The Commissioner's First Real Story!
The very beginning of Jim Gordon’s backstory!
Police Commissioner James “Jim” Gordon debuted in the very same issue as Bruce Wayne/Batman did (Detective Comics vol 1 #27, way back in 1938), but the point from that moment to his first real, starring story, would come much later.
In fact, it wouldn’t come around until World’s Finest Comics #53! This was after some build up, with occasional glimpses into Gordon’s world and personal life coming for some time, since Gordon returned from a period of absence. In this issue, we finally get more in-depth insights!
Here, we learn that early in his career as a police officer, Gordon had apprehended a criminal who went by “Sheik” Hanson, a man who in the guise of a sheik commits crimes like smuggling, robbery and more. He was considered one of the most notorious, dangerous crooks on the loose until he was put away.
That is… until the present day of this issue, when Hanson breaks out of prison! Because of how Gordon had made his name on the capture, it being the most difficult and lauded case of his career at that time, Hanson’s main motivation once he was free was the destruction of Gordon and everything he held dear.
This, of course, meant we met the Commissioner’s original family! In this world, that’s his wife, Thelma, and his son, Tony.
Wait, aren’t we missing someone?
Kind of! At this point, not quite, but later retcons say yes. In this story, there is no sign of Barbara Gordon (either of them). Mostly because the character of Barbara who would later be Batgirl wouldn’t be conceived for another 15 years. Eventually, things would be retconned to fit Barbara’s presence in the story as well as Tony’s, though obviously Tony wouldn’t survive the Crisis (we’d get James Jr. instead. I’m unsure if that’s a fair trade).
We see a glimpse, in Tony, of a son who loves his father deeply but knows he’s married to the job just as much as he is to Tony’s mother. One who understands, when they say a criminal is targeting Gordon’s family, why that is and what the consequences could be. There’s a fascinating hidden life there, one that fits nicely into the box of “the kind of thing the Golden and Silver ages rarely got the chance to fully explore in side characters”.
Sheik Hanson, for his part, turns out to be a character in the same vein as Sin Fang - a white man race faking as a racial stereotype in order to pull off his crimes. This is a particular aspect of Golden Age stories, which were themselves no stranger to stories featuring characters who were real racial stereotypes. However, villains like Sheik Hanson and Sin Fang might age slightly better than their counterparts in of-the-time bigotry, simply because the villain was also a white person taking part in the bigotry on display in the issue.
It’s unfortunate that something like that clouds this story, because aside from that, this issue is a fascinating time capsule of Gordon’s family dynamics before the 60s would thrust a different idea into the spotlight forever. Reading this, you can see the kind of man Gordon would be to his kind of family, and the kind of relationship he has with his work-life balance, the crooks he apprehends, and more.
It’s not the fault of this story that there’d be something much, much more impactful on comics coming down the line that knocks this story out of canon completely.
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