The Superhero Who Couldn't Save Herself: Barbara Gordon and the Politics of Miraculous Recovery

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 10:30:00 -0400

Barbara Gordon closed the Birds of Prey case file for the last time on a Tuesday evening in September 2011, twenty-three years after the Joker’s bullet had transformed her from Batgirl into something DC Comics would eventually decide was far more dangerous: a disabled hero who didn’t need fixing.

The notification glowed on Jill Pantozzi’s phone at 2:47 PM. DC Comics was calling her personally—not because she was a prominent comic journalist, not because she wrote for Newsarama, but because she was a wheelchair user with spinal muscular atrophy who had found herself reflected in Oracle’s story. “They knew I’d have a strong reaction to it,” Pantozzi would later recall.

Comics Culture on Notes from the Rabbit Hole

The Superhero Who Couldn't Save Herself: Barbara Gordon and the Politics of Miraculous Recovery