Comissioner Gordon
53 years ago - James Gordon is born in Gotham City.
35 years ago - 18-year-old James Gordon attends the Police Academy.
33 years ago - 20-year-old James Gordon becomes a patrolman in the GCPD.
31 years ago - 22-year-old Gordon is the first GCPD officer on the scene of the murder of Thomas & Martha Wayne and gives his coat to young Bruce Wayne, taking care of him.
30 years ago - 23-year-old James Gordon marries Eileen Kean. He moves to New York, where he gets his bachelors in criminal justice.
28 years ago - 25-year-old James Gordon & Eileen Kean have their daughter, Barbara Gordon.
24 years ago - 29-year-old James Gordon is promoted to Lieutenant.
20 years ago - 33-year-old James Gordon arrests a prominent corrupt businessman in New York for racketeering & drug trafficking. As a punishment he is given a promotion to Lieutenant and transferred to Gotham City. He confonts Crispus Allen for taking bribes. Harvey Bullock is assigned as his new partner by Commissioner Loeb, tasked with disrupting his efforts to clean up the GCPD. The move and job stress his marriage to Eileen Kean to the breaking point. He works with Sarah Essen and they have an emotional affair. Eileen finally leaves him and Barbara Gordon, moving to Europe. Barbara goes to a boarding school.
19 years ago - 34-year-old James Gordon & Crispus Allen have a heated argument about the right way to fight a corrupt system. They are not friends but understand each other.
18 years ago - 35-year-old James Gordon & Harvey Bullock destroy Commissioner Loeb's blackmail evidence with Crispus Allen's help, loosening his hold over the GCPD. Bullock becomes Gordon's most trusted ally.
15 years ago - 38-year-old Gordon is the only man in the GCPD that Batman trusts when he first surfaces. Gordon mistrusts him at first, but soon they are working together along with Assistant DA Harvey Dent.
14 years ago - 39-year-old Gordon's daughter Barbara Gordon moves to Gotham to begin taking college courses, leaving boarding school to live with him. Barbara talks him into finally asking out Sarah Essen. His work with Batman & Harvey Dent leads to Gotham's DA being brought down on corruption charges.
13 years ago - 40-year-old James Gordon becomes the new Commissioner of the GCPD. He starts the new Major Crimes Division, with Harvey Bullock & Sarah Essen. He places Crispus Allen on administrative leave pending review, but avoids charges and is allowed to return to duty. Gordon specifically asks him to continue to keep them honest.
12 years ago - 41-year-old James Gordon marries Sarah Essen.
11 years ago - 42-year-old James Gordon & the GCPD are put under new pressure to capture Batman by mayor Rupert Thorne when Hugo Strange frames him for the kidnapping of Thorne's daughter. This leads to the apparent shooting death of Strange who is wearing a replica Batsuit.
9 years ago - 44-year-old James Gordon is kidnapped by the Joker along with Barbara Gordon & Sarah Essen. The Joker attempts to shoot and kill Sarah to push the commissioner to madness, but Barbara takes the bullet instead, leaving her paraplegic. Gordon refusing to let Batman kill the Joker, proving him wrong.
8 years ago - 45-year-old James Gordon's son James Gordon Jr. is born. Sarah Essen, chooses to step down from the GCPD Major Crimes Division as a detective and begins working with the mayor's office as a police liaison.
4 years ago - 49-year-old James Gordon is cut out of Batman's mission by Jean-Paul Valley. Gordon is forced treat him as a criminal until Dick Grayson takes over as Batman resolves their relationship.
3 years ago - 50-year-old James Gordon coordinates the GCPD during the No Man's Land earthquake. He receives a "batphone" from Batman. Sarah Essen returns to active duty to help during the quake. He works alongside Two-Face to secure part of the city, stopping him from killing Julian Gregory Day. When Two-Face places him on trial for his life he asks for Dent as his defense attorney, notably fracturing his identities.
It is really hard to look at a character like James Gordon and describe them with the same language we use for most of the other characters on this site. While he's technically part of Batman's supporting cast, I don't think I have to tell you how that feels woefully inadequate in describing just how important he is. Yes, he's a character unto himself, and can be central to all sorts of stories centered around Gotham and the people who call the city home, but he's also a fundamental part of the fabric of the world without which the story simply wouldn't work. Doing a timeline for Jim Gordon is primarily about setting up the world so Batman can exist.
Gordon's Comic HistoryCommissioner Gordon's first appearance was in the same issue as Batman himself, Detective Comics #27 in 1939, In literally the very first panel, along with Bruce Wayne. Batman might have the largest cast of supporting characters as any costumed hero in comics, but Gordon was absolutely the very first of them. He was a core part of the framing of those original stories; Batman was a full-on vigilante at first, so he wasn't able to meet with the police. Instead it was Bruce who hung out with the Commissioner as his lazy shiftless socialite friend who got to just tag along to murder scenes for the hell of it. The transition to Batman actually working WITH the police happened as a reaction to the old 'Seduction of the Innocent' complaint, but once this was in place it became a core mechanic of the entire Batman mythos.
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The opening structure of Batman comics is so familiar it's almost indistinguishable from Batman himself; Gordon lights the Bat Signal, Batman and Robin see it and race to meet with the Commissioner who gives us the exposition of this issue's threat. As the decades passed Batman's world would undergo all sorts of changes, but Gordon remained absolutely foundational to the story.
Most of DC's classic characters had their origin stories retold Post-Crisis, and Batman was no exception. We got Batman: Year One by Frank Miller, which was largely told from the perspective of a younger more complex Lieutenant Gordon, where we saw his relationship with his wife Barbara fragments as he becomes inappropriately close with fellow detective Sarah Essen, and watched his relationships with Batman develop from the beginning. Gordon was actually not part of the groundbreaking GCPD series in the 2000s; he'd been shot on duty and had actually retired as Commissioner at the time. He would eventually return before the continuity was reset in 2011, where the timeline was reset with a younger version of Gordon yet again. |
Our Commissioner Gordon StoryGetting Commissioner Gordon's story set up properly for our story is maybe one of the easiest tasks we have in our timeline. He's so incredibly important in getting Batman correct, but we all know him so well and understand the role he's meant to play, so all we really have to do is make sure he's in a position to play that role.
We did make a few small changes to the order of events related to his family life; Post-Crisis, his daughter Barbara was changed to make her his adoptive daughter, presumably to shift the relative ages of everyone involved, but we switched her back to his biological daughter. We also changed the order of events around so Gordon's relationship with Sarah doesn't start until after his divorce from his first wife. We get that there was a dramatic story being told, but it doesn't really fit into Gordon's larger story. Also, we're not going to have his son James Gordon Jr grow up to be a serial killer. There have been one or two good stories that have come from that idea, but for the most part it's all pretty dour. We've made a point to not make Gordon too old; he's still in his early fifties. He's still years from retirement, so he can continue to be the pillar of integrity for the entire city for a long time. |
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