Kim Yale

Kim Yale (1957 – 1997) was a writer and editor who made her most lasting mark co-writing Suicide Squad with her husband, John Ostrander, for DC Comics in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Their run on the series, which redeemed and complicated the character of Barbara Gordon after she was shot and paralyzed in Alan Moore's Batman: The Killing Joke, gave the world Oracle — redefining Gordon as a disabled intelligence operative and one of the most important disabled superheroes in mainstream comics history. Yale was a fierce advocate for disability representation and insisted that Gordon's paralysis be treated as permanent and as a source of strength rather than a problem to be solved. She also wrote for Marvel and worked as an editor across multiple publishers. She died of cancer in 1997. The Oracle character she co-created remains one of her most enduring contributions to the medium.