barbara gordon

The world of comic books is full of debates as to who is the strongest, the fastest, the toughest or just the plain best, but it's often hard to come to a decisive idea about who is the greatest in their field. In MVP, we want to know which character stands head and shoulders above their peers and contemporaries, and we need your help to do it. Over the past twenty years, the Birds of Prey have gone from a two-person operation to a sprawling network of operatives highlighting some of the most efficient, effective and iconic female superheroes. What we want to know is, out of the team's surprisingly large history of members, which ones make the top ten?

When I first jumped into the Batbooks early into the New 52, I was disappointed to learn that Barbara Gordon, my favorite superheroine, hadn’t had many love interests, and even less showing up in the new canon. How did a character so awesome, who had been around for so long, have so few romances over the years? I had started brainstorming who I would pair her with, and around that time I checked out the event comic Death of the Family. In the last issue, the Batfam had stopped the Joker, but they were all still coming down from the Joker toxin. While they were all sitting in a pool of water, grinning painfully against their wills, there was this one detail towards the back of the panel...

The end of the year is always a time for reflection, and we're taking this opportunity to look back at the long and weird history of superhero comics by picking our favorite heroes from each decade. Our panelists must put together fantasy teams drawing from the last 80+ years of superhero comics, using heroes from any publisher.

On this day in 1966, one of the greatest characters in the Batman Family appeared for the first time: Barbara Gordon. While many aspects of her identity are tied to the men in her life, including Commissioner Gordon, Batman, and the Joker, she’s at her best when she’s the star of her own stories, or saving the world with other women.

Blind bag toys have been a huge market these past few years, and perhaps no brand knows this better than Lego. Since launching the blind bag minifigures back in 2010, Lego has had tremendous success with the collection, which has had 16 proper waves alongside special edition series like Disney and The Simpsons. Early next year, another special series will see Lego celebrate the launch of The Lego Batman Movie, and you might be surprised to see who's being packed inside.

This summer our Bird Watching team of Meredith Tomeo and Caleb Mozzocco endeavored to watch, re-watch, and dissect every episode of the half-forgotten, critically-ignored 2002 live-action Birds of Prey TV show in order to determine if it really deserved its fate, or if it was perhaps simply a show ahead of its time. In this final installment of the series, they render their verdict on the show, and try to answer some of the questions they had before they first hit play on the DVD collection of the series.

This is it! The final episode of the series! A newly empowered Harley Quinn attacks the Birds of Prey head-on, taking over their base and plunging all of New Gotham into complete, apocalyptic (and decidedly off-screen) chaos! It will take the combined efforts of all three Birds of Prey and both Bros of Prey (Alfred and Reese) to punch and kick the city back to safety!

In this episode, which aired back-to-back with the final episode on February 19 of 2003, our heroes encounter not one but two metahuman criminals with a claim on the name Clayface; Mia Sara's Harley Quinn finally returns after a four-episode hiatus; and Ian Abercrombie's Alfred Pennyworth takes his meddling to soaring new heights. "Feat of Clay" --- get it?! --- was written by Adam Armus and Kay Foster and directed by Joe Napolitano.

In this episode, Helena Kyle (Ashley Scott) is completely uninterested in attending her five-year class reunion... until her former classmates start showing up dead, the apparent victims of a metahuman killer. Meanwhile, Barbara Gordon (Dina Meyer) struggles to balance crime-fighting with her relationship with Wade (Shawn Christian), Alfred (Ian Abercrombie) cleans stuff, and Dinah (Rachel Skarsten) wanders around aimlessly, looking for stuff to do.

There’s no arguing that the version of Batgirl that looms largest in the minds of both comic fans and people only familiar with the character from pop culture in general, and that version is Barbara Gordon. Not only has Barbara held the title of Batgirl the longest, she’s the character that’s endured throughout her own adventures and tribulations, the many changes to the fictional universe that surrounds her, and the real world upheavals of the medium she exists within. So we hope you’ll enjoy this collection of artwork celebrating Babs’ many moods and looks and check out the artists who’ve shown her so much love. This is the best Batgirl fan art.