10 Popular Comics Characters Imported From Other Media

First appearance: With viewing figures falling by the time of the third season of ABC's pop art kitsch take on Batman in 1967, the producers decided to court new audiences, particularly girls, and so decided to introduce a female hero to the show's traditional Batman and Robin dynamic.

Although a Batwoman and Bat-girl already existed in the DC comics past, they were deemed too old fashioned and incapable of connecting with modern young women of the 1960s. Hence the introduction of the late Yvonne Craig as librarian and commissioner's daughter Barbara Gordon who moonlights as Batgirl (without the hyphen).

In the comics: Much like Renee Montoya, Barbara is a character who was created for a medium outside the comics, but actually appeared on the page before she appeared on screen. The TV show's producers approached DC editor Julius Schwartz to create the new modern young female character for them, resulting in Barbara appearing in the comic The Million Dollar Debut Of Batgirl! (Detective Comics #359) a few months before she was seen on TV.

Although the TV series did not last beyond its third season, the Barbara version of Batgirl became a regular fixture in the comics over the following decades. Batman: The Killing Joke in 1988 dramatically transformed the character, having her shot and paralysed by the Joker, eventually resulting in her becoming wheelchair bound genius hacker Oracle. After the New 52 reboot, now Barbara is Batgirl again and has her own title, but the paralysis and Oracle era still happened at some point in the past.

And back again?: As the best known version of Batgirl, Barbara Gordon has donned the mask and cape for virtually every animated version of the Batman and DC world, including the futuristic Batman Beyond in which she is portrayed as the future police commissioner.

In the live action films, Batgirl was instead an invented Barbara Wilson played by Alicia Silverstone in Batman And Robin, while Commissioner Gordon had a daughter that appeared very briefly as a young child in The Dark Knight. Her role as Oracle was adapted into the TV series Birds Of Prey in 2002 with Dina Meyer as Barbara. Presumably she hasn't been born yet in Gotham, but that will happen sooner or later.

Jena Malone's part in Batman V Superman is also rumoured to be Barbara, but that has yet to be confirmed.