I never have read The Killing Joke and thus don't have much to say about it other than I don't feel any desire to read it even now. But I have read Ennis's The Boys and I think it's great. The violence is extreme but I think it's the opposite of gratuitous: it's essential to one of the major themes of the book - the dangers inherent in the kind of power routinely granted to supeheroes with few repercussions, according to genre convention. Ennis used the violence to make us take another look at those conventions, and I think he made an important point.

I have no knowledge of that, even if I'm fairly familiar with a part of that culture of the early 80ies, through the works of Clive Barker or Coil.
But my understanding of the term is it was coined by film critics in the early 00ies to categorize  horror movies such as Saw or Hostel. It has since entered common language, not before that. Therefore, using it to describe TKJ builds an unconcious and unfair association with this kind of movies since the comic bears little resemblance to those kinds of movies.

It was not an elseworlds story, Arthur; its place in continuity was a bit uncertain because those were the days of the post-crisis reboot, and I suppose it had been written before Frank Miller turned Barbara from Gordon's daughter to his wife (and later into a niece also named Barbara, whom I believe he eventually adopted because retcon). In any case... I'm sure it was meant to be a "real" Batman story from the get-go, and Barbara did remain crippled after her ordeal.

Regarding the place of violence in art: yes, there is such a thing. I just doubt that the sadistic treatment of Barbara (stripped naked and abundantly photographed after she was shot through the belly and spine, for those who didn't read it) and Gordon (likewise stripped naked and tortured) has no place in a Batman book. That horrible things happen in real life is irrelevant: this is a comic about a guy who " fights crime" by dressing up as a bat to punch characters like Crazy Quilt! Any relation to the real world is tenuous at best.

Mature and even disturbing material has its place in comics, I'm sure, but a Batman book isn't it... especially not a "regular" Batman book.

It's brutal, that's for sure. I think it means to show just how inhuman humans can get. In such a context, it's not even the walking cannibal corpses that are the worst threat... it's other people.

Something the existence of ISIS or the concept of the cobalt bomb had convinced me of a long time ago!

I like The Killing Joke as a story, but can certainly understand why Barbara Gordon fans wouldn't. Still: it gave us Oracle.

That's quoted out of context and comes from another comic, but even so the fact that a story is imaginary does not mean that anything is suitable for every book. Even allowing for creative freedom, there's a time and a place for everything. What you can tell in Preacher to great effect, you can't necessarily tell in Care Bears.

(Well, obviously you can but you probably shouldn't. Not if you want to be true to the book).

Superheroes are a ridiculous concept, built around a modern mythology where ideals of justice are defended by vigilantes beating people up while wearing funny costumes. The tacit agreement between writer and reader pretending the whole thing makes sense opens up many story possibilities, and yes, it can even allow the writer to say something about human nature and human society. However, losing sight that these are essentially silly books meant for kids condemns superhero comics to near total irrelevance in the short run.

Clearly TKJ is not suitable for children -it even says so on the cover. That would be fine, I suppose, because comics don't have to be caught in amber, forever unchanging. However, Batman is also unsuitable for the vast majority of adults right from the start, since most adult won't care for superhero comics anyway. TKJ features a man dressed as a bat who beats up a sadist dressed as a clown, for crying out loud! What's adult about that? Are we going to tell stories meant for comic-book-guy types only? (The question is rhetorical... the answer is pretty much "yes", and as a result, twenty years later, we have stories about the Joker's face being ripped off and books that sells peanuts).

It's not about sacred cows and holy temples, it's about telling good stories. A Batman story with explicit sadism in it does not strike me as a good Batman story, because it goes against the nature of the character. I probably wouldn't care to see an episode of the Flinstones in which Fred molests Pebbles either.

As you say, that's my opinion... aren't they all?

Arthur wrote:


I don't you to lecture me about violence, sex, unpleasantness, and art, Arthur. I have neither argued, nor would, for censorship nor advocated that readers avoid works about any of these subjects or ebcause such works are unpleasant.

And I love the Goya, but it is a far cry from The Killing Joke. So are Lear, the Odyssey, and the Iliad, all of which explore the nature and the effects of violence, and none of which sugar-coat it. Neither does any of these works glorify, exploit or wallow in violence. I think that portions of TKJ do; you don’t.

Don't know where you're going with the torture-porn definition. I even added a qualifier just in case someone was more knowledgeable about the term. Apparently, Rob is, and he recognizes that the term existed before TKJ was written.

(You are apparently unwilling to call what Bolland and Moore depict in TKJ as being less disgusting and violent than actual “torture porn.” I hope you don’t mind if I defer to your judgment rather than try to prove you correct.)

Even so, I’d liken using the term to using “post-traumatic-shock disorder” as a way to describe the condition once called “shell shock” or “combat fatigue” even though the term did not exist during World Wars One or Two. Would you forbid me from describing Hamlet as evincing symptoms of manic depression? Following your reasoning, I couldn’t, because since that term did not exist in 1601, the condition could not have either.

The desire to depict violence for prurient purposes has probably been with us for centuries. And so has the objectification and mistreatment of women, which is the centerpiece of the story. Even though the Joker treats James Gordon sadistically, he is not left paralyzed; hell, he’s not even traumatized. In fact, he’s the stalwart symbol of all that’s right, commanding Batman to capture Joker “by the book.” The cruelty inflicted on Barbara Gordon, depicted in far greater detail, is the focus of the story, and Barbara bears the physical, emotional and psychological scars with her for a long time.

Else, DC Comics could not and would not have rebooted her Batgirl series with the cover depicting the Joker holding a petrified Batgirl prisoner after having defiled her face with a smile drawn in blood.
Batgirl, despite the Oracle makeover that a writer who recognized female exploitation when she saw it created to restore her to some dignity, was used once again as the weak female whose fear and capture serve to titillate and thrill the target audience.

I get it, I do. DC wants to sell books, primarily to males stuck at an immature level of development.
That’s how pulp men’s magazines made their money, too.

My beef really comes down to the telling of the story, and my disappointment in Moore, much of whose work I  enjoy

I would echo much of what Roquefort put so well, so I’ll try only to add to his point. Had TKJ been told exactly as it was with other characters, even if they were close analogues or near-clones of Batman, Joker, Gordon and Barbara, beyond what Moore did in Watchmen, I would have found it less opprobrious.

Had he (or Bolland) not seemed to revel in the violation of Barbara Gordon with the same glee as the Joker did, I might have been less repelled by it.

Had Batman not giggled like a 10-year-old at the Joker’s final story, had he stayed within character --not “boundaries,” as you describe them, but the evidence of the character’s words and actions as shown over decades.

It’s Moore’s story and he can tell it as he wishes; I think in the end, he simply failed.

There is a fine story to be told linking these two adversaries locked in eternal combat like Holmes and Moriarty, Milton’s God and Satan, Ahab and the whale. But, the Batman we know would not share a conciliatory laugh with his arch-enemy. The yin and yang share but a smidgen of each other; they are not equivalents.

Would Batman be plagued by the questions the Joker posed to him about life’s meaninglessness, about random nature of reality, about the futility of trying to wrest meaning form it? Of course! What intellect like Batman’s wouldn’t?

What Batman wouldn’t do is let down his guard in front of the Joker. That kind of doubt, anxiety, fear and despair would out; it would have to. But it is in Batman’s nature, just as it is NOT in the Joker’s to bear that burden alone in the darkness of the Batcave. Perhaps he would share it with Alfred or Silver St. Cloud, or an older Dick Grayson. Any of those premises would be worth exploring, and I think would have led to a more thoughtful exploration of Batman and Bruce Wayne.

But not with the narcissistic, cruel, emotionally needy Joker.

So my dislike for the story has nothing to do with its premise. I think Moore saw something in the formative moments of the two characters that others hadn’t. My complaint is that he veered too far from the evidence that has accrued over decades and that he for whatever reason, and that he gave the usual sop to Cerberus and included sadistic violence meted out to a woman. (That some of it was shown in pictures within the context of the story, as you argue, matters little.) You call the latter an artistic choice. I would argue that it was a commercial one.

But please don’t suggest that I don’t like it because I am shying away from the notion that art is often unpleasant or that it raises uncomfortable, unsettling questions. (I think that’s what you were implying.)

Quite the contrary. I just want my stories to be well told, and this one didn’t meet that criterion.