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Orange Is the New Bat: Barbara Gordon’s Life Behind Bars
Gotham City is a busy place, with a lot going down each and every week. In this monthly column, Joshua Lapin-Bertone helps you stay on top of it all by letting you know what you should be paying attention to within the Bat-Family…and why.
Barbara Gordon is a woman who has worn many hats. Along with her roles as Batgirl and Oracle, she’s been a librarian, lawyer, Congresswoman and member of the Justice League. Recently, the DC Universe heroine added a new title to the list—inmate #682281.
If you’ve been away from the Batman books for a while, you should know that things in Gotham have been even rougher than usual. Poison Ivy is mayor and Vandal Savage is the police commissioner, and as you can imagine, this has made the city a dangerous place for masked vigilantes. Law enforcement has been ordered to target Batman and his allies, and in Batman #9, they stormed Oracle’s clocktower and arrested Barbara Gordon.
You might be wondering how this could happen. After all, Babs is usually three steps ahead of everyone and knows how to mask her trail as Oracle. In this case, getting caught was part of her plan. The crimefighter hacker knows there is something suspicious going on in Vandal Savage’s Supermax Penitentiary and the only way to untangle the conspiracy is to become an inmate herself.
All of which gets us to Barbara Gordon: Breakout, a new series written by Mariko Tamaki and drawn by Amancay Nahuelpan. The comic follows Barbara as she tries to survive life behind bars and figure out who is killing off Gotham’s political prisoners. Barbara Gordon: Breakouthas captured my attention for a few reasons. First off, the creative team couldn’t be better, as Tamaki and Nahuelpan’s track record speaks for itself. Second, the premise of putting a member of the Bat-Family in prison is an interesting way to set it apart from other Gotham titles.
But most of all, Barbara Gordon: Breakout has electrified my brain because of how it uses and challenges Babs as a character. Any member of the Bat-Family could have gone undercover in the prison, but it wouldn’t have been as interesting as it is with Barbara. This is the type of story that feels like it could only be told with her.
When you look at Babs’ history, you see that she’s always a woman who has sought out knowledge and taken advantage of every resource around her. There’s a reason she became a librarian. Babs is well aware that knowledge is power and it’s one of the reasons she’s chosen to surround herself with books. Her career as Oracle is an extension of that, because what is the internet if not the world’s largest library? Whether it’s through books, the web or her superhero network, Barbara Gordon has always tapped into the world around her and used it to accomplish great things.
Becoming inmate #682281 has stripped her of that. As a prisoner, she is cut off from every network she once utilized. There are no computer mainframes in her cell, and now Barbara is forced to rely solely on her wits and skills. Luckily, she has those in spades.
Still, this new reality has put Barbara in a vulnerable position and forced her to depend on strangers. In Barbara Gordon: Breakout #2, she must place her trust in an inmate named Sparrow, realizing she has no other choice. Sparrow, in turn, takes advantage of Babs’ vulnerable state to drug her, keeping her bedridden and disoriented. In any other setting, Barbara would see Sparrow’s duplicity from a mile away, but stuck in Supermax, she doesn’t have many options.
It doesn’t help that Barbara is the daughter of Jim Gordon, a former police commissioner against whom many of the prisoners hold a grudge. Even if the nature of her relationship to the Bat-Family isn’t fully known, Barbara’s family name has put a target on her back, making her survival that much harder.
This is why Barbara Gordon is the only member of the Bat-Family you could truly tell this story with. It wouldn’t work the same way with Tim Drake or Cassandra Cain. Their challenges would be different, and they wouldn’t have to learn and grow the way Barbara does.
And that’s the thing, Barbara Gordon is someone who knows how to adapt. Just look at the way she rebuilt her life after she was shot by the Joker. Being confined to a wheelchair could have cut Babs off from the world, but instead she became Oracle, extending her reach even farther than she had as Batgirl. Now Babs is going to have to find new ways to build re I have a feeling she’ll do just fine
In other words, she has Vandal Savage right where she wants him.
Barbara Gordon: Breakout #3 by Mariko Tamaki, Amancay Nahuelpan and Tamra Bonvillain is now available in print and as a digital comic book. Get caught up on the series on DC UNIVERSE INFINITE.
Joshua Lapin-Bertone writes about TV, movies and comics for DC.com, is a regular contributor to the Couch Club and writes our monthly Batman column, “Gotham Gazette.” Follow him on Bluesky at @joshualapinbertone and on X at @TBUJosh.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Joshua Lapin-Bertone and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.
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