Boodikka
34 years ago - Boodikka is born on Bellatrix.
22 years ago - 12-year-old Boodikka begins training for the warrior caste.
15 years ago - 19-year-old Boodikka earns her rank in the elite warrior caste.
9 years ago - 25-year-old Boodikka is selected by the Guardian Scar as one of the Rogue Corps.
8 years ago - 26-year-old Boodikka betrays the Green Lantern Corps to Thaal Sinestro. She dies during his assault.
The extended membership of the Green Lantern Corp comes from a few different sources, but interestingly, those same sources all seem to happen in cycles. There are characters introduced more or less as background characters who have a line here and there but who gain popularity because of some quirk of their design, there are characters introduced in their own standalone stories whose role may or may not expand over time but who remain popular because that original story was so clever, and there are characters that are actually introduced with the intention of playing a role in the main continuity Green Lantern story. These different character sources repeat through the various eras of Green Lantern Corp mythology, resulting in a pretty deep roster of potential characters for us to go over.
Boodikka was introduced in the regular Green Lantern story, clearly intended to be a regularly recurring member, and for a while she really delivered, showing up with the sort of regularity that only happens when a character is a clear favorite of the writer. A very strange transition happened with her, however, evolving her into practically an entirely different character.
Boodikka was introduced in the regular Green Lantern story, clearly intended to be a regularly recurring member, and for a while she really delivered, showing up with the sort of regularity that only happens when a character is a clear favorite of the writer. A very strange transition happened with her, however, evolving her into practically an entirely different character.
Boodikka's Comic History
Boodikka first appeared in issue # 20 of the new 90's series of Green Lantern, as Hal was rebuilding the Green Lantern Corp. She arrived fully formed with the intensity of a freight train, a giant, screaming barbarian who wanted nothing more than the most violent fight she could find. She made appearances in the regular series as well as several spin-off books, always huge, always violent, and always clearly a character the creators loved to use. She was among the characters who tried to stop Hal during his assault on Oa, very specifically having her hand cut off before being left for dead.
Later, when Geoff Johns took all the characters from the particular issue of Hal's attack and brought them back as the 'Lost Lanterns, Boodikka weirdly came back with a completely different design that seemed to abandon everything that made her unique. Her massive muscular physique was gone, replaced by a much more generic woman-in-a-comic costume. She would continue to appear in comics of that era, but never really with that same original energy |
Our Boodikka Story
Boodikka actually fits really well into a particular role in our story. We're introducing the Rogue Lanterns, a Corp built by the Guardian Scar when he breaks away from the rest of the Guardians. This is specifically to give Guy Gardner his own route that makes him unique among the Lanterns, but for it to work we want to find characters that eventually would serve the Corp, but are first introduced as real outsiders. Boodikka is absolutely perfect for this.
Unlike the rest of the Rogue Lanterns, all of whom will go on to join the Corp proper after an attack by Sinestro and the Weaponers of Qward, we're actually going to go a step further with Boodikka, drawing from a very particular appearance in the animated movie Green Lantern: First Flight. I suppose I should include a spoiler warning (for a 10+ year old movie), but in it Boodikka is revealed to be a traitor to the corp, working with Sinestro. Boodikka doesn't really have a place to go in the story after her introduction, so even though this story beat is wildly out of left field, I really like this use of the character. |