Tom is with us today to talk about Batgirl, The Killing Joke, and how seemingly disrespectful editorial mandate can be to established quality lore.

Now, with that rule es­tab­lished, there are a very few ex­cep­tions. Sometimes, char­ac­ter changes are un­done, but some­times, they so fun­da­men­tal­ly al­ter the char­ac­ter that the im­pact is kept around. Barbara “Batgirl” Gordon was one of those char­ac­ters for a very long time.

Way back in 1988, one of the industry’s best and most con­tro­ver­sial writ­ers changed Batgirl in such a way that it ac­tu­al­ly made the char­ac­ter be­come more mean­ing­ful than ever. It was the one-shot “The Killing Joke” that made Batgirl be­come more than Batman’s fe­male side­kick. With one pan­el, Alan Moore turned Batgirl into some­thing more. (Note: User just­cailen on Reddit helped point out that it was Kim Yale and John Ostrander that brought The Oracle to life as a char­ac­ter af­ter Barbara was shot.) A sin­gle gun­shot from the Joker took Barbara’s abil­i­ty to walk, as well as leav­ing per­ma­nent psy­cho­log­i­cal scars. I’m not even go­ing to touch the rape im­pli­ca­tions you see float­ing about. Needless to say, Joker did some rather scary and messed up shit.

DC hit some­thing there that I re­al­ly don’t think they re­al­ized at the time. A promi­nent su­per­hero was now par­a­lyzed from the waist down. Instead of re­tir­ing the char­ac­ter, DC in­stead went a new route: A dis­abled su­per­hero. Confined to a wheel­chair, Batgirl be­came Oracle, the in­for­ma­tion cen­ter of not just Batman’s op­er­a­tions, but her own and even those of the en­tire god­damned Justice League.

Let me tell you, be­ing dis­abled, that was DC’s best move with the char­ac­ter. Aside from char­ac­ters with men­tal dis­abil­i­ty (who are of­ten psy­chot­ic vil­lains, I might add), there aren’t many dis­abled peo­ple putting on the tights. Oracle changed that, and proved that in spite of such prob­lems, there’s still more worth to a per­son. It takes a lot to be the info cen­ter for a good chunk of the planet’s su­per­heroes. Yet Barbara did it all, even form­ing and lead­ing her own team, the Birds of Prey, who had their own tit­u­lar com­ic for a good while.

There was hope, that no mat­ter how bro­ken our minds and bod­ies might be, that we can still find a place in the world. When you’re bro­ken and fucked up, that lit­tle bit of hope is a dan­ger­ous god­damn thing. The kind of thing that can move moun­tains like the Hulk, or just give you the strength to deal with the day to day.

From the re­ac­tions over the years, I wasn’t alone in how I saw Batgirl. In fact, I have a friend who is dis­abled as well, and one of the big things that con­nect­ed us was a mu­tu­al love of Birds of Prey, and Barbara Gordon in par­tic­u­lar. Barbara was a hero for the rest of us, who don’t al­ways have all our work­ing parts any­more.

As I said, in comics change is tem­po­rary. Sadly, Barbara Gordon fell vic­tim not to the Joker’s bul­let, but to the dark gods of ed­i­to­r­i­al man­date. Apparently, noth­ing is good enough to just be left the alone, right?

Hand-waving 23 en­tire years of char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment for some (most­ly off-panel) bull­shit, DC took a dis­abled icon and just put her right back into the shad­ow of the Bat. After some ex­per­i­men­tal surgery and heavy re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion that would have tak­en years of real-time (yet only took a short mini-series), Oracle was un­made into Batgirl, again.

What this felt like can only be de­fined by one word: Betrayal. DC be­trayed the peo­ple who came to see Barbara as their hero. The peo­ple who, like Barbara her­self, had to strug­gle with dis­abil­i­ty. That con­nec­tion was hand-waved away. Let’s not even touch the fact that The Killing Joke is one of DC’s most well-known comics, and un­do­ing the ef­fects of such a mas­ter­ful piece of sto­ry­telling is near­ly a crime in and of it­self.

At sev­er­al points in the 23 years Barbara spent in a wheel­chair, DC had said they want­ed her to re­main an icon to the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty. Since she was pop­u­lar with an under-represented de­mo­graph­ic, they wouldn’t just “cure” Barbara. That is the re­al­i­ty at the core of this is­sue. No one can hand-wave and make an­oth­er per­son “whole” again. It cer­tain­ly didn’t work for Christopher Reeve, and he was fuck­ing Superman!

We learn to be­come whole in spite of what has been done to us. We don’t need to be society’s idea of what con­sti­tutes “nor­mal”. Yet DC felt the need to take the hero we want­ed and de­served, and pushed her right back in the shad­ow of Bruce Wayne. All for flag­ging sales.

It’s four years that Barbara has been walk­ing, again. Not only do I feel like I no longer have a hero that rep­re­sents me, my friends, and the life I have to lead; I feel like an “out­sider” whose hob­by has hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly said that the dis­abled out­siders aren’t worth hav­ing a hero.

At least we still have Professor Xavier, right?

What, he’s dead, right now?

Fucking Cyclops.