The De-aging of Barbara Gordon.

[mathew101281]

Batgirl is one character that seems to get younger and younger the more time goes on. When she was created in 1961 she came across as clearly a woman in her mid to late 20's. Older then Robin but not as old as Batman himself. By the 90's it seemed like she was de-aged making her seem more in line with Dick Grayson's age. Now it feels like Dick is older to me. Can anyone tell me why it seems Babs is getting younger and younger?

[oasis1313]

Batgirl is one character that seems to get younger and younger the more time goes on. When she was created in 1961 she came across as clearly a woman in her mid to late 20's. Older then Robin but not as old as Batman himself. By the 90's it seemed like she was de-aged making her seem more in line with Dick Grayson's age. Now it feels like Dick is older to me. Can anyone tell me why it seems Babs is getting younger and younger?

Comic book artists want to draw young chicks.

[WonderNight]

because right now dc want's the batgirl brand to aim for young girls. babs just so happens to be the current batgirl.

[Badou]

Because she is the iconic Batgirl and DC wants to market her as being Batgirl. So they want to keep her in her early 20s so they can keep her college age where the Batgirl title still feels appropriate, and that is how she is being written. She isn't going to be written like she is in her early 30s like she was pre Flashpoint.

Dick is the same age as her, but he also isn't Robin anymore and is Nightwing. So they are sort of forced to write him as acting a little older as he has Jason, Tim, Damian and even Duke now all after him as being Robin or some version of a Robin in the Batman books as being younger than him.

[hotroddii]

And now that we have a red-headed BatWOMAN who is probably about 30 ... it makes sense that BatGIRL would be considerably younger.

[Carabas]

Because she is the iconic Batgirl and DC wants to market her as being Batgirl.

The original Barbara Gordon Batgirl was closer to Bruce Wayne's age than Dick Grayson's. She was a PhD and an elected member of the House of Representatives.

[RedQueen]

Seems like a weird contradiction. They want to keep Killing Joke canon, which has horrific things done to her that is meant for a older audience, but then keep Babs as a dumbed down version of herself to appeal to the more kiddy crowd. idk I just want them to make up their mind. Because with the timeline so far we've been given she was about 16/17 when TKJ happened so that fact coupled with her massive deaging has even more massive creepy implications regarding TKJ.

I've never viewed Batgirl as a more younger kids brand sort of thing, because Barbara herself is was never carried that way. I mean she is family friendly in a lot of ways but it's not like she is in the My Little Pony category.

I wish Barbara was 25 so that way she can keep the history but can still feel more like Babs in writing.

[Badou]

The original Barbara Gordon Batgirl was closer to Bruce Wayne's age than Dick Grayson's. She was a PhD and an elected member of the House of Representatives.

And post Crisis Batgirl has been depicted as either a young woman or a teen whether it is Babs, Cass or Steph. That is what they want Batgirl to be, and since Babs is the iconic one she is being depicted as such.

[Aahz]

- pre crisis she was 25 when she was a congress woman and 7 years older than Dick

- post crisis her age was never directly stated but you could roughly estimate that she was about 2-3 years older than Dick

- in the new 52 she is 21 and the same age as Dick

I think one reason for the down aging are the animated series, where she was usually much younger than in the comics and and often Dicks love interest.


Btw. Jason seems to be one of the rare cases, where you have the opposite problem, he should be actually not much older than Tim but is usually written like he was almost the age of Dicks generation, who were originally 7 years older than him (even Beats Boy was originally about 4 years older than him).

[Oberon]

That was eventually. My own take was that Barbara was a Librarian (so, Masters of Library Science + Bachelors, about 6 years) who was / seemed new perhaps. So mid twenties.

Eventually she seemed to be older and was elected and all that. At or around this time they started putting Dick/Robin (so pre-NW, '70s) more around / with her, in both age and some stories.

I don't mind her being in her early 20s but I do mind her being younger than Dick. She should be about 1 or 2 years older than him, maybe.?

[MajorHoy]

. . . I think one reason for the down aging are the animated series, where she was usually much younger than in the comics and and often Dicks love interest.

I think this is the key right here.
For the New52, they were trying to de-age just about ALL their characters, though those who were already younger than 18 were de-aged less than the adult-age characters. So Babs was going to be made younger anyway, and if they felt the animated version of Batgirl was better-known / more "iconic", it probably made sense to DC for the New52 version of Batgirl to now be closer to Dick age-wise.
Whether this would bother older, long-time comic book readers who were introduced to Batgirl prior to the animated Batman-series may not have crossed DC's mind.

[AlcorDee]

Honestly? De-aging aside they basically reverted her to her factory settings in the most generics ways and that's what truly bothers me. Everyone got de-aged to various degrees so I'm cool with that part. Even tough she was the only batgirl to survive the reboot without having to be reintroduced from zero, zero was basically where she was anyway. And unlike Robins who kept a rough outline of their pre-boot struggles and who're gradually getting bits and pieces of their past retconned back into their histories, Babs can never get many parts of herself back when her two most important proteges, and sources of character development, had their time with her completely retconned.

And she herself lost decades of struggle, reconciling and hardass survival with her disability which was turned into a brief sidenote in her new history. Which is a pity because pre-boot Babs could have a powerful, near omnisciencent presence in Bat Franchise sometimes. Something far beyond anything she managed to achieve while running around the streets as Batgirl, now or in the past.

[SixSpeedSamurai]

I look at the art for the current Batgirl and I'd guess she's a teenager. Pre-Flashpoint I always considered she and Dick to be in their mid-20's.

[Carabas]

And post Crisis Batgirl has been depicted as either a young woman or a teen whether it is Babs, Cass or Steph. That is what they want Batgirl to be, and since Babs is the iconic one she is being depicted as such.

"Iconic Batgirl" and "post-Crisis" are not terms that go together in any way at all.

[Godlike13]

Dick and Babs are suppose to be the same age now. While one can argue Babs is portrayed as too young, one could also argue that Dick is portrayed as too old.