Fourth World has filled in their minds. The romance between Highfather’s son raised in the bowels of Apokolips and the leader of Darkseid’s personal strike force is one which has been imagined many times, but one we only ever tend to see in hindsight—and always from the perspective of Scott Free. Barda presents us with not only the best look we’ve ever had at the other side of DC’s greatest cosmic love story, but the most cogent, approachable introduction to the Fourth World mythology of New Genesis and Apokolips since the old gods died.

LET’S TALK TALENT:

Like Jack Kirby before her, Ngozi Ukazu is a writer/artist double threat bringing her own vision of the Fourth World to life all herself. Unlike Jack Kirby, she does the inks and colors, too. So maybe we should call her a quadruple threat. Outside of Barda, Ukazu is best known for Check, Please!, her slice-of-life queer webcomic about a scrappy hockey team. (She was fully on that tip years before Heated Rivalry.) Soon, Ukazu will be returning to the Fourth World with a follow-up graphic novel, Orion, so now’s the best time to get on board before the sequel hits.
 

A FEW REASONS TO READ:

• KIRBY 101: Jack Kirby is rightly hailed by comic fans and historians as one of the greatest contributors to the medium in history, and his Fourth World mythology established in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, The New Gods, Mister Miracle and The Forever People form many of the bedrocks of DC’s cosmology to this day. But brimming with ideas and presented with a powerful bombasity, Kirby’s mythology can sometimes be difficult for modern readers to follow in the original text if they haven’t been briefed. Luckily, there’s Barda—a graphic novel written for the modern reader, formatted as the most cogent entry point into understanding the complex cosmic dynamics Kirby was laying down in the ’70s. Barda is the first book on the syllabus in your Kirby education.
   
• STRONG, STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS: One of the greatest assets of the DC Universe is its many strong female characters, usually to multiple definitions of the word. In terms of both actual physical strength and the sheer emotional depth of a woman raised in a culture of hate pursuing the absurd ideal of love, women in comics do not come stronger than Big Barda. If she somehow wasn’t one of your absolute favorite characters before, she soon will be.

• COMICS’ GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER TOLD, RETOLD: One of the most fun facts about Jack Kirby is that he not only revolutionized the superhero genre, but he’s actually responsible for the invention of romance comics in the western comic industry too. So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that with Mister Miracle and Big Barda, he also gave us the most powerful love story in the entire DC Universe. (All due respect to runners up like Superman and Lois, Batman and Catwoman, Harley and Ivy, and whoever your faves are. But you’ve all been outclassed by the woman based on Roz Kirby.) In Barda, Ngozi Ukazu brings us to the heart of that love story, and expresses it the most powerfully and clearly it’s ever been.
   
• EXPRESSIVE, EMOTIONAL ART: Sure, a queer hockey drama as the main point on your resume isn’t the most obvious signal that you’d be a great fit to take on the loftiest points of DC’s cosmology. But Ukazu has something that takes a lifetime for other artists to master: immaculate control over depiction of every shade and hue of the human condition. It’s in the expressiveness of Ukazu’s art that we find the dramatic highs and lows that a space opera like Kirby’s Fourth World demands, especially with a romance of longing, temptation and denial from the darkest of gods at its very center. Art is, as it goes without saying, what separates comics from prose, and Ukazu’s work to bring humanity to the superhuman figures of Barda is what makes this a graphic novel worth beholding.
   

WHY IT’S WORTH YOUR TIME:

Barda is worth your time because, if you’re anything like me, you’re going to find it’s not going to take up very much of your time at all. You’re going to get an excellent return ratio of time to satisfaction on this one. Because from the opening surprise reveal of Barda’s infatuation not with Scott, but Orion, this book will do everything in its power to prevent you from putting it down. And it will win. Rare is the man or god who can ever claim they bested Barda. She will conquer your heart just as easily.
 

Barda by Ngozi Ukazu is available in bookstores, comic shops, libraries and digital retailers as a softcover graphic novel. It can also be read in full on DC UNIVERSE INFINITE.

Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.