Batgirl – A guide to Batgirls

There are multiple characters named “Batgirl”, and I guess it can be confusing to people who aren’t experts. So here’s an orientation (Wikipedia would say “disambiguation”) page for your convenience.

Betty Kane

The 1960s Bat-Girl. Note the hyphen. She was the sidekick (and niece) of Batwoman. This first Bat-Girl chiefly appears in 1961-1964, but after that there are strange, obscure returns.

Barbara Gordon

Babs first put on the cowl in 1967, and is widely considered the core Batgirl. But this also means, DC being DC, that there are many different takes on her. Especially if we include the cartoon versions.

Two versions of Barbara Gordon have writeups.org profiles :

	The Batgirl: Year One version. This take on Babs only appeared in 2003. It was a working, but not perfect, attempt at distilling a modernised version for the 2000s. So we picked it as our material for a “general Batgirl” profile.
	The Batgirl of Burnside. This softboot  version was seen in 2015/16, and gathered a notable level of buzz.

Cassandra Cain

The living weapon. Cass first appeared in 1999, and soon was granted the Batgirl identity. This distinctive character was the first to helm her own Batgirl comic book. Our profile covers her appearances written by her creator, K. Puckett.

Stephanie Brown

	Spoiler (two profiles). Steph didn’t start as Batgirl. Her first identity was Spoiler. We have two Spoiler profiles — 1990s and 2000s — to follow her evolution.
	Batgirl. In 2009, Stephanie inherited the Batgirl identity from Cassandra. She too had her own Batgirl book for a while.