“50 Tales for 50 Years: A Celebration of Barbara Gordon” - 2000: Personal Effects:
Barbara’s time as the genius computer hacker Oracle has both been a time of self reflection and dealing with the trauma of being shot by The Joker, originally in Alan Moore’s 1988’s “Batman: The Killing Joke”. In several stories since John Ostrander and Kim Yale introducing this new guise in 1989’s ‘Suicide Squad’ publication, flashbacks of that fateful day Babs opened the door to her new fate have been retold by different creative teams well into the 2000s. The anthology style publication “Batman: Gotham Knights” featured the adventures of not just the Caped Crusader but also his allies and later on in the book his infamous rogues gallery. Oracle is given the spotlight in Devin Grayson and Paul Ryan’s tale “Personal Effects” in issue 6 from August 2000 (cover presented by Brian Bolland, who penciled Moore’s 'Killing Joke’). Set after the events in “Batman: No Man’s Land” and the rebuilding of Gotham City, when Bruce Wayne discovers that a safety deposit box has been destroyed holding important items, such as an anecdote for the plague that rocked Gotham in the 'Contagion’ storyline. Informing his Intel, Oracle, about locating leads to who has the contents of the deposit box, Babs tells Batman that she had important papers as well and wants them returned to her. After speaking with the Penguin about his involvement with a man named Stuart Bently, the Dark Knight gets all the looted contents back, including Oracle’s belongings. She reveals that one paper is a letter Barbara received from her mother before she passed away telling her that James Gordon might actually be her biological father (in this Post-Crisis timeline, Commissioner Gordon is Barbara’s adoptive father after both her parents died while living in Ohio). While Batman believes Barbara should tell James the truth, she becomes defensive and says he should worry about his own family ties with Nightwing (Dick Grayson) who feels their relationship is strained. ✌🏼️💜💛📖🎨🎉
