Actually, kinda sorta yes. I'm not disagreeing with your perception that Barbara's POV was not shown, but the original wording came across as a little... not voyeuristic, exactly, but a little weird. Too academic and detached, perhaps.

It's true that Barbara is not focused on in the story.Her thoughts and feelings aren't mentioned. But that's kind of the point of the story. It's not her story, it's a story about what the Joker is doing in his personal war with Batman, and Barbara is an unfortunate victim of it. You don't have to like it, but that's how it was written.

Also, I believe Moore kind of did show a little of Barbara's personal experience in this. It comes across to me that Barbara knows she was just a prop in the Joker's plans to get at Batman. It's a valid argument to say that she should have been able to say as much directly and hate the Joker for it, but from a storytelling viewpoint, it's something that should have happened after the climax of the story - at the point where we last see her, she's extremely worried about her father, as she should be. It's something that could and probably should have been addressed after the final scene that saw print. And I think we both agree that whatever Moore's intent was or was not for ending the story with that last scene, the result was crap.




That's a good counterpoint. Now that I think about it, I would also say that stripping and collaring Gordon had the added effect of - in his particular case, since he is an official authority figure, charged with maintaining order - was an extra insult by the Joker by saying "You have no power, no ability to keep order, you are weak and helpless, not a protector of anyone" (I can totally see how the Dark Knight movie ran with this).

That said, I still don't think it invalidates anything I stated about no rape occurring.




"Gratification from committing violations that induced humiliation" should be the title of your next album with Morrissey.

I'm not going to call that "twisting my words" because you rearranged my words to good effect in order to explain your point, well done. And you're right, he was indeed gratified with the successes he had up to this point. But I still maintain Joker was not after any sexual gratification (at least, not in the way anyone else would. For all I know, he really, uh, enjoys everything he does in the story to an extremely perverse degree). But yeah, he was having a grand old time, no doubt.

Miracleman, to Johnny Bates, which is why he ultimately releases Kid Miracleman and he goes on his spree of death and destruction.  Johnny had been placed in an institution, which housed boys with mental issues (Johnny had been comatose, after Kid Miracleman switched, early in the series) and several of the boys were at least borderline psychotic.  He is bullied, then the gang leader tells the others to hold him down and pull down his trousers, as the thug starts to unbuckle his own.  Johnny pleads that he cannot take what is about to happen and it will force him to do something that they will all regret (not exact words, but implication) and he says "Kimota!" and Kid Miracleman proceeds to turn the bullies into stains on the wall and it grows from there to devastating large portions of London.  Also to The Invisible Man, in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, when Hyde comes for him.

In addition to the pages chadwilliam posted, Ostrander and Yale mentioned a couple other errors in Moore's story in Suicide Squad #48 (panel 3 and the last panel) -




Although in fairness to Moore, and as codystarbuck mentioned above, Moore thought the story would be separate from the rest of the DC universe proper.

The problem here is that Ostrander has a rare ability that few writers have. The only other one I can think of offhand is Mark Waid. They have this uncanny ability to - pardon my phrasing - polish a turd.

They can take a stupid idea and make a good story out of it. And as Ostrander and Yale* do here, they can actually add details that make the stupid idea more plausible, more believable. The trouble with this ability is that it just reinforces the beliefs of the higher-ups that the stupid ideas were actually always good all along.

* I say Ostrander here because however good a writer Kim Yale may have been, adding these kinds of details always seemed more like John's writing, and I have seen him do the same trick on stories he has written solo.

I was not even a Batgirl fan back then. But still I thought her characterization was terrible. Really really lazy writing.

And it’s just one of the things wrong with The Killing Joke. I read it when it first came out because my roommate bought it. I’ve always thought it was bad. Despite the great art.

Batman #426-429 (December 1988 - January 1989)



"A Death in the Family"

Script: Jim Starlin
Pencils: Jim Aparo
Inks: Mike DeCarlo
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: John Costanza

Grade: n/a (only exploring this in terms of what it means to The Batman Family)


""We counted on the vote being against him living," - Mike DeCarlo (1)

"I knew who my fans were and I figured that Robin was toast the moment they decided to put this thing out." - Jim Starlin (1)

"There were only 72 votes between him living and dying." - Jim Starlin (2)



As with my recent review of The Killing Joke, I'm going to refrain from discussing this work's artistic merit and just explore its significance to The Batman Family. If you'd like my complete thoughts on the storyline, you can find them here:

Batman #426 Part 1, Part 2
Batman #427 Part 1, Part 2
Batman #428
Batman #429


Here, I'm interested in exploring exactly two extremely complex dimensions to this storyline/event: 1) Who wanted Robin killed and what that tells us about DC's attitude towards Batman's supporting cast, and 2) What impact this death had upon The Batman Family.



Who wanted Robin killed?

The conventional narrative, as DC tells it, is that, "Many of our readers were unhappy with Jason Todd" (Jennette Kahn (1)) and that his death being put to a phone-in-vote was a logical consequence of his extreme unpopularity.

In fact, the real story is a bit more complicated. As I explain in greater detail here, the Post-Crisis Jason Todd was only marginally different from his established, pre-Crisis counterpart after only two issues:


from Batman #410

But first impressions are powerful, and this was how The Pre-Crisis Jason Todd first appeared in Batman #408:



Writer Max Allen Collins had a specific agenda in doing this: by having Jason begin on the wrong side of the tracks, he gave Batman a more logical boy sidekick for the 1980s, one who was in greater danger without Batman than he was while fighting crime with Batman. By the end of his first story arc, this Jason is as wide-eyed and smiley as ever, his rough exterior now entirely in his past. While there was certainly some fan outcry over that initial Post-Crisis appearance, Jason v2.0 ceased to be controversial for a long while after that, spending two full years as an unremarkable, traditional sidekick to Batman.

What happens next only really makes sense when one considers the larger context of Batman in 1986 thru 1988. The Post-Crisis Batman was originally set up to be pretty much the same as his Pre-Crisis counterpart. Max Allen Collins had changed Jason Todd a little and done some light revisions to Nightwing's history, but Batman himself was still an unquestionable hero who was only as dark as the context required him to be, still able to be a warm paternal figure to Dick Grayson and Jason Todd.



But then Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns far outsold DC's wildest predictions, causing them to throw his follow-up work, Year One, into the regular Batman title in an effort to drum up more sales. This then inspired Keith Giffen to work a darker, Miller-inspired Batman into his Justice League, and that take on Batman exploded in popularity after this little moment in Justice League #6 (September 1987):





A darker Batman seemed to equal greater sales and greater attention. For a franchise that had been struggling to remain relevent and profitable for over two decades, as well as a publisher that still hadn't regained the ground it lost to Marvel in the late 1960s, the need to lean into this new take on the Batman was clear. Detective Comics writer Mike W. Barr was soon replaced with John Wagner and Alan Grant, two writers coming from Judge Dredd with a reputation for darker, violent anti-hero storytelling, and Batman writer Mike W. Barr was replaced by Jim Starlin, the guy who had killed off Captain Marvel. The Batman office was clearly positioning itself to write a far darker version of Batman.

Starlin's Batman constantly wrestled with morality and the question of how far to go when taking on crime:



which seemed to explode with Batman's decision to murder The KGBeast in Batman #420, locking him in a sewer chamber right before the water was about to rise:





A common sentiment circulating in the fandom and among the DC offices at this point was that Batman would be far darker without a brightly colored boy sidekick. Allegedly, Jim Starlin repeatedly pushed for O'Neil to let him kill off Robin, but O'Neil resisted at first. I suspect it's around this point (and for this reason) that Starlin suddenly shifted Batman's reckless anti-hero behavior onto Jason Todd. Suddenly, only two issues after Batman deliberately chose to murder a villain, Jason is the one repeatedly crossing the line that Bruce needs to hold back:



And, only two issues after that, Jason deliberately murders a rapist/murderer that the law could not otherwise touch:




It's my firm belief that Starlin was purposefully making Jason unlikable so that O'Neil would allow Starlin to kill him. In O'Neil's words:




So Denny O'Neil came up with the idea to let fans vote via 1-900 number to determine whether Jason would live or die during the Death in the Family storyline, but Starlin wasn't done stacking the deck against Jason. In Batman #426, Jason's impulsive rage has reached a whole new level. Whereas there'd always been an understandable reason for his vigilante impulses previously, he's just over-the-top troubled from the very first page:





Starlin even goes back and completely changes the climactic moment during Max Collins' run in which Jason forgoes vengeance in order to take the hero's path:


from Batman #410, by Max Collins

with a very different ending, depicting a very different Jason who never decisively chose the hero's path:


flashback from Batman #427, by Jim Starlin

Starlin even goes so far as to add these little moments in Death in the Family that serve no purpose other than to make the reader like Jason less:



For the casual fan who read Jason's first Post-Crisis appearance but didn't stick around for the rest, and who would be picking up a major storyline like this one (missing everything in between), there'd be no reason to suspect that Jason hadn't just been a total monster all along.


But the agenda runs deeper than that. Let's not forget that the storyline was called "A Death in the Family". How was that title going to be earned by the end if Jason lived? I doubt the death of Dr. Sheila Hayworth would have been a satisfactory enough death to warrant such a title.

Let's also not forget the minor detail that the vote by phone advertisement only appeared in the direct edition of Batman #427. Even the front cover of the newsstand version uses the barcode to eclipse the portion of the cover promising that the reader would get to decide Jason's fate:



Direct market readers were the folks buying up Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke, the kind of mature fanbase that would likely want to see a darker Batman with no Robin by his side, whereas the kids and more general audiences were left out of the voting all-together.

Add to that the fact that the approved alternate panels for Batman #428, which would have been used had Jason lived, still left Jason in a coma indefinitely and with Batman vowing to work alone from now on:



Even if, somehow, the voting did not go their way, Starlin, O'Neil, Jennette Kahn, Paul Levitz and everyone else eagerly watching at DC had stacked the deck so that Robin was permanently out of the picture either way.


As it stands, the voting was far closer than they'd expected, coming down to a mere 72 votes out of over 10,000. Even amongst the demographic most likely to support the death of Jason Todd, the vote barely went in that direction. What DC had decided audiences wanted wasn't necessarily accurate.



The aftermath

Whether Robin died or not, DC seemed intent on the final outcome:



Bruce would be a dark loner from now on. No more Robin, no more reaching out to Nightwing, and this very issue is the first to confirm that Barbara Gordon was indeed crippled in regular continuity, ensuing there'd be no more Batgirl to lend a hand either.

THIS was the Batman Family DC wanted at this point:



A far cry from the Post-Crisis Batman Family Starlin was developing as recently as ten months earlier:





And thus The Batman family is more or less dissolved, even as later writers beginning with Marv Wolfman would seek to soften Batman a little and restore some level of strained relationship between him and Nightwing.







(1) Calamia, K. (2022, January 31). Superhero death - creators revisit Batman's 'a death in the family' controversial fan vote. Newsorama. Retrieved May 4, 2023, from www.gamesradar.com/revisiting-batmans-a-death-in-the-family-controversial-fan-vote/

(2) Salcido, M. (2021, September 29). Exclusive: Interview with thanos creator Jim Starlin. ScreenGeek. Retrieved May 4, 2023, from www.screengeek.net/2019/05/01/jim-starlin-interview/

(3) Greenfield, D. (2017, May 6). Denny O'Neil: Getting rid of Robin - twice. 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture. Retrieved May 4, 2023, from 13thdimension.com/denny-oneil-getting-rid-of-robin-twice/

Even now, Starlin says the difference was 72 votes, and O'Neil said it was 85.




Part of the challenge with researching too deep into this event is that accounts conflict tremendously, but at one point Starlin claimed that he was fired from DC because Warner merchandising was furious that they had killed off Robin ahead of the film and demanded to know who was responsible. Allegedly, O'Neil then threw Starlin under the bus.

Starlin took over Batman with issue 414 cover dated December 1987.  The corresponding issue of Detective Comics (#581) was Barr's last for the title.  When Grant and Wagner took over Detective, Robin was strangely absent.  No explanation that I can recall - just solo stories of Batman as if that was the new status quo despite what was happening over in Batman.  When Jason Todd dies in Batman #428, Detective Comics hadn't mentioned the kid in almost a year.  It wouldn't be until Detective Comics #605 cover dated September 1989 that he finally gets a mention in the title - when Clayface IV impersonates him and yes, the title finally confirms that Jason Todd is dead. 

Now, despite the darker, grittier stories that O Neil might have expected Grant and Wagner to come up with, their Batman was actually a nice, decent guy - not campy or anything like that, but sane, well adjusted and someone who was completely at grips with himself and not psychologically affected by the darkness around him even when facing off against cannibals like Corneius Stirk compared with Starlin's Batman who seemed to let everything get to him.  Grant's Batman is very tonally different from Starlin's and I wonder how he would have written Robin.  Of course, no one really got the chance to find out, but I can't imagine that their Robin would have been so singlemindedly offensive.  I wonder if Grant and Wagner weren't asked to keep Robin out of their stories so that Starlin could have complete control over the character.  Perhaps Detective was just seen as an ancillary title which wasn't expected to have much of an impact on continuity (it would have been strange if that were the case, but I mean, other than Year Two, I don't think there's any continuity building going on in that title from the start of Post-Crisis until Tim Drake is on the scene) and as a result, Grant and Wagner were asked to keep things simple hence their 'Batman vs. weirdo of the month' tales, but man, if O Neil wanted to stack the deck in Starlin's favor this would have been the way to do it.  It might have been perceived as a 'Starlin problem' rather than a 'Jason Todd problem' had Robin come across well over in Detective but not in Batman, but handing him over to Starlin and then saying, 'Look we tried to make the kid likable but it was hopeless' seems harder to challenge when every story he was in had him looking bad.

Of course, it could be that Grant and Wagner simply asked not to use Robin since he wouldn't fit the stories they wanted to tell (Batman and Robin against Scarface and The Ventriloquist I can actually picture, but Cornelius Stirk or even The Corrosive Man is a little trickier) but if this is the case, what a stoke of luck for Starlin who I 100% agree with made Jason unlikable for the sole purpose of being allowed to kill him off.

Great catch on Batman suddenly becoming more of a legally upstanding citizen the moment his 'justice above the law' attitude gets switched over to Jason.  I hadn't noticed that before, but it perfectly fits.
Even story wise perhaps - maybe Batman was starting to worry that any day now the Gotham Police were going to discover The KGBeast's corpse in that Gotham sewer and start asking some pretty uncomfortable questions of their resident vigilante.  Might be convenient if he could shift his eyes over to Robin when those questions were asked and say "Now Robin, did you have anything to do with that poor man dying like that?  I know you like hanging around the sewers..."  "What?  No I don't!"  "Like you didn't throw that nice Felipe boy off that roof while I was performing my Bat-rap on the importance of obeying the law for the children of the GCPD at the request of, God bless him, President Reagan?"  "What - when you kidnapped him?"  "Oh-Kay, Robin - I 'kidnapped the President - ssuuuurrrreeee I did".