59 Years Later, Classic Batgirl Officially Unveils Her Darkest Redesign of All Time

Classic Batgirl Barbara Gordon just debuted her darkest redesign of all time, as the character hits what's sure to be the lowest moment of her entire career. DC is putting Batgirl through Hell, and it's starting to show.

Introduced in 1967, Barbara Gordon wasn't the first Batgirl (that dubious honor goes to Bette Kane - a hastily designed character explicitly introduced to quash any impression that Batman and Robin might be gay.) However, she is the definitive version.

That makes it all the more shocking that she's about to lose everything she holds dear, as the Bat-Family suffer a devastating loss.

Barbara Gordon's Batgirl Is the Living Dead in Dark New Series

New solicit information for the upcoming Barbara Gordon: Breakout #2 - from Mariko Tamaki and Amancay Nahuelpan - shows Batgirl's imprisonment going from bad to worse. After being locked up for aiding the Bat-Family, Barbara will reckon with a new Supermax prison - one which threatens to end her life. The issue's summary promises:

BATGIRL BEHIND BARS! Barbara Gordon is alone, imprisoned, and outnumbered by the very criminals she put away. Without her team, she's going to have to fight to survive on her own.

Someone at Supermax has her in their crosshairs. Barbara is being hunted, but she's about to learn that in prison, there's nowhere to hide...

Eisner Award-winning writer Mariko Tamaki and artist Amancay Nahuelpan continue to put Barbara through her paces as DC's most surprising Next Level series continues!

While Karl Kerschl's main cover shows Barbara pursued by the Grim Reaper, Dan Mora's variant goes even darker, showing Barbara illuminated by light shining through cell bars. While her body is human in the light, the darkness 'reveals' her as a rotting corpse.

Meanwhile, Matteo Scalera shows Barbara as one prisoner among many, and Jeffrey Spokes shows her trying to cling on to her vigilante identity by creating a makeshift Bat-symbol.

So far, it's unclear whether Barbara will have a literal encounter with the undead. The issue summary makes it sound like these images might be a metaphor for the threat of death, but comic covers are rarely that abstract, and two artists using death imagery suggest Babs may be targeted by a death-themed villain.

Why Is Batgirl Going to Jail?

Over in Batman, villains Poison Ivy and Vandal Savage have wormed their way into positions of power, becoming mayor and police commissioner of Gotham respectively.

The two will soon lash out with 'Operation: Peregrine', targeting the Bat-Family's bases and anyone who helps them. This storyline will see Barbara Gordon arrested, but not because of her identity as Batgirl. Instead, it seems she will be mistaken for some kind of civilian consultant.

Sadly, that's enough to see her locked away with every villain she ever fought, turning her vigilante identity into the biggest threat to her survival.

Batgirl Wasn't This Horrifying as a Literal Zombie or Vampire

Dan Mora's haunting cover is particularly impressive because it's the freakiest Barbara Gordon has ever looked... despite previously turning into both a zombie and a vampire.

Barbara became one of the undead in the iconic DCeased from Tom Taylor and Trevor Hairsine. While the 'zombie virus' in that series causes its victims to rake their own skin, Barbara got off easy, mostly because she was quickly killed off by Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn.

Batgirl is far more terrifying in James Tynion IV, Matthew Rosenberg and Otto Schmidt's DC Vs. Vampires. In that series, Batgirl took Nightwing's place as the ruler of Earth's vampires, sacrificing her humanity to free longtime love Dick Grayson.

Batgirl became the most dangerous vampire in the world, combining peerless tactical and technological acumen with authority over the planet's blood-suckers - all of who could now operate 24/7 after Nightwing orchestrated the blotting out of the sun.

As terrifying as those stories were for fans of Barbara Gordon, seeing her locked up will seemingly be even darker, putting the classic Batgirl through a dark crucible that could end up changing her forever.

Barbara Gordon: Breakout #2 is coming June 10 from DC Comics.