Barbara Gordon is one of my all time favorite comic book characters. She’s young at heart, she’s extremely intelligent and I admire that she’s a computer hacker. She cares immensely for Bruce and she was a great role model for disabled characters in comics. I’m enraged at how Barbara’s story is being told in multiple movies and games. I’m writing this post as a disappointed fan who knows Barbara deserves better.
I consciously thought about writing this post after I finished playing Arkham Knight on a Saturday night. As I play the game, I watch vividly as Barbara is kidnapped. I cruise through Gotham trying to find her because I’m sad she was kidnapped in the first place. After punching, kicking, and running Scarecrow’s men over in the Batmobile, I find Barbara. She seemingly “kills herself” after being exposed to Scarecrow’s gas, but she ends up being alive. Too bad she is only in the game for maybe an hour. I will say though that there is a fun part where Barbara will hack certain objects to help Batman in the finale, which was really epic!!
The Killing Joke is another story that really throws Barbara’s character in the trash. I understand it’s based off the Alan Moore comic and Barbara is paralyzed and stripped nude by the joker. It wasn’t necessary however, to add more footage of Barbara and Batman having sex. Like what? Batman has always been a guardian to Barbara and it was way too weird to throw this random sex scene in. Barbara is sexualized for no reason at all.
I hope in the future, Barbara Gordon gets a good film or TV series as I think she deserves it.
The Killing Joke is an abysmal portrayal of Barbara. I will say Arkham Knight did get better with how Barbara ended up helping out Batman. Hopefully, DC comics can see the hatred they have caused in the community and are willing to give me a decent Barbara Gordon story. It will be worth every penny.
Bizarre Brunette 
I don’t know much about her, but she was in the book Batman: No Man’s Land that I read a few months ago and she was easily my favourite character!
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I’ll have to read that because I have never heard of it!
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Wow…I didn’t even know that much about Barbara Gordon. But I do agree that they can explain how she came to be in a wheelchair without subjecting her to violence by a man. I’ll have to check some of the stories that you mentioned.
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Yeah let me know what you think! I just think that the Killing Joke is deeply disturbing and with the prevalence of violence against women in culture, they could alter Barbara’s back story.
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No Man’s Land is a great read – So is Officer Down – if you are looking for a good “Oracle” storyline. I prefer Babs as Oracle – I really don’t like the new 52 Batgirl – I’m hoping the Rebirth storyline return her to her former Batgirl.
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Thanks for the recommendations! I don’t mind the new 52 Batgirl, but I like Oracle a lot. It was representation for disabilities and I think what made her character fantastic was she was more than just her disability.
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I’ve honestly never really heard of Barbara. Interesting character.
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Yeah she definitely is. She comes from such a violent past which I’m not a huge fan of. I get why that happened to her, but at the same time with all of the violence against women in today’s culture, it just rubs me the wrong way.
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Wow… I’m reading Batgirl of Burnside, that version is fine. However, the Barbara you mention has suffered to much and in a gratuitous way. One of the reasons I don’t fancy DC too much is because of the treatment to characters like Barbara. I just hope they can portray her in the way she deserves soon.
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Yeah exactly. Which sucks because I love DC’c characters. However, they are very problematic. Also DC should hire more women because that may help the problem immensely.
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I don’t know much about her aside from what I’ve see on Gotham, which seems like they’ve totally got her character all screwed up on there too.
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