Barbra Gordon's Portrayal Of Female Characters

Eddrich Janzzen L. Ang I BS Computer Science
EN 12 –R28
Ms. Andrea N. Macalino
The Portrayal of Women in Comics: Victimization and Derogatory Portrayal of the Female Character
The Comic Book Genre
Since its humble beginning up until present, comic books have become a popular source of entertainment. From the conventional comics such as Archie Comics, to the super hero genre, comic books present an imaginary world that is a reflection of our real world and its social norms.
Comic books are unique genre that can capture a variety of different images to be conveyed to the audience (Delany 85). They first emerged as a creative from of entertainment in the 1930’s. They communicate stories with a unique form with the use of sequential illustrations
This type of demeaning view prevailed for so long that it seems to be inevitable and true despite the fact that it is not logically possible (Ferguson 2). Barbra Gordon Perhaps one of the most heavily debated upon female characters among enthusiast is the character of Batgirl, as it is a controversial part of the DC comic collection. It is in fact famous as it was the story which put Barbra Gordon in a wheel chair. There have been multiple articles such as No one is Laughing The Killing Joke 20 years on… ,that talk about her character particularly in The Killing Joke, where she was crippled. Originally known as Barbra Gordon, Batgirl is the daughter of Police Commissioner James Gordon. She is the head of the Gotham City Public Library, with a degree in library science. The horrific crippling of Barbra Gordon occurs in her house where the Joker catches her off guard. Attending to a random knock on the door, Barbra is suddenly shot in the spine by the Joker. She is left on the floor to bleed, while Police Commissioner James Gordon is kidnapped, and goes through a torture, that is meant to drive the commissioner
Starfire Born of Tamaran decent, Starfire or Koriand’r was the second of three children. Her older sister Komand’r was next in the line of succession but was crippled of her natural Tamaranian powers, which deemed her not worthy for the thrown, making the succession fall to Starfire. In the comics, Starfire was a character that underwent many challenges, one of which was being forced to marry the Prince of Karras to seal a peace treaty. Apart from this, she went through under six years of torture, up until she was released for experimentation by the Psion. (Mad scientists who performed experiments to see how much energy her body could absorb before exploding). In the review of the Red Hood and the Outlaws, it had been stated that character of Starfire supports the idea of women as sexual objects. This can be seen in a scene where Starfire defends her decision to have sex with Arsenal by saying that “love has nothing to do with