If you follow comic book creators on Twitter, you’ve probably seen the #Creators4Comics hashtag floating around this week. Creators are putting cool items up for auction, with all the benefits going to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, which will help comic shops and independent booksellers who are facing financial difficulties because of the ongoing pandemic. There are so many amazing items up for sale, including lots of great artwork, scripts, toys, statues, and more! You should definitely peruse the hashtag if you have the means to contribute.
I didn’t have anything particularly auction worthy around the house, but what I do have is an old pitch for a book on the history of Batgirl. Titled Batgirl & Beyond: The Dynamic History of the Heroines of Gotham City, the book would have covered every Bat-heroine in Gotham City in comics, film, and television, in the same way I’ve looked at Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, and Catwoman in my other books. The pitch didn’t work out (so it goes!) but I did write four chapters for it, covering the first few decades of Bat-heroines. They’ve just been sitting on my hard drive, but now they live again and you can read them!
All you have to do is donate $10 or more to the BINC Foundation and send me proof of your donation via a Twitter DM or an email to timhanley01@gmail.com. In return, I will send you a PDF with all four chapters! I gave them a thorough edit this week, designed a cover, and added a bunch of comic book images to the text. It’s ONE HUNDRED PAGES of Bat-fun that covers:
- The original Batwoman of the 1950s!
- How the writer of The Empire Strikes Back is connected to Batwoman!
- The first (short-lived) Bat-Girl!
- The second (longer-lived) Batgirl!
- Yvonne Craig as Batgirl on the 1960s Batman TV show!
- Congresswoman Barbara Gordon!
- Batgirl vs. Benedict Arnold (he was reanimated by Satan, obviously)!
- Batman: The Killing Joke, and why it’s trash!
The chapters cover Bat-heroine history from 1956 through 1988, and offer a fun introduction to these great characters. If you liked my other books, this will be right up your alley. It’s fascinating to see how these heroines carved their own spaces in the traditionally male-dominated arena of Gotham City, and managed to shine through despite the many sexist limitations of the comic book industry in this era.
If you can spare a few dollars during this difficult time, please consider a donation to this great cause! The BINC Foundation is doing fantastic work that’s going to help a lot of comic shops and booksellers, and ensure that many of them will be able to open again once our current circumstances are past. Plus a hundred pages of Batgirl history should give you something to do for a little while as you shelter in place. Check it out!
TIM HANLEY 
Read your January 2011 comments on Lady Antebellum. You were right to doubt they would change their name. Today it finally happened. Maybe their is progress ahead. I am a 73 year old white male lifetime liberal. Hopeful that I may see change in my lifetime.