Creation Story
Batgirl is the rare Bat-family character who was designed backwards, from a television schedule toward a comic. That origin is usually told as a piece of trivia. It is closer to the whole explanation of why the 1967 version stuck and the 1961 version did not.
By the mid-1960s DC had already tried a girl in a bat costume and thrown her away. Betty Kane arrived in 1961 as Bat-Girl, hyphenated, attached to Batwoman rather than to Batman, and editor Julius Schwartz cleared both of them out of the books as, in the wording Wikipedia’s history uses, outdated and unrealistic. Whatever else the 1961 character was, she was a sidekick’s sidekick, and nobody at DC treated her as load-bearing.
The 1967 character was commissioned. By the standard published account, William Dozier, producing the ABC Batman series, asked Schwartz for a female counterpart who could debut in print and on screen at the same time, and suggested she be Commissioner Gordon’s daughter. Carmine Infantino drew the concept. Dozier and producer Howie Horowitz took the artwork and optioned the character in a bid to sell ABC a third season.
Two things follow from that commission. The first is that Barbara had a real job in the fiction from page one: she is Gordon’s daughter, which wires her into the existing cast rather than hanging her off an outer branch of it the way Betty Kane hung off Batwoman. The second is that she was commissioned to headline rather than to assist, which is the structural difference between her and the 1961 Bat-Girl.
Yvonne Craig then played her on ABC within a year of the comic, which is the part that decided the outcome. Betty Kane got a handful of Batwoman stories. Barbara Gordon got a network audience.
First Bat-Girl (Betty Kane): Batman #139
Batman #139 is cover-dated April 1961, written by Bill Finger with art by Sheldon Moldoff. It introduces Betty Kane as Bat-Girl, spelled with a hyphen, and the hyphen is the cleanest way to keep the two characters apart in a search result.
Betty is Kathy Kane’s niece. Kathy Kane is Batwoman, and Betty is built one rung further down: a sidekick attached to a sidekick-adjacent heroine, deducing her aunt’s identity and being trained by her. Her relationship is with Batwoman, not with Batman.
Julius Schwartz removed both from the Batman line. The reason recorded in the character’s published history is that they read as outdated and unrealistic. Whatever sat behind that judgement, the effect was that DC had already built and discarded a girl in a bat costume before Barbara Gordon existed. Betty resurfaced much later as Flamebird, introduced in that identity in Secret Origins Annual #3 in 1989, and her name is often rendered Bette Kane in modern continuity.
None of that makes her a version of Barbara Gordon. Different creators, different mentor, different name spelling, different decade, no continuity of identity between them. Betty Kane is the first character to use a Bat-Girl name. Barbara Gordon is the first Batgirl.
First Appearance of Barbara Gordon as Batgirl: Detective Comics #359
Detective Comics #359 is cover-dated January 1967 and went on sale November 29, 1966. Gardner Fox wrote it, Carmine Infantino drew it, Julius Schwartz edited it, and the cover is Infantino and Murphy Anderson. The story is “The Million Dollar Debut of Batgirl!”.
The debut does something most first appearances do not: it introduces the civilian and the costume in the same issue. Barbara Gordon has no prior appearances to trace back to. She arrives as Commissioner Gordon’s daughter, makes a Batgirl costume for a masquerade ball, and runs into Killer Moth and his Moth-Men going after Bruce Wayne. The issue is also Killer Moth’s first Silver Age appearance, which gives the book a second collector claim.
What makes the debut hold up is that Barbara’s decision is hers. The costume is a party outfit until she uses it, and she keeps using it. Six decades of Batgirl stories rest on that: she is the Bat-family member who was never anyone’s ward, sidekick, or project.
For collectors, Detective Comics #359 is an unusually clean Silver Age key: the character and the identity arrive in one book, with no cameo issue in front of it and no argument about which printing counts. Every complication on this page is about which Batgirl, not about which issue.
Batman #139 vs Detective Comics #359
The disambiguation in one table:
| Batman #139 | Detective Comics #359 | |
|---|---|---|
| Cover date | April 1961 | January 1967 |
| Character | Betty Kane | Barbara Gordon |
| Name as printed | Bat-Girl, hyphenated | Batgirl, no hyphen |
| Creators | Bill Finger, Sheldon Moldoff | Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino |
| Attached to | Batwoman (Kathy Kane), her aunt | Nobody. She recruits herself |
| Civilian identity | Batwoman’s niece | Commissioner Gordon’s daughter |
| Still in use | No. Reworked as Flamebird in 1989 | Yes. The name has passed to three more women and back |
| Collector shorthand | First Bat-Girl | First Batgirl |
Both statements are true at once: Betty Kane’s Bat-Girl came first, and Barbara Gordon’s Batgirl is the first appearance of Batgirl. They are not competing answers to one question, the way a cameo and a full appearance compete. They are answers to two different questions that happen to sound alike out loud.
The practical test is the hyphen. If a listing says Bat-Girl and 1961, it is Betty Kane. If it says Batgirl and 1967, it is Barbara Gordon and it is the book almost every buyer is looking for.
First Appearance as Oracle: Suicide Squad #23
Alan Moore, Brian Bolland, and John Higgins published Batman: The Killing Joke in 1988. The Joker shoots Barbara, and the injury ends her career as Batgirl. Moore wrote her as a device inside a Joker story, and the choice has been argued about ever since.
John Ostrander and Kim Yale answered it. In Suicide Squad #23, cover-dated January 1989, Barbara returns as Oracle, an information broker running intelligence from a wheelchair for people who have no idea who she is. The choice is a direct rebuttal: rather than retiring the character DC had just maimed, Ostrander and Yale made her the DC Universe’s central node.
It worked better than anyone planned. Oracle was more important to DC’s shared continuity than Batgirl had ever been, and by the 1990s she had her own field team in the Birds of Prey. For a generation of readers, Oracle is the definitive Barbara Gordon and Batgirl is her backstory.
The Oracle period held for more than twenty years, which is why the 2011 return to the cape is still argued over. DC gained a Batgirl and lost Oracle.
First Ongoing Series in the Title Role: Batgirl #1 (2011)
Barbara went forty-four years without a monthly of her own. After the 1967 debut she guest-starred, then picked up a semi-regular Batgirl backup strip in Detective Comics beginning with #392, cover-dated October 1969. The Batgirl title that launched in 2000 belonged to Cassandra Cain, and the 2009 relaunch belonged to Stephanie Brown.
Batgirl #1, cover-dated November 2011 and on sale September 7, 2011, is the first ongoing series with Barbara Gordon in the title role. Gail Simone wrote it, Ardian Syaf drew it, and it launched as part of DC’s New 52 line-wide relaunch, which restored her mobility and put her back in the costume. The run reached 52 issues before ending in 2016.
Restoring her mobility is the part of the New 52 that readers fought about, because it took Oracle out of the DC Universe to put Batgirl back in. It is also the version that stuck: the mobile, cape-wearing Barbara is the one Gotham Knights made a playable lead in 2022.
Barbara’s thread runs through most of the first-appearance archive here. Commissioner Gordon is her father, Nightwing has been her partner on and off for decades, the Birds of Prey were built around her, and she is one of the load-bearing members of the Batman Family. For how first appearances get sorted when two characters share a name, see the true first appearance guide.
