DC has pulled the Joker variant of Batgirl #41 which echoed the events of The Killing Joke for being too violent to women, especially since it brings up Barbara Gordon's horrible shooting and sexual abuse and adds to the culture of victimizing women.
While censorship is never a good thing, self-control and common sense can go a long way in preventing incidents like this. Some people have brought up past covers and storylines and while they should not condemned for merely existing, we all have to remember that we are living in a different time.
Also if things that were accepted and tolerated in the past were NOT accepted and tolerated in the past, then maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't be having these problems today!
I'm not vehemently on one side or the other, but it seems that it has polarized the issue of free speech and political correctness. If there are going to be female super-heroes, they must be put in danger just like the male ones. Yet women face different dangers than men, at least in a greater proportion so care must be taken that things don't go too far.
I guess all I'm saying is that things like this should be thought out with a better evaluation of consequences.
Replies
I'm so glad DC decided to pull the cover at Albuquerque's request. It's a really powerful image, but is entirely incongruous with the tone, style, and intention of the new Batgirl series. (The writers have said they never want the Joker in the book -- it's an attempt to move past all that.) It seems like every so often, the Joker's trotted out to re-terrorize Barbara, and it grows more and more distasteful over time. The recent Cliff Chiang Harley Quinn variant for the book was a much better way of referencing The Killing Joke -- a shot of a smiling Batgirl holding a camera (like the Joker did on TKJ's cover) with Harley Quinn being put into a police car visible in the lens.
There's always going to be a place for putting protagonists in jeopardy in comics art. But this image was a lot more than that, both with its historical and cultural weight, and the fact that Barbara wasn't struggling, but was paralyzed with fear, reliving the moment. This wasn't Batgirl being lowered into a fishtank full of piranhas -- it was her enduring an unwelcome arm around her, while being forced to smile about it, a commonplace occurrence, a metaphor made literal. It was intentionally upsetting, but I don't think Albuquerque recognized how upsetting it would be when he drew it, and DC marketing didn't seem aware of how opposed in tone it was to a book which is trying its best to welcome a female readership.
I'm tempted to jump on this as a free speech/artistic expression issue (hey, I'm a librarian by day!). But I have to agree that pulling it is the right call in this case. Especially if it's so different in tone from the book itself.
As a journalist, I lean pretty far toward free speech. But the First Amendment isn't an absolute, as numerous Supreme Court decisions have established ("fighting words," yelling "fire" in a theater, etc.). In fact, the First Amendment only applies to government suppression, and only to prior restraint. If you want to publish something libelous or otherwise actionable, the First Amendment won't stop you, nor will it protect you from the consequences.
All that being said, what we're talking about here is self-restraint. Yes, DC should have thought a bit more about that cover. And now that the issue is raised, the right thing to do is quash it.
It seems to be acceptable if they switch it around. In the since cancelled soap opera One Life to Live, a rich man is kidnapped and crippled by a crazed stalker (think Misery), who then tries to to rape him. When he fights her off, she gives him date rape drugs and threatens to kill his wife and children if he continues to refuse. Afterwards she runs out and gets a home pregnancy test. Seeing she's pregnant, she blows up the place with him in it. He survives and tries to get the baby he had with her because he doesn't want him being raised by a psychopath like he was (his father was a monster that beat him, threw him out of the house, and raped his sister.) She fakes her own death, leaving evidence he killed her. He's tried, convicted, and sentenced to die by lethal injection. She's caught but he's already been given the drugs and surgeons work for hours trying to save his life. Apparently someone decided they'd had enough of her since she's then killed on the way to prison when the paddy wagon crashes. Just to show everybody in the series is a jerk, the surgeon that saves him is later arrested for committing crimes (including murder) and pinning them on his ex-wife and little brother.
I would go further and say that not only did DC make the right call in quashing this cover, it shouldn't have made The Joker shooting Barbara part of her history in the New 52.
ClarkKent_DC said:
You're probably right -- but that might also have caused its own, different problems. Erasing it from continuity is different from erasing it from history (or even canon). When the Legion was rebooted (no, the other time. No, the other, other time, around Zero Hour), it restarted from square one -- and despite efforts of the creative team to travel in a different direction, classic stories kept being retold (with new wrinkles). Computo returned, the Fatal Five were formed, the Sun Eater came to earth. And with the Killing Joke being arguably the most recognizable part of Barbara's history as Batgirl, I think if it weren't still set in continuity during the New 52 reboot, it would have been retold by now... or at least a retelling would have been teased a number of times (probably at least during the Death of the Family crossover). I'm not sure if that's a better or worse problem, but it's still a problem. At least by keeping it in Barbara's past, it means she won't always have the threat of this assault and paralysis looming around the corner.
I'm on the side of free speech, too -- but this is a marketing issue, not a free speech issue. The Albuquerque cover was marketing this new Batgirl book all wrong, driving off the very audience the comic itself is intended to attract (and probably attracting an audience that wouldn't be happy with the book inside). It would have made an appropriate cover for one of the Death of the Family issues where Barbara faced off against the Joker, confronting that very same fear. Still upsetting, but very true to what it advertised. But as a variant cover on a considerably sunnier book, it was the wrong tool for the job.
I'm not sure the current version of Batgirl would stand much of a chance against the Joker, but if they've taken away her history as Oracle then I think they should take away the Killing Joke as well. It was the joker crippling her that made her Oracle. I agree the cover wasn't the one I'd have gone with.
I still don't see how Batman's backstory can still exist if Superman's and Wonder Woman's don't. He should have access to all kinds of memories that they'd insist never happened.
How many times has Ferro Lad been killed by now?
Mark S. Ogilvie said:
I'm not sure the current version of Batgirl would stand much of a chance against the Joker, but if they've taken away her history as Oracle then I think they should take away the Killing Joke as well. It was the joker crippling her that made her Oracle. I agree the cover wasn't the one I'd have gone with.
In The Killing Joke (which we forget has the best Joker origin story ever), Barbara answers the door and is immediately shot. This is the likely result no matter which character answers the door. The Joker doesn't even know he's shooting Batgirl. He just wants to hurt Jim Gordon, driving him insane if possible.
I think restoring Barbara to the mantle of Batgirl was a lot less valuable than keeping her as a wheelchair-bound, unique heroine. I wasn't around for the Stephanie Brown Batgirl though I always liked her character. The Cassandra Cain Batgirl was an interesting character, especially because of her origin. Did they REALLY need Batgirl to be Barbara Gordon again?
They need Batgirl to be Barbara Gordon just about as much as they need Robin to be Dick Grayson. Maybe less actually.
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
of 8 Next