That’s something, though, that she is inexperienced with. Now, she’s just trying to find the correct path for herself. When she is pushed to this absolute breaking point, in terms of trauma, tragedy, and horror, and realizes that she’s going down this dark path that’s basically going to turn her into Batman, which she doesn’t want, she takes a step back from that. So she’s never really had a “normal” life. Then she was injured and had her time in the wheelchair, and then went back to being Batgirl. she’s in grad school and trying to take a step back from being a superhero and just be a 21-year-old, figure herself out, and kind of own herself for the first time.ĬS: In the New 52 continuity, she’s been Batgirl since she was a young teenager. She’s just trying to figure herself out because she’s been fighting crime since she was sixteen. She’s in college. She hits a point in the last Batgirl issue and in Batman Eternal where she’s like, “I need to get away from this,” and she moves to Burnisde. What are her concerns in your run of Batgirl? They seem very different.īT: She’s trying to get away from all that with her move to Burnside. In Batman Eternal, she’s dealing with her dad’s incarceration. And refreshing.īarbara has had a dark past. You don’t really see social media in comics. I don’t think that a superhero comic has really used that as one of the central conceits of the story. One of the things we wanted to do was to try and have an honest portrayal of what a 21-year-old girl living in a big metropolitan city would be like. Everyone I know is on Tinder and dating sites, so it is very much a part of the culture. She’s a 21-year-old girl and we are trying to steep it a lot in youth internet culture because that’s a very relevant and present thing. We thought that since social media has been this massive explosion in the last eight years…This enormous explosion, with the use of cellphones and so on, that it seemed like a natural extension of what she’s known for.Īlso, we are trying to steep this a lot.

How did you guys approach modernizing Batgirl while staying true to her character?ĬS: Barbara Gordon had always been associated with computers and technology. I talked to the new creative team behind Batgirl - Babs Tarr (art), Cameron Stewart (writer), and Brenden Fletcher (writer) - about Barbara Gordon’s new home, style, and social media concerns at NYCC last week:

Batgirl #36 by Cameron Stewart