Story: Oracle -- Year One: Born of Hope (18 pages)
Writer(s): John Ostrander and Kim Yale
Artist(s): Brian Stelfreeze and Karl Story
Characters:
Barbara Gordon / Oracle (in flashback also as Batgirl), James Gordon, Ashley Mavis Powell / Interface
Minor Characters / Guest Appearances:
Bruce Wayne / Batman (also as his alter ego Matches), Joker, Riddler, Sylvia Kandry, Richard Dragon
Synopsis:
This story begins ten weeks and three days after the Joker shot Barbara in The Killing Joke. Barbara is still in the hospital, thinking that she was an idiot to be so careless to open the door without even looking through the peephole or putting the chain on, that she should have known better. She also has nightmares about the incident. The night before she's going to be released Batman visits her, and she is angry at him. She feels humiliated because she didn't have any significance as herself to the Joker, but only as a way to get to Batman. She lashes out at Batman, asking whether the private joke was her, when Batman and the Joker stood together laughing during the Joker's capture, hoping to hurt Batman that way. When she is released there are lots of reporters, watching her struggle to get into the car, but once again she feels only as an extension of someone else, this time of her father. She thinks the reporters wouldn't have bothered if not for her being the commissioner's daughter and thus a symbol. Six months of physical and emotional therapy follow, during which she had to accept that she would never walk again. Then for weeks Barbara just sits in her father's apartment, afraid to go out, afraid of the next day, feeling that she means nothing, that her life is now over, but then she resolves not to be a victim any longer. With a grant of the Wayne Foundation she gets a powerful computer set-up. She discovers her affinity for computer hacking and starts to make some money. The fledgling internet community also provides her with emotional support and acceptance during that time. One day her father, James Gordon, tells her about a case, a woman who launders money with the help of computers, Ashley Mavis Powell, also known as Interface. Gordon is out of his depth because he lacks the computer knowledge. Barbara researches Interface on her own. She gets information on Interface from Sylvia Kandry, a police computer operator out of NYC. Interface uses a low-level metahuman talent to interact directly with computers, she's also a child abuser. Barbara starts to go after Interface, but she doesn't protect her identity sufficiently yet. As Barbara tries to cross a busy street Interface pushes her into the traffic, but Barbara isn't run over. Barbara decides that Interface just made the biggest mistake of her life, because she made Barbara feel like a victim again. Barbara wants to start learning self-defense from a wheelchair, but doesn't want to ask her father or Batman for options. She asks around on-line, and gets contact information from someone named "Matches" one of Batman's alter-egos (which Barbara doesn't know then). She meets with Richard Dragon, who asks her what she wants. First she says she doesn't want to be afraid anymore, to which he replies that fear is useful, then she says that she wants to walk again, he says that's not really what she's seeking, then she says she wants her life back, and to that Richard Dragon says that that is who she were, not who she is now. He asks "Who are you?" and Barbara says "I...I don't know. I don't know if I ever knew..." and he says now she's ready to begin. He teaches her escrima during the next months. The physical and mental discipline hones the questions of her identity until the answer comes to Barbara in a dream. In that dream she's dressed as Batgirl and is at Delphi, asking the Oracle "I've lost so much. I've lost everything I thought I was. Who am I now? How do I go on?" The Oracle replies "You have lost nothing that matters. You have everything you need. Everything before leads up to now and now leads to what shall be." Barbara says she doesn't understand, the Oracle replies that she will when they both remove their masks. The woman who is the Oracle removes her mask (which looks like the later Oracle logo) and it is revealed that she is also Barbara. That makes Barbara realize that the internet could function as a mask as surely as any cowl, and she assumes the identity of Oracle, ready to take on her first task, i.e. dealing with Interface. Three weeks later her preparations are finished. She lures Interface into a logic trap, exploiting that Powell is psi-linked with the computer. Eventually Oracle cuts her loose, but tells her that she planted a post-hypnotic suggestion in Interface's mind and that she could trigger it again anytime, and that she will unless Interface turns herself in. In the end Barbara feels that her life is finally her own, that she is no longer a distaff impersonation of someone else.
Important Continuity Events:
- Barbara Gordon becomes Oracle. [p. 14]
Continuity References:
- The encounter with the Riddler in the flashback took place in ??. [p. 2]
- The Joker shot Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke. [p. 2]
- The time Joker and Batman stood together laughing, that Barbara mentions, was in The Killing Joke. [p. 3]
- Batman's connection to or knowledge of Richard Dragon refers to previous events in ?? [p. 12]
Bruce Wayne Character Details:
- Batman knows Richard Dragon. [p. 12]
Barbara Gordon Character Details:
- James Gordon is Barbara's adoptive father. [p. 2]
- She's lived in Gotham most of her life. [p. 2]
- She ran one of the largest libraries on the east coast. [p. 2]
- Barbara doesn't remember much after the shot and the initial pain, she's not sure what happened. That hints at the fact that she was found naked and the Joker took pictures of her to torture her father. [p.2]
- Barbara feels it is humiliating and demeaning that she didn't have any intrinsic value for the Joker, but that her life only counted in relation to Batman. She thinks that it was similar in her role as Batgirl, that she was only seen as a weaker version of Batman [p. 3], she feels similar when the reporters cover her release from the hospital, that they're not interested in her as herself, but only because she's James Gordon's daughter. [p. 6]
- Her initial physical therapy after being shot took six months, during which she accepts that she'll never walk again. [p. 6]
- The money for her first computer equipment comes from a Wayne Foundation grant, later Barbara starts to use her hacking skills to make money. [p. 7]
- Barbara doesn't know that Batman uses the alias "Matches" [p. 12]
- Barbara learns escrima from Richard Dragon for several months [p. 13], before that she feels conspicuous and clumsy in her body, no longer loving how it moves as she did before, when she was a gymnast and a dancer. [p. 10]
- Barbara conceives her identity as Oracle first in a dream, where she sees herself as the Delphi Oracle. [p. 14]
James Gordon Character Details:
- James Gordon refused to have police guarding their house like other police commissioners in big cities, because the symbol of an open administration was important to him. [p. 6]
- James Gordon hates computers. [p. 9]
Gotham City Details:
- Barbara meets with Richard Dragon in Robinson Park. Robinson Park has a Centograph. [p. 12]
Trivia:
- Barbara has her Batgirl doll with her in the hospital, although the way it looks here it could be just as well a Batman doll. [p. 1]
- The Joker used a .45 to shoot Barbara but with a doctored bullet, with only half the grains of a normal .45, because the Joker wanted her alive for his scheme. [p. 3]
- We see Barbara with a coffee mug saying "#1 DAD" propably her dad's. [p. 9]
- Both in her dream [p. 14] and in the final panel [p. 18] white birds surround her, like bats often surround Batman in these kinds of scenes.
- Unlike her later wheelchair, here Barbara's wheelchair is still a regular chair throughout, seemingly without gadgets, but with handles for other people pushing her.
Story: The Killing Joke (48 pages)
Writer(s): Alan Moore
Pencils: Brian Bolland
Inks: Brian Bolland
Characters:
Bruce Wayne / Batman, Joker (also as Red Hood in a flashback), James Gordon, Barbara Gordon / Batgirl
Minor Characters / Guest Appearances:
Harvey Dent / Two-Face, Jeannie (the Joker's wife), Alfred Pennyworth, Colleen Reece, Harvey Bullock, Oswald Cobblepot / Penguin
Synopsis:
It's a rainy night. Batman meets James Gordon in front of the Arkham Asylum. Batman is there to visit the Joker, Gordon waits outside the cell. Batman wants to talk to the Joker to break their vicious cycle of mutual obsession, that he thinks will lead one of them to kill the other in the end, and he doesn't want Joker's murder on his hands. The Joker sits there silently playing solitaire, Batman grabs the Joker's hand and notices that the white skin is not genuine but make-up. It turns out the Joker has escaped Arkham Asylum once again. The Joker is at an abandoned carnival ground, which he prepares as the scene for his next crime. He wants to prove that anyone will go insane under the right circumstances, that he is not different from the rest. To illustrate this, he tries to drive James Gordon insane. He shoots James Gordon's daughter, Barbara Gordon, causing her permanent paraplegia, assaults her sexually (at least he removes her clothes), and takes photographs of her. He has James Gordon beaten up, then kidnaps him and brings him to the carnival to torture him. There the Joker puts Gordon in a bizarre scenario to drive him mad. Gordon's clothes are removed, a collar is put around his neck, and he's tortured with a tazer by two weirdly dressed midgets. In a ghost train ride he's shown the pictures of Barbara, as she lies naked and injured, again and again, and taunted and mocked by the Joker, who tells him that human existence is mad, random and pointless, and madness the appropriate response. Meanwhile Batman tries to find a lead on the Joker, but nobody knows anything. The Batsignal appears and Harvey Bullock gives Batman an invitation and entry ticket for the carnival that the Joker has sent to Batman. As Batman arrives at the carnival, he and the Joker grapple briefly with each other, but the Joker buys some time by spraying acid at Batman, and runs into the House of Fun. Batman frees James Gordon, who's been put in a cage outside. Gordon didn't go mad, and insists that the Joker must be brought in by the book, to prove to the Joker that their way works. The Joker tells Batman what he wanted to prove, that they are not different, that they both have been driven mad by one bad day, only that Batman refuses to admit to his madness, and insists on pretending that life makes sense when it does not. Batman replies that Gordon is as sane as ever, that not everybody cracks, so maybe it was the Joker himself all along. They fight, the Joker's gun is empty and he admits defeat, and asks Batman what he's waiting for. Batman explains that he doesn't want to hurt him, that he thinks that maybe tonight is the last chance for them to escape their suicide course. He offers to help him, to rehabilitate him but Joker says that it is too late for that. He says it reminds him of a joke, and he tells Batman a joke of two guys trying to escape a lunatic asylum, and though Batman is reluctant to laugh at first, in the end he cracks up too, and they stand together in the rain, laughing, as the police comes to pick up the Joker.
Intercut with the main story are flashbacks of Joker's memories, telling a possible origin story for the Joker: To get money for his wife and the baby they were expecting, the Joker agreed to lead two men from the Red Hood mob into the chemical plant where he used to work, before he gave up his job as a lab assistant to become a comedian. The same day the robbery is supposed to take place, his wife dies in a freak accident with a baby-bottle heater, but the mobsters insist that he still has to come along. They make him wear a red hood and cape, also to draw attention to him, instead of them, but the Joker doesn't realize this. The robbery in the chemical plant doesn't go as planned, because security procedures have been changed since then. Batman appears on the scene, confronting the Joker, because Batman thinks he's "Red Hood," the leader, not realizing that the mask is worn by different people. The joker flees, and jumps into a vat with chemicals to escape through some sewage system, but the chemicals transformed his face, skin and hair to his "Joker" appearance, seeing this he goes mad, and becomes obsessed with Batman.
Important Continuity Events:
- The Joker offers a possible origin story.
- The Joker shoots Barbara Gordon, the bullet hits her spine, this results in her paraplegia. [p. 14]
Bruce Wayne Character Details:
- Batman is convinced he and the Joker will end up killing each other. He wants to avert that outcome, to save or rehabilitate the Joker. [p. 5]
Barbara Gordon Character Details:
- Barbara worked at the library. [p. 13]
- Barbara had nightmares as a kid about the Joker, because her dad told her stories about him. [p.13]
- She has yoga classes with her friend Colleen. [p. 13]
James Gordon Character Details:
- James Gordon keeps scrapbooks for newspaper articles relating to Batman, Catwoman, and possibly other costumed heroes and villains. There are at least so many that Barbara thinks he needs a filing system. [p. 13]
Joker Character Details:
- Before he became the Joker he wanted to work as a stand-up comedian, but wasn't very successful. [p. 8]
- He and his wife Jeannie were expecting their first child. [p. 8]
- He felt he was a looser. [p. 9]
- Jeannie thought he was funny and good in bed. [p. 9]
- Joker was a lab assistant, but quit to be a comedian. [p. 16]
- To get money for his family he gets involved with crime, he agrees to get the others through the chemical plant where he used to work. [p. 16]
- The Red Hood gangsters ask him to wear a bow tie and a suit since it's their trade mark. [p. 23]
- His wife died as she was testing a baby-bottle heater. [p. 23]
- The Joker is disfigured as he jumps into a vat with chemicals while running from Batman, terrified by Batman's appearance. [p. 32]
- He goes mad seeing his disfigured face on top of loosing his wife, as he realizes what a black, awful joke the world was. [p. 33]
Note about the Joker origin story: The Joker himself says, he prefers to have multiple pasts and that he remembers different versions, so it isn't certain that his memories here are the "true" origin story. [p. 40]
Trivia:
- Harvey Dent's number in Arkham is 0751. [p. 3]
- The Joker's number in Arkham is 0801. [p. 3]
- Batman has a "family" photo in the Batcave, it shows Batman, Robin, Batgirl, Alfred (?), another woman in a costume (she's ?), another man in a regular suit (he's ?), a dog, and a small child (or maybe a puppet ?) in a bat costume. [p. 11]
- The visible trophies in the Batcave are a dinosaur, the huge penny, and some penguin. A Bat-gyrocopter is also visible, it's suspended from the ceiling with a chain. [p. 11]
- The newspaper articles seen in Gordon's scrapbook are "Asylum Security Uproar. Maniac Escapes Again. Crimefighter Unavailable For Comment. Vicki Vale Exclusive" in the Gotham Examiner, for the current day incident, and one from the first time Batman encountered the Joker, saying "Bat-Garbed Vigilante Critically Injures Murderer. Disfigured Homicidal Maniac In Hospital" [p. 13]
- The Joker's gun has two barrels, one for the bullets, another one where a flag with "click click click" written on it comes out when the gun is empty. [p. 44]