Sarah Essen Gordon
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 Sarah Essen, from Batman: Year One. Art by David Mazzuchelli
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Sarah Essen Gordon is a fictional character in the DC Universe, created by Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli as a supporting character in the Batman mythos.
She is first mentioned in Frank Millers's Batman: Return of the Dark Knight but she doesn't actually appear and the story is not tied to the mainstream continuity. Therefore, her first formal appearance is in Batman #404, part of the Batman: Year One storyline.
Very little is known about Essen's past aside the fact that her parents are from Germany and that she grows up and becomes a cop in Chicago like James Gordon, who is considerably older than her. Then simply Sarah Essen, she is introduced as a very attractive detective partnered with then-lieutenant James Gordon after he is promoted. Being both honest cops fighting against police corruption and the Italian mob, they develop a lot in comon and become close until the point that, she and the married Gordon start a brief affair. When some compromising photos of the affair get to the hands of corrupt Police Commissioner Gillian B. Loeb and he threatens to tell Barbara Gordon and the media, they both decide to end the romance and she goes back to Chicago.
Editor Denny O'Neil later chose to revive the character as both an investigator and a love interest for Gordon. The two are eventually married. Unlike her husband, among the clean cops, she becomes the mayor opposer to Batman. She becomes Police Commissioner for a while. Despite being appointed by mayor Armand Kroll, by then a Batman supporter, as a Commissioner she complicates the relationship of Batman with the police. However Gordon is eventually restituted and she is moved to lead the Mayor Crimes Unit.
She is murdered by The Joker at the end of "No Man's Land" arc (Detective Comics #741); the Joker had her catch an infant he was holding, and to prevent her leaking his location shot her in the head while her hands were full. Strangely, the Joker seemed to take no pleasure in this act, walking away with a sour frown as opposed to his usual maniacal grin before surrendering himself to the police. In retaliation, Gordon shot Joker in the leg. The Joker bawled over his wound and the fact that he would never walk again, until he "got the joke"; in Batman: The Killing Joke he had shot Gordon's niece, Barbara, paralyzing her, and now Gordon had done the same to him.
[edit] All Star Batman and Robin
In All Star Batman and Robin Issue 6, the first appearances of Jim Gordon and Barbara Gordon, Gordon is talking to Sarah on the phone. Dialogue indicates that Gordon still loves Sarah and may even be having an affair with her in front of his wife.
[edit] In Miller's continuity
She was an almost unseen presence in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Gordon, by now a retiring police commissioner, inwardly repeats, "I think of Sarah. The rest is easy" as a kind of mantra. She is only glimpsed near the end, when she and Gordon embrace in silhouette. The character is handled similar way to Police Commander Stan Merkel, they are both introduced alive in the same story about Batman's future by Miller, reintroduced to the mainstream and current continuity by him in Batman: Year One and killed by other authors. Ironically Miller along with All Star Batman and Robin considers both stories to be conceived as part of the same continuity.
