Batman: The Killing Joke

[TordelBack]

Still one of my all time favorite Batman comics.

Mine too.

I understand the complaints about Batgirl being crippled and photographed nude but people seem to be forgetting a certain rape-scene in the Dredd story America.

The rape scene is in America II, and plenty of people have identified it as the weak point in arguably the least popular installment of the story.

Incidentally, I don't have a particular problem with the Barbara Gordon sequence in the Killing Joke comic, it was appropriately horrifying, gave rise to a pretty cool character, and for me at least at the time was a whole new level of shock. Little did I know that it would form the model for the next 25 years of comics. I do however question the need to repeat it in an animated adaptation in 2016.

[Woolly]

10 minute making of featurette:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLxwK0kd5kE

I doubt there's anyone on this forum who hasn't read The Killing Joke, but if you actually haven't then beware - the video is a bit spoiler-ish!

[Jim_Campbell]

I've said it before, but:

Killing Joke is a very minor entry into the Moore canon. Had it been Detective Annual #23, illustrated by A. N. Other Jobbing Superhero Artist, it would be a footnote in Moore biographies — it's only the fact that DC had to maintain interest in the project while Bolland took two years to draw the bloody thing* that elevated the book to its exalted status.

Nonetheless, the 'misogynist' reading of Killing Joke (and, even worse, the 'rape' reading) require such a determined mis-reading of the text that it makes me quite angry. There is a chunk of comic fandom whose persistent mispresentation of key mainstream comic texts** actively harms the medium, and this one of those.

BAH.

Jim


*If you do the maths, that's roughly one finished panel per week.

**I had cause to revisit this thought this week after Ron Marz pointed out on Twitter that a significant chunk of online fandom were, apropos BvS, talking about how the finale of DKR had Batman beating the crap out of Superman. Marz pointed out that the finale of DKR has Clark deciding to keep Bruce's secret, and is about their friendship, not the fight.