The Joker, Batgirl and the specter of censorship in comics

When dueling perceptions of sexism and censorship are spilled on the canvas of creative expression, the result is not a pretty picture.

Last week, DC Comics elected to cancel the variant cover of the latest issue of Batgirl after an online preview was met with disgust and outrage from a small, but vocal, contingent of Twitter and Tumblr users who accused artist Rafael Albuquerque of glorifying violence against women and reinforcing the same hackneyed damsel stereotype the plucky heroine, known by day as Barbara Gordon, was invented to combat. The outcry even earned its own hashtag, “#ChangeTheCover,” which quickly drew the ire of other fans who viewed DC’s decision as tantamount to self-censorship, which it most certainly was.

The cover art, which depicts a leering, pistol-packing Joker smearing a bloody smile across the face of a weeping, petrified Batgirl, was actually part of an ongoing series celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Clown Prince of Crime, who first menaced the good people of Gotham back in 1940, and was intended as a homage to Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s seminal one-shot graphic novel The Killing Joke from 1988, now widely considered one of the greatest Batman stories ever told despite being subject to multiple feminist critiques in the years since its publication.

The comic, a supremely unsettling meditation on the razor-thin demarcation between order and chaos, gave the Joker both his multiple-choice origin story, something Heath Ledger would later employ to marvelous effect in The Dark Knight, and, for the first time ever, a clear psychological motivation aside from his eternal dance of death with his symbiotic arch-nemesis Batman: the notion that “one bad day” is the only thing separating the rest of humanity from the Joker’s subterranean levels of depravity. Eager to test his new pet theory, the Joker kidnaps Commissioner Gordon and attempts to drive him mad by shooting and crippling Barbara, the lawman’s only daughter, thus ending her career as Batgirl. Although it’s never explicitly stated in the narrative, many fans and critics believe the assault was also sexual in nature, adding an extra layer of unpleasantness to Albuquerque’s artwork.

So, was DC right to pull the cover? Not in my opinion, but the placement certainly seems odd given the optimistic, empowered tone of the current Batgirl series. After two decades of serving as the wheelchair-bound computer hacker Oracle, Batgirl finally recovered the use of her legs during the launch of DC’s New 52 continuity. The move was greeted with skepticism initially — the Oracle persona had grown incredibly popular, especially within the disabled community — and her solo title struggled at first, but the creative team of Cameron Stewart, Brenden Fletcher and Babs Tarr managed to right the ship, retooling the character for a younger, primarily female audience without sacrificing the qualities — the fierce intelligence, the indomitable will, the playful banter — that made her so interesting to begin with.

If DC’s decision to cancel the variant was motivated by a desire to simply move on from the controversy, that strategy appears to have backfired drastically. The great cover debate is still raging across traditional and social media, making the initial uproar look rather quaint by comparison.

The battle lines of this argument have been clearly drawn from the start. One side views the image as further evidence of the rampant misogyny that continues to plague the world of mainstream comics, a traditionally male-dominated subculture whose ham-fisted efforts to court a wider audience – Hey look, the new Thor is a woman! Ms. Marvel is a 16-year-old Muslim from New Jersey! The Green Lantern from Earth-Two married his boyfriend! – only serve to highlight the troubling lack of diversity among its own creative workforce. The other side, wary of a return to the puritanical heyday of the Comics Code Authority, sees this purely as an issue of free speech, one where creativity is being curtailed by arbitrary litmus tests and the tyranny of what constitutes good taste.

Both sides have their points. There’s no denying that sexism is alive and well in today’s comic books. Just last year, Italian artist Milo Manara was taken to task for producing a variant cover for Marvel’s Spider-Woman #1 that seemed absurdly fixated on the character’s shapely red posterior. DC’s Catwoman is continually forced into anatomically challenged action poses, including illustrator Guillem March’s notorious zero-issue cover from 2012 where the whip-cracking jewel thief was reduced to a leather-clad blob of breasts and buttocks, frozen in a position that would be extremely painful for anyone with a spine.

Unlike these examples, however, the Batgirl cover was never intended to be titillating. Albuquerque isn’t cheapening a traumatic event by indulging in creepy fan service. The image is inherently disturbing, a nightmare brought to waking life, and it’s meant to provoke a strong emotional response. On that count, it’s an unqualified success. Would it have been better to show Batgirl as an avenging survivor instead of a helpless victim? Perhaps, but that’s not what the artist chose to convey.

Much has been made about the fact that Albuquerque himself was the one who asked DC to cancel the variant, issuing a statement that read in part, “My intention was never to hurt or upset anyone through my art.” If this change of heart was genuine, more power to him, but his carefully worded apology stands in sharp contrast to the proudly confrontational nature of his artwork, both in the Bat-verse and in the pages of Scott Snyder’s creator-owned American Vampire. Did the online protests force his hand? If so, it’s a sad commentary on the state of an increasingly risk-averse industry.

I’ll end this by addressing anyone who was upset by the Batgirl cover art: You have the right to be offended, just as all artists reserve the right to offend. Your beliefs and opinions are perfectly valid, but it’s a mistake to impose limits on creative expression. If you think a piece of art is racist or misogynistic or homophobic or blasphemous, feel free to verbally vivisect it to your heart’s delight. I’ll be cheering you on, regardless of whether I agree with you or not. We’re all content creators now, and if your analysis is clever and cogent enough, your voice will be heard and your subject will be exposed for what it is. But please don’t call for art to be banned. Don’t create a culture where artists have to produce apologies instead of new art. There’s a fine line between the critic and the censor, and to cross that line is to surrender to madness.

 

Landon McDonald is a graduate student studying public relations. His column, “Screen Break,” runs Fridays.