Gotham Calling

Leave it to comics to take a completely perfunctory and derivative concept and actually do loads of fascinating stuff with it. The best example I can think of is Batgirl, aka Barbara ‘Babs’ Gordon, who turned out to be one of the coolest characters hanging around Gotham City! And with the current run of Batgirl getting all sorts of praise, it’s worth looking back on her amazingly eventful butt-kicking career.

Barbara’s real world origin isn’t all that exciting. In the mid-1960s, editor Julie Schwartz was asked to develop a new female character that could be used in the Batman television show and the result was the librarian daughter of Commissioner James Gordon fighting crime in a batsuit. The name ‘Batgirl’ isn’t particularly inspired (she wasn’t even the first to be called that), but it does the job – she is like Batman, only younger and female. Also, like any character working in the Ancient Age of Alliteration, she was soon given plenty of fun nicknames, like Dominoed Daredoll, Darknight Damsel, or Daughter of Darkness. My personal favorite: the Flame-Haired Woman of the Shadows!

In-story, there was nothing too complex about Batgirl’s origin either. In fact, she showed up in Detective Comics #359 almost fully formed. In the second page of her debut issue, we learned that Barbara Gordon had already completed a PhD from Gotham State University and wore a brown belt at judo. Unlike Batman or Robin, there was no defining tragedy to motivate her – she just happened to be on her way to a masquerade ball when she bumped into Killer Moth and his gang trying to kidnap Bruce Wayne. After beating up some of the thugs, she decided she dug it and started doing it more often.

The nonchalantness of it all may have been one of the most refreshing things about her. Barbara wasn’t rich or traumatized and didn’t spend years training for the role (although she did mention a special protein diet and intensive exercise). In fact, this was her ‘I shall become a bat’ moment:

Detective Comics #359

The best scene in that issue, though? Robin’s reaction when he first sees Batgirl butting in on his turf:

Detective Comics #359

While there’s something inherently feminist about a badass female character that keeps sticking it to all the men who underestimate her, I should also point out that the early adventures of the Dominoed Daredoll took place in some totally ‘60s comics, with all that entails… including a predictable dose of over-the-top misogyny:

Detective Comics #371

‘Batgirl’s Costume Cut-Ups!’ is probably the worst offender, although it was written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Gil Kane, so impossible to completely dislike… That said, the plot basically revolves around the notion that Babs keeps screwing up in her crime-fighting because, as a woman, she’s too obsessed with her looks and gets easily distracted by her vanity:

Detective Comics #371

In Gardner Fox’s defense, the story’s sexist set-up does lead to a truly unexpected, if equally sexist, pay-off:

Detective Comics #371

The final punchline is that Batgirl actually knew what she was doing: she tore off her tights deliberately to give herself an excuse for showing off her leg and distract the crooks… in order to prove to Batman that her feminine side had its strong points too! So, yeah, make of that what you will.

In any case, Barbara Gordon did become increasingly fleshed out in the backup features of Detective Comics, where she was depicted as an intelligent and resourceful crime-fighter in her own right. Notably, Frank Robbins’ scripts in the early ‘70s pitted the Darknight Damsel against all the latest trends, with adventures about pop art, fashion-setting, the wigs craze, and youth activism, often with dated results that now seem more than a bit weird:

Detective Comics #407

In 1972, Barbara Gordon decided she was too frustrated with her reactionary role of punishing crime while failing to prevent it. She then managed to get herself elected to Congress on a youth-oriented populist platform of ‘Boot the rascals out – elect me!’

National politics may seem like a dramatic shift for a character who got such a kick out of busting heads, but hey, at least Babs became one of the most hardworking representatives in the House:

Batman Family #1

You go, Batgirl. You take back the power!

Now based in Washington, Congresswoman Barbara Gordon faced some of her most outlandish challenges in the pages of Batman Family, where in the first handful of issues alone she went against the Devil, a couple of rampaging dinosaurs, and the Spanish Inquisition… of the future! She also had a fling with Robin, the Teen Wonder.

Indeed, Washington was no more boring than Gotham City – there was always something going on, whether it was committee kickback investigations, a witch called Madame Zodiac trying to turn the Pentagon into a mystical pentagram, or an attack by the most catch-all of terrorist groups:

Detective Comics #483

Babs was so busy fighting kooks that it’s no wonder she neglected her campaigning, thus failing to get reelected for a second time at the end of the decade. She returned to Gotham City (and to the hellhole of mediocre Detective Comics backups) to work in a Humanities Research and Development Center.

And while the early 1980s is the period in Batgirl’s career where things get really bizarre (yes, I’m talking about the issues in which she turns part-snake), over in the main titles Barbara actually got some strong characterization. For example, around this time she played an instrumental role in supporting her father when he got close to a nervous breakdown:

Batman #346

My favorite ‘80s out-of-costume Barbara Gordon story, though, is from Detective Comics #533, by Doug Moench and Gene Colan. A gang of criminals tries to kill a hospitalized James Gordon and, although dizzy from sleeping gas, Babs manages to save her father by stumblingly carrying him across the hospital while drawing strength from a mantra he told her when she was a kid: ‘Look to the mountaintop.’ (This is from the era when Moench saturated all his comics with overlapping symbolism, so everyone in the story keeps looking up and down at stuff – it’s great!)

Babs’ Batgirl career came to an end in 1988. In the forgettable ‘The Last Batgirl Story,’ written by Barbara Randall, the Daughter of Darkness put away her costume. And in the unforgettable (for better or worse) The Killing Joke, written by Alan Moore, she was shot by the Joker and crippled for life.

The Killing Joke

Now stuck in a wheelchair, over the next couple of decades Barbara Gordon went on to become Oracle, a brilliant computer expert and information broker… and an awesome crime-fighter in her own right (the subject of a future post).

Yet if you desperately wanted to see a red-haired Batgirl kicking ass in the 1990s and early 2000s, then you could still do it in the alternative continuity of Gotham Adventures, where she became Batman’s regular partner:

Gotham Adventures #46

There were also the flashbacks. In 1997, DC published a prestige one-shot set in Babs’ past in an attempt to cash in on the not-yet-infamous Batman & Robin movie… Fortunately, writer Kelley Puckett didn’t have to use the film’s version of Barbara, who had been recast as Alfred’s niece, back from studying in ‘Oxbridge Academy,’ in what I assume was the British province of Portmanteau (geddit?), even though actress Alicia Silverstone totally kept her American accent, because that movie just didn’t give a damn!

Although it was gun-for-hire work, Puckett took the assignment with brio, and so did the art team of Matt Haley, Karl Kesel, and Kevin Somers. Their Batgirl one-shot is a neat comic, which even gave Babs a kind of retroactive payback by having her face the Joker years before his brutal attack on her:

Batgirl (1997)

Kelley Puckett followed this up with the dynamic two-parter ‘Folie a Deux’ (Legends of the DC Universe #10-11), also set during Barbara’s Batgirl days yet looking closer at her relationship with James Gordon (who in the meantime had been retconned as her adoptive father).

The most extensive reimagining of Babs’ early ventures into the world of costumed vigilantism, however, was the extremely fun and smart mini-series Batgirl: Year One, which remains one of the character’s highest points:

Batgirl: Year One #4

Honestly, I didn’t need more than that. Barbara Gordon was doing fine as Oracle in the main titles and other heroines had stepped in to take the Batgirl mantle, including fan favorites Cassandra Cain and, later, Stephanie Brown.

There was a lot of debate in 2011, when DC announced they were taking Barbara out of the wheelchair and putting her back in the Batgirl outfit. Me, I was apprehensive, to say the least. Here was a character who had evolved in so many interesting directions, yet DC wanted to push her back to her starting point (indeed, that was DC’s policy across the board in 2011). And as much as I love Gail Simone’s writing on other comics, what I read of the reboot didn’t convince me it was worth it…

I’m still not entirely convinced. With a densely packed yet lighthearted style, Cameron Stewart, Brenden Fletcher, and Babs Tarr have turned Batgirl into one of the hippest series around, integrating social media, hashtagtivism, and millennial sensibilities into their stories while populating them with one of the most diverse casts on the stands – but the comic would’ve probably worked just as well with Stephanie Brown in the main role.

Still, it does look as if the current team is willing to take Barbara Gordon into new and original places, which is what she deserves. And with its finger-on-the-pulse-of-pop-culture vibe, the series will hopefully reach a different kind of audience, introducing a new generation to the Flame-Haired Woman of the Shadows…

NEXT: The various faces of Catwoman.