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One especially sexist thing about Barbara’s original character sheet: she was only allowed to be a brown belt in judo, just to make sure she wasn’t seen as being totally capable. You’re right in that there was a lot of improvement from the original idea, but there was still a lot of bad mixed in with the good (the handbag, as well).

I’ve often said that Ostrander’s transition of her into Oracle is the greatest character salvage job in comics history, as he found a great role for Babs to occupy that the DCU was lacking, and also put her into the right place at the right time when control of information became more important that control of a physical battlefield. It’s why I throw up in my mouth a little every time some overly-nostalgic DC person says that they’d rather have her as Batgirl than as Oracle… anyone can fill in as Batgirl, but Babs works best as Oracle.

Heck, even the usage of the Calculator as the “evil Oracle” worked as a nice bit of character salvage.

Ostrander is a genius at character salvage. Deadshot, Bronze Tiger, Nemesis, and even Captain Boomerang were pulled from obscurity or the lame pile and made interesting. I always liked that when it was time to move a character out of Suicide Squad, that he found a place for them in Firestorm or Spectre. It really shows that you don’t have to “build new” every time.

I bet it’s actually easier to salvage a character, than to build a new one. Pick the pieces you like, and replace whatever you don’t, and you’re good to go. You don’t have to justify their existence.

That’s true – there’s very few comics characters without at least some interesting ideas to them. Look at what Peter David did with Aquaman as an example: he took the stuff that could potentially be used for an interesting ongoing series (the more mythological side of the character, the royalty aspect) and dropped the things which didn’t really play any more (basically, any character trait emphasized on Superfriends). Suddenly, you had an Aquaman book that sold reasonably well for quite a few years, which no one would have ever predicted considering the character’s past history.

In all honesty, I’ve always found “distaff” heroines like Batgirl inherently sexist to a certain degree. They seem to be an unpleasant holdover from the bad old days when a woman’s identity was primarily going to be an extension of a man’s, usually either a father, husband, or perhaps a boss/mentor figure. Ergo, Barbara Gordon doesn’t come up with her own heroic identity– she becomes a spin-off of “Batman”, identifying herself as an extension of him. Oracle is such a better character (in part because her identity is strictly her own) that it’s almost hard to believe.

Barbara Gordon is not the only crimefighter in Congress. In FireStorm there is a senator who is also a superheroine (Firehawk?).

Lauren

Hmm, I hadn’t realized they had released this showcase presents. It sounds like it would pretty interesting, maybe I will pick it up after i finish the Elongated Man volume (which has been quite enjoyable so far.)

The Batman Family series showed her as Batgirl, while still a Congresswoman. And there was an issue of Detective where Jim finds out her identity. As much as I like her as Oracle, I would prefer to see Babs as Batgirl.

As stated above, right when she we becoming a more well rounded character her appearances ended.

I often read fans saying she is better as Oracle, and as Batgirl was a cookie cutter character, but so was everyone else in the Silver Age. She did not have the benefit of appearing in edgier, more character driven stories in the 80′s, like many other characters did. So there is a distinct cutoff between the 2 characters of Batgirl and Oracle.

And who can forget the ad for the Killing Joke, in the back of the Last Batgirl Story…

You know… I’m going to Man Up and tell it like it is!

I like Barbara Gordon as Batgirl and over all other Batgirls that ever were, are or will be because she is the Sexiest!

Blame Yvonne Craig or Don Newton:

I don’t care!

I am man, hear me roar, In numbers too big to ignore,

And I’m way too hungry to settle for chick food!

-ahem-

What I was saying is that Barbara Gordon’s reasons for becoming Batgirl were completely altruistic. She was brainy but very feminine. She could kick ass but also be vulnerable. That’s important because unlike a certain Amazon, the guys in her life didn’t have to play the role of damsel in distress.

Oh, well.

The second Batgirl can definitely be seen as progress from the original; she, too, pursues criminals “for kicks”, but she’s a lot more competent than Betty Kane was. (Although the writers still enjoy tossing in some rampant sexism, such as Gardner Fox’s infamous “Batgirl’s Costume Cut-Ups” story where Batgirl keeps letting criminals escape while she stops to fix her make-up.) The subtext is no longer, “Women should stop fighting crime and settle down with a good husband,” but “Some women feel like there’s a void in their life, and they fill it with beating up the forces of evil.”

That sounds like an awesome, hilarious story. It’s too bad comics are too PC and take themselves way too seriously to ever have fun like that again. One of the few DC stories I liked pre-Crisis was Brave & Bold 100 where Robin, Green Arrow and Black Canary have to race against time to save Batman’s life and Robin is bitching because Black Canary is along and is a woman. Sure enough a sting operation goes down and Canary isn’t where she’s supposed to be. Robin goes to a hair salon and sure enough there Canary is getting her hair done instead of doing the sting. Her excuse: her hair got wet and she had to leave her post to get it dried. Awesome stuff…

Wow, certain writers really did’t like the idea of strong, competent female characters at all, do they?

It should be noted that Batgirl was created by the ‘Sixties television series rather than DC. The show also revitalised Catwoman, who hadn’t been seen in a comic for many years.

This should surprise no-one. The TV series aspired to capture the zeitgeist of the period, and they would have seen how fashionable lady crime-fighters had become – The Girl from Uncle, Emma Peel, etc.

DC on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice that they were living in the ‘Sixties until about 1969.

Wow, certain writers really did’t like the idea of strong, competent female characters at all, do they?

Another thing could be that pre-feminism, a lot of women were really different than women of today and those depictions reflect that.

What seems to be the case to me in these early stories (that I’ve read, anyway) is that since they were written explicitly for little boys, the women were often played for comedy. Especially in early comedy, the two genders were meant to elicit very different types of humor, and women striving to do something important in a comedy were usually undone by ditziness or vanity (as per most I Love Lucy episodes).

These may have had to do with certain historic perceptions of women, but most women were actually expected to work very hard and be successful at domestic tasks (which demanded both skill and tenacity to achieve back in the day), so I’m sure part of the “joke” was its own inaccuracy. Female roles in comedy changed tremendously during the feminist movement, and at the same time superhero stories stopped incorporating a lot of humor into their stories. So, what now looks like cruel sexism is really just a very dated joke in a very dated type of story.

Also, I think it’s not that different than the current vogue in entertainment, where it’s the guy who is clueless and can barely tie his shoes together or watch the kids on his own without it turning into an absolute fiasco.

Well, it’s certainly true that the classic male comedy stereotype of the well-intentioned but stupid bungler hasn’t changed much over the years (and in fact, modern comedy writing often inclines toward making male characters as unbelievably stupid as possible when using this type). The usual female comedy contrast to that role is usually something of a very competent “straight man” who helps straighten out the mess and usually forgives the bungling male. I think this goes all the way back to the Honeymooners, and was the role Desi Arnaz played in I Love Lucy (since that was essentially a comedienne’s show).

In older comedies she was often played off as a long-suffering wife (or husband, in Desi Arnaz’s case), and in modern comedies often ends up portrayed as somehow intrinsically more intelligent or reliable than the man. Talking this over with a friend who’s a writer, he’s pointed out that most of these portrayals are written themselves by men, and men often of the age that either they or many acquaintances may have been raised by struggling single mothers. He’s go an interesting theory that since comedy often comes out of personal suffering, this idealization of the new “female breadwinner” role in comedy may also be an implicit criticism of, and anger toward, absent or negligent father figures.

Theories of the why aside, the highly stupid/incompetent male is classic inversion-of-expectations humor, just shaded against modern real-life expectations. The modern male is usually expected to be something of a “superdad” who can fulfill traditional breadwinner and “handyman” roles while also being as much of a nurturing/involved parent as the mother and, if necessary a fully capable housekeeper and meal provider. It’s an incredibly high standard and one that can be reasonably intimidating. Yet there are plenty of fathers I’ve known in my time who pull this off, too, and then happily laugh at bungling buffoon males in comedies.

Don’t forget that Kim Yale, along with John Ostrander, was also responsible for Barbara Gordon becoming Oracle.

It’s very different, since there aren’t centuries of male subjugation to compare the characters to, T.

I would point out that by no stretch can Batgirl be considered a “pre-feminist” character; by 1966, the Women’s Liberation movement was in full swing, and had already made a major impact on pop culture. Comics simply moved a bit behind the times in terms of their depiction of female characters. The story in question was already outdated as it was published.

To some extent, this isn’t surprising; Gardner Fox was 55 when he wrote those stories, and probably took some time to adjust to the social changes sweeping the nation. He and the story are an artifact of their times, and should be viewed as such. But as an artifact of my time, I’m glad to see this kind of story go the way of many other sexist tropes.

It’s one thing to have a “dumb” character to play as a comic foil in a story; they can be either gender, even today (guys, of course, notice the dumb guys and gals notice the dumb gals.) But Babs is supposed to be intelligent. The writer knows she’s too smart to stop chasing a criminal to fix her make-up, the reader knows it too, and so the story rings as false…and false in a very sexist way.

“The writer knows she’s too smart to stop chasing a criminal to fix her make-up, the reader knows it too, and so the story rings as false…and false in a very sexist way.”

Another problem with that story is that Barbara does something sensible at one point (fixes her mask when it’s knocked askew) and it’s presented as horrible feminine vanity which leads to her being a failure. If Batman’s masked got knocked askew, he’d stop to fix it a) so he could see through it properly and b) to protect his secret identity, which was a major consideration at the time, after all. It wouldn’t be portrayed as either a personal failing on his part or a failing of his gender. (It’s also disappointing because if you read it in the Showcase volume, it’s around the fourth story chronologically, and after a few stories where she’s been portrayed as competent, it’s a pretty abrupt shift of character.)

“I think this goes all the way back to the Honeymooners, and was the role Desi Arnaz played in I Love Lucy (since that was essentially a comedienne’s show).”

I’d trace it at least as far back as “Fibber McGee and Molly,” which started in 1935.

It’s very different, since there aren’t centuries of male subjugation to compare the characters to, T.

yeah, but i don’t really believe there are centuries of female subjugation either, at least in the West.

It’s very different, since there aren’t centuries of male subjugation to compare the characters to, T.

Oh, yeah? Then, what do you call Marriage!??!

-bada bum!-

Thank, you. Thank, you! I’m gonna be here all week folks, so I hope to see you again; and don’t forget to tip your waitresses! …err… person type?