Celebrating 50 Tumultuous Years of Batgirl

Barbara Gordon wasn’t the first Bat-Lady, preceded by glamour-girl Kathy Kane, shoe-horned into the comic largely, it’s believed, to dispel any gay subtext canny readers (meaning everyone) might have spotted in Bruce Wayne/Dick Grayson relationship. She had a niece named Betty who would herself become Bat-Girl, an on-again, off-again girlfriend for Robin, proving once and for all that nothing at all weird was going on up at Wayne manor. Just a couple of dudes who like working out together just as much as they like holding hands with their girlfriends.
Batwoman and Bat-Girl had both sort of faded away by the time the cultural phenomenon that was the 1966 Batman television series was in full swing. Though the show was a blockbuster early on, the novelty faded quickly, and executive producer William Dozier was looking to pump some new life into it for the third season. Though the exact sequence of events is a bit hazy, legendary editor Julius Scwartz, running the Bat-books at the time, tasked artist Carmine Infantino with creating a design for a female crimefighter, possibly at Dozier’s suggestion.

The character debuted in 1967’s Detective Comics #359, “The Million-Dollar Debut of Batgirl,” and as a new regular in the third season premiere of the TV show, where she was played by Yvonne Craig, just a few months later. On TV, Barbara Gordon is kidnapped by the Penguin, who has plans to marry her in order to secure immunity as a son-in-law of the police commissioner. Which I guess is how the law works, sure? She escapes with a little help from Alfred before revealing the fabulous (truly) purple lamé costume hidden away in her apartment. Joining Batman and Robin, she helps defeat the Penguin and secures Alfred’s agreement to keep her identity secret from even the Dynamic Duo.
In her comic debut, Barbara creates the Batgirl costume for a charity masquerade ball, but leaps into action when she sees Killer Moth attacking Bruce Wayne, giving him a time to escape. Naturally, Batman shows up moments later, and the two make introductions. Though Batman initially dismisses her help, not wanting to have a girl underfoot to worry about, she proves herself against the villain by the end of the first story. Bats welcomes her help with a surprisingly encouraging: “She doesn’t have to take a backseat to anybody!”
(Her jerk of a dad wonders aloud why Babs can’t be a bit more like Batgirl, apparently not satisfied with having a brilliant, beautiful librarian as a daughter.)
Though the TV series only lasted another year, Batgirl ultimately became the regular backup feature in Detective Comics and made various appearances in other books. In the beginning, her alter-ego held a doctorate in library science and ran the city’s library system. In the ’70s, she runs for Congress, winning a seat and occasionally acting as Batgirl in Washington. She wasn’t just a career woman, she was a career woman/congressional representative/crime-fighting superhero (a real Mary Tyler Moore type, that Babs). In that era of mainstream comics, there was really no other character with as much feminist cred (even Wonder Woman was struggling through a rough patch, with many a lackluster story revolving around her doomed love for Steve Trevor).

Unfortunately, the future wasn’t nearly as bright. A mid-’80s reboot saw her become the adopted daughter of Commissioner Gordon, which was fine, but not so fine was her supporting role in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke. As an examination of the relationship between Batman and the Joker, the book is seminal and has much to recommend it. It’s Barbara’s role that’s the problem, a big one, and even Moore has expressed regret over it—the Joker shows up at her apartment, shoots and paralyzes her before using bloody and naked pictures of her to try to drive Jim Gordon insane. The violence is over the top, but, more importantly, Barbara’s plight is used entirely to drive the narrative of the male characters. With one shot, she goes from one of the DCU’s most empowered female heroes to a victim.

You can’t keep a Batgirl down, though. About a year later, the mysterious information broker Oracle appeared in the pages of Suicide Squad. Writers Kim Yale and John Ostrander ultimately revealed the disabled Barbara to have parlayed her genius-level intellect and facility with computers to recreate herself as a one-woman think tank working for the heroes. She later founds the Birds of Prey team, interacting with every corner of the DCU for over two decades—with some help from writer Gail Simone, who was famously critical of Babs’ treatment The Killing Joke and who helped make Oracle a world-class hero. During those years, other women took up the Batgirl mantle, including a mute former assassin Cassandra Cain and college student Stephanie Brown. Both hugely important characters in their own rights, neither had the impact of Barbara.

Barbara wasn’t done with controversy, though: DC’s New 52 reboot starred a Barbara whose paralysis had been cured via experimental surgery. On one hand, the original and most iconic Batgirl was back out kicking butt, on the other, mainstream comics no longer had a disabled hero with anywhere near the stature of Oracle. Softening the blow, again, was Gail Simone, brought on to tell the new adventures of Batgirl. More recently, a soft reboot from the team of Cameron Stewart, Brenden Fletcher, and Babs Tarr gave Barbara Gordon a young, fresh coat of paint, moving Batgirl out of the shadows and into Gotham’s trendy Burnside neighborhood. At 50 years old, college student Barbara has never been younger, finally pushing aside the events of The Killing Joke in favor of friends, online dating, and a sly sense of humor that continues to emphasize Barbara’s brains as well as her brawn.

These days, Hope Larson, Rafael Albuquerque, and Dave McCaig have picked up on the sunnier vibe while sending Batgirl on a world tour in their latest book, Beyond Burnside. The idea of a “hip, trendy” Batgirl sounds awful (a “hip, trendy” version of anything is usually awful), but the bright colors and youthful energy have made the book an antidote to the (often unnecessarily) dark storytelling of modern superhero books.
Batgirl’s course over the last half-century has not run steady by any means, but she’s never met a super-villain, nor a misguided writer, whom she couldn’t triumph over in the end. As a fighter with brains, a single girl with a career, a former Congresswoman, and our most important disabled hero (for a time), Barbara Gordon and Batgirl have been knocking heads and breaking down barriers since 1967.
Who’s your favorite Batgirl?