10 Shocking Comics Events That Changed Characters Forever

6. Barbara Gordon Is Shot By The Joker - The Killing Joke

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DC Comics / Brian Bolland

The punchline to The Killing Joke was that it was meant to be non-canonical, simply Alan Moore giving his spin on a Batman story in the same way he had given his own spin on Superman in Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?

However, one moment in the book would eventually solidify it as being a permanent part of Batman canon: Barbara Gordon being shot by the Joker.

The Joker, in an attempt to prove that even the sanest man alive can go as crazy as he is with one particularly bad day, decides to go after Commissioner Gordon and drive him mad. He starts this by shooting his daughter Barbara in the spine and then taking naked pictures of her to mock her father with later.

Barbara would be confined to a wheelchair for decades afterward, going instead by the name Oracle, an information broker and founder of the Birds of Prey. However, even after they rebooted the universe yet again and returned Barbara to the mantle of Batgirl for that sweet sweet status quo, they kept her time in a wheelchair caused by the Joker shooting her, with the story now being that she got her legs back thanks to modern surgical techniques.

Being brought so low by the Joker and then rising above what he did to her has now become a permanent part of Barbara Gordon's character history.

Contributor
Contributor

John Tibbetts is a novelist in theory, a Whatculture contributor in practice, and a nerd all around who loves talking about movies, TV, anime, and video games more than he loves breathing. Which might be a problem in the long term, but eh, who can think that far ahead?