The Four Color Media Monitor

Big Hollywood has an entry where the writer talks about how superheroes reflect their times. Unfortunately, it's a pretty superficial piece, and despite what's claimed, superheroes and the stories they star in, more specifically, stopped reflecting reality long ago (are they seriously combatting modern-day terrorism? Not really, and human relations have also become scarce), but it does have a little something about Batman and the Joker worth considering:

How often has Batman allowed the Joker to live and murder again and again over the years? His body count may be in the millions by now.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for the Black Knight to just terminate Joker once and for all with extreme prejudice?

Well, that's a good question. If you look at what the Batbooks were like by the 1990s, when the Joker murdered Jim Gordon's second wife Sarah towards the end of No Man's Land, or afterwards, and all Gordon could do was shoot the Clown Prince of Crime in the leg because Batman pressured him to refrain from executing the monster, which would've been justified, you have to wonder if DC has gone beyond the pale and believability with how this is being handled. In fairness, they have downplayed the Joker's appearances in the past decade. Unfortunately, as mentioned before, that's as far as they've gotten, resorting instead to making other supervillains carry out the deadly work (and let's not forget how they characterized Dr. Light).

If DC really wanted to prove they're trying to move away from too much bloodshed and other acts of the vile, they wouldn't have promoted Geoff Johns to their top writer/editor, nor would they continue to keep Dan DiDio on their staff. But that's today's DC, a joke if there ever was one.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, marvel comics, politics, violence