Barbara didn't get her first Batgirl book until Vol 3??

[Iron_Leopard]

Damn. Isn't that weird? The first and most iconic Batgirl didn't get her own solo until the New 52.

Cain was Vol 1 and Brown was Vol 2.

Or am I wrong? Why did Gordon be never get her own book earlier?

[RedQueen]

She's had one shots and minis.

I think because of the comics climate pre TKJ prevented any sort of solo happening. All the back issues of a lot of female characters I am into just have one shots or a mini here and there prior to about 10 years ago before we finally got consistency in the prevalence of female titles. Characters like Cass and Mayday Parker getting solos and having the longevity they did was a rare but special occurrence. Male characters and team books were pretty much at the forefront during Babs' era also.

I don't think it speaks to Babs' impact, but more to the fact there wasn't a lot of belief in female lead solos. I mean when Avengers came out, I believe there was no female solos at Marvel and there was like an online campaign to get Black Widow a title.

[reni344]

Supergirl got her first series at DC in 1972 and has had one since I believe I think she got one because DC thought she was more popular then Batgirl. I remember reading an interview once that Alan Moore did Killing Joke there were two writers at DC who wanted to do a Batgirl series starring Barbara but they were turned down in favor of shelving her and eventually making her Oracle.

[MajorHoy]

Barbara-as-Batgirl had a decent run as a back-up feature in Detective Comics back in the day.

Also don't forget that the first Robin to get his own regular book was Tim Drake. Dick Grayson, who has been around since the days of the Wooly Mammoth, got a mini-series in 1995 and a continuing series in 1996, but Tim's first mini-series was in 1991 and his on-going Robin title started in 1993.
(Dick did have a solo-feature as Robin in Star-Spangled Comics that began in late 1946 (with a February 1947 cover-date), but he wasn't the only feature in that book.)

[Frontier]

Supergirl got her first series at DC in 1972 and has had one since I believe I think she got one because DC thought she was more popular then Batgirl. I remember reading an interview once that Alan Moore did Killing Joke there were two writers at DC who wanted to do a Batgirl series starring Barbara but they were turned down in favor of shelving her and eventually making her Oracle.

That kind of goes against the train of thought that they let Moore move ahead with his plans for Barbara because there weren't any plans or desire to do anything with Batgirl at the time.

[reni344]

That kind of goes against the train of thought that they let Moore move ahead with his plans for Barbara because there weren't any plans or desire to do anything with Batgirl at the time.

When Moore first wrote the story for Killing Joke he thought it would be out of continuity DC decided to put it in continuity because it was so popular and that screwed up plans for other people to use her. John Ostrander made Oracle because he was so angry at how Barbara got treated.

[kjn]

That kind of goes against the train of thought that they let Moore move ahead with his plans for Barbara because there weren't any plans or desire to do anything with Batgirl at the time.

I gathered a couple of links about TKJ and DC's thinking about Babs and Batgirl in the 80s, and CBR had a good well-resarched and well-documented article:

A Look at Barbara Gordon Post-Killing Joke and Pre-Oracle

I checked the DC wikia, and TKJ was preceded by Batgirl Special 1, "The Last Batgirl Story" by a week, where Babs retired from being Batgirl. Apart from Ostrander's and Yale's slow introduction of Oracle (which took over a year), Babs only appeared in flashbacks or sitting silent in her wheelchair in the background.

[reni344]

I gathered a couple of links about TKJ and DC's thinking about Babs and Batgirl in the 80s, and CBR had a good well-resarched and well-documented article:

A Look at Barbara Gordon Post-Killing Joke and Pre-Oracle

I checked the DC wikia, and TKJ was preceded by Batgirl Special 1, "The Last Batgirl Story" by a week, where Babs retired from being Batgirl. Apart from Ostrander's and Yale's slow introduction of Oracle (which took over a year), Babs only appeared in flashbacks or sitting silent in her wheelchair in the background.

Okay so DC clearly did not care about Barbara. I still wonder why though she did not have a series earlier why was she always stuck in Detective Comics but Supergirl got her own series.

[sunofdarkchild]

Okay so DC clearly did not care about Barbara. I still wonder why though she did not have a series earlier why was she always stuck in Detective Comics but Supergirl got her own series.

TBF, Supergirl's series were never successful pre-crisis and ended pretty quickly. The 1972 run didn't even last 12 issues, and their next attempt 10 years later didn't make it to the two-year mark. The first successful Supergirl run was the 90s PAD series that wasn't even about Superman's cousin.

Also, Dick Grayson never had a solo Robin series. The first Robin solo was the Tim Drake run of the 90s. Granted, Grayson got more use in Teen Titans, but the idea of giving Batman's allies their own solo series wasn't seriously considered until the 90s, it seems.

[MajorHoy]

Okay so DC clearly did not care about Barbara. I still wonder why though she did not have a series earlier why was she always stuck in Detective Comics but Supergirl got her own series.

Supergirl was around well before Barbara became Batgirl and had her own feature in Action Comics (beginning in 1959) which moved over to Adventure Comics about ten years later. A few years after that she got her own solo-title, but then again, Superman characters Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane each had had their own solo-titles (usually guest-starring Superman, but . . . ) well before Supergirl got her own book.

Also, back in 1975, both Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon were co-leads in the book Batman Family. Each of those two characters either appeared in a team-up story or had his/her own feature in every issue.

[kjn]

One should also remember that comics back then simply worked quite differently: a lot more titles were anthologies with two-three adventures with various characters. The single-character (or single-team) titles were the exception, not the rule as they are today.

I believe the anthology format for floppies is still dominating in many parts of the world, at least they do so here in Sweden. For single characters or teams, one had to look at the comics albums, which I believe usually followed a trade model.

[Aahz]

I think because of the comics climate pre TKJ prevented any sort of solo happening. All the back issues of a lot of female characters I am into just have one shots or a mini here and there prior to about 10 years ago before we finally got consistency in the prevalence of female titles. Characters like Cass and Mayday Parker getting solos and having the longevity they did was a rare but special occurrence. Male characters and team books were pretty much at the forefront during Babs' era also.

I don't think it speaks to Babs' impact, but more to the fact there wasn't a lot of belief in female lead solos. I mean when Avengers came out, I believe there was no female solos at Marvel and there was like an online campaign to get Black Widow a title.

It doesn't have much to do with her beeing female. At that time DC put the stories of smaller characters usually in antology books, and only the big characters got solos. And IIRC during that time Superman was DCs big flag ship character, and I think that only his spin off characters (Louis, Jimmy, Supergirl) who got solos.

The only Batman characters (apart from Batman) who afaik had a solo series pre TKJ were Man-Bat and the Joker, and Man-Bat's series laseted only 2 issues while the Joker got 9. And it wasn't untill 1993 that any Batman charcter appart from him (in this case Tim and Selina) really got long lasting ongoing series.

[atomicbattery]

As MajorHoy said, Barbara starred with Dick in the Batfamily title in the ‘70’s.
Also worth noting that the Batman titles consisted of Batman and Detective (with Batman and family members also starring in titles like World’s Finest and Brave and the Bold) for decades.
In an entirely different publishing environment, Barbara’s backup feature and name alongside Batman’s on the masthead of Detective in the seventies reflects a prominence that is certainly the equivalent of having her own title today.

The explosion of Bat-titles really began with Legends of the Dark Knight in 1989. The book was a huge hit, and DC responded with an ever expanding Batman line with titles like Shadow of the Bat, Catwoman, Robin, Azrael, and, later, even a new Batgirl.
Barbara missed that wave, of course, because of an atrocity perpetrated by Alan Moore the year before.

[SixSpeedSamurai]

Vol 4 actually. Cass, Cass 6 issues mini, Steph, then Barb's series.

[MajorHoy]

Vol 4 actually. Cass, Cass 6 issues mini, Steph, then Barb's series.

Where would Barbara's Batgirl Year One mini-series fall into that equation?