Oracle Timeframe

[Impulse]

I am so sorry. I have been the reason for the fight on "Dinah's Name Changed" but I just had to know. I read the book Batman: No Man's Land. And then I watched Birds of Prey. And I know you explained this to me before that comic book times are totally different. But in Birds of Prey it said that Jesse Reese was born in Gotham City, not New Gotham. And No Man's Land, the book, describes the city after Old Gotham but before New Gotham. And Oracle was there.

So, how old is Barbara?

I need the age, it's been driving me crazy. If you have the answer. Whether from the comic books or from the T.V. show. Tell me.

:D

[Jesse321]

The answer is NO ONE KNOWS !! in either the comicbooks or the show ... there have already been a couple of threads discussing this ... everyone has put Barbara's age at more or less mid 30's.

Jesse (on the show, he doesn't exist in the comics) was at least mid 30's which would put his birth before the Earthquake that destroyed Gotham and his current age after the rebuilding efforts.

And ONCE AGAIN .. your mixing the books with the show ... please lets stick to one or the other in order to avoid anymore "heated debates"

Please don't take this as a rude answer ... but if your looking for an exact number ... forget it ... you won't find it ... you can't say that Barbara was born on this day, in this year and is now this age because that would put the book in different decade which we know wouldn't have the level of technology that we have today.

For example ... Batgirl's first appearence was in Detective Comics # 359 which was published in January 1967 ... she had already graduated college in that appearence so lets say she was 20 (just for the sake of using round numbers) ... following "real time" that would make her 56 right now (give or take a year) ... we all know she's not that old (and if she is, I want the name of her plastic surgeon DAMN IT !!)

So lets say she's 35 ... following the logic or "real time" that would make the book date right now as somewhere in 1982 ... but there have already been references made to recent current events made in the books 9/11 being just one amoung them .... as you can see IT DOESN'T ADD UP any way you cut it.

Real timelines just don't work in comicbooks ... if they did everyone with the possible exception of Wonder Woman would be in nursing homes .. this is just one of those little unspoken rules that we don't bother with in comics.

FB's charts prove that if nothing else.

[Frostbite]

Want to know how it goes in the Western Timeline (get it, because it's based around the Adam West Batman show? Western? Adam West?) ? Barbara Gordon was born March 22nd, 1949. She became Batgirl when she was in the last months of being 17 (she was a genious in high school and graduated at age 16 and graduated college two years later [DC said this]). The Gotham earthquake happened in late September/early October 1975. Construction began on New Gotham on January 1st, 1977. The first episode of Birds of Prey takes place October 1987. Reese is around 26 or so, so he was born in the early 1960s, and was in his early teens at the time of the earthquake.

[Jesse321]

The only flaw in that is that the virual reality that was used in the pilot episode was in its EARLIEST development stages at that time ... much less that celphones were still HUGE back then and don't even get me on the transponders that Babs and Helena used one the show.

And by the way ... the model of motorcycles and cars that were used on the show were WAY after 1987.

See what I mean ... you can try but it just doens't work ,,, mind you I'm not saying thats not VERY creative ... but the sets and the props would have been TOTALLY different ... if your going to keep time accurate .. then the props would have to follow suit ??

Or are we omitting the props in favor of the timeline ? .. you ahve to favor one or the other .. but you can't have both.

[Frostbite]

I'm telling you, besides the fact that Bat-technology is ahead of its time anyway (they had a carphone in 1966), props and stuff are superfluous. They don't matter. Although Barbara did say, "It's a transceiver, not a Walkman!" instead of "Discman".

[Jesse321]

LOL ... see now your cheating ... ahead of its time may be one thing ... but your taking DECADES ahead of its time .. sorry but you can have one or the other .. not both.

And the "carphones" they had back then ... please ... they were still the table top models like the ones they had everwhere else they weren't even the Princess Trimline models ... at least Star Trek made thier communicators look like advanced technology.

[Frostbite]

Just because they weren't realistic looking doesn't mean they didn't exist in the DC universe.

And Superman comics in the seventies had human cloning alot (all those Jack Kirby thingies), and we still don't have human cloning yet; we probably won't for at least 30 years.

[Jesse321]

Cloning has been a sci-fi standard BEFORE comics were even invented just like androids and robots ... my point is that they were trying to emulate real technology and didn't even bother trying to think of what it would look like.

In any case, I'm not going to get into this again and turn this thread into another argument.

If you want to explain it this way .. go ahead ... but the numbers don't add up, the technology doesn't add up ... none of it does ... period.

[DrayvensCrow]

Jesse, just a devil's advocate question- You remember the Green Hornet, right? Now there was tech decades before its time, for the most part. Not starting anything, just adding my two cents.:D
Personally, I like to think that Babs (BOP version) is about my age, 34, just as is Dina(eight days older than I am).

[Jesse321]

Dray ... I'm not debating that comic-technology has always been more advance that actual technology ... for gods sake the JLA had an orbiting space station before Sputnik.

I'm even of the mind that most of our technology today comes from trying to match what was considered science fiction of the past.

But technology aside ... how do you explain away refences to current events in comicis over the last few decades and the fact that the charactors haven't aged decades later ... there have even been books that refence New Years .. yet they still don't seem to age.

Also look what John Byrne did with his run on WW ... WW was staged in Boston for the longest time and when Byrne took over he moved her to "Gateway City" ... when he was asked why he did that he said (and I'm roughly qouting his response) things happen in Boston that were worked into the books so it was setting a definate timeline... and you can't do things like kill the Mayor of Boston since your actually trying to make it coinside with whats actually happening in the city itself ... as opposed to a fictional place like Gateway City in where you have total freedom to do most anything you need to do to make the story fit.

I"m not debating what your saying don't get me wrong ... I don't agree with it either its just plain sloppy story telling sometimes, but like I've said before ... if comics followed real time all the heros would be in nursing homes by now ... thats why time and year and birthdays are so RARELY if EVER mentioned in most books.

Think about it this way ... comic books come out once a month ... most storyarchs take at least 4 to 6 issues to tell sometimes even more ... but the elapsed time in each story isn't more than a few days tops ... so either these guys are still stuck in the 60's and 70's which we know isn't the case ... or they have found the fountain of youth.

[Frostbite]

Originally posted by DrayvensCrow
You remember the Green Hornet, right? Now there was tech decades before its time, for the most part.
Green Hornet comics actually run/ran in real time. There was a Green Hornet of the forties (radio/movie serials/comic), a Green Hornet of the sixties (TV show), and a Green Hornet of the eighties and nineties (new comic).

[DrayvensCrow]

What was the title that was out in the 70's that ran real time????

[Jesse321]

Are we discussing The Green Hornet or DC ??

I know that several comcis "ran" in real time TGH being one of them .. for while the Shadow and the Phantom ran in real time too .. but ONLY in the case of the PHANTOM did the main charactor age, die and was replaced by another person ... in the DC universe we are still dealing with the SAME people decades later who still have not aged a proper amount !