Signal Boost: Queer-Coding, Bad-Bat-Takes, And Why The Joker Isn’t That Important to Batman
stitchmediamix posted: Queer-Coding, Bad-Bat-Takes, And Why The Joker Isn’t That Important to Batman
The comics industry loves villains that appear to be moral Mirrorverse images of their biggest and best heroes. It makes sense with many other hero-villain set ups (like Superman and Lex Luthor, Hal Jordan and Sinestro), and can be used to set up dynamic and intricate plot points that are just part of the tense relations between the characters who seem to be direct opposites of one another.
The difference between the aforementioned hero-villain relationships is that these heroes and villains aren’t set up to owe their existence to their foes in the same way that comic pros and fans insist the Joker and Batman owe one another.
Even with some serious retconning and rewriting on the part of DC’s many writers over my lifetime, it’s a theory that still doesn’t work for the Joker and Batman because they don’t need each other.
A very interesting article on the unbalanced relationship between Batman and the Joker, that also dig deeper in the way the queercoding of the Joker is usually framed. (Aka "The Joker is never seen as more terrifying a figure to Batman and his readers than when he is visibly and aggressively queer.".) Lots of interesting points in there and plenty of food for thoughts given that I still kind of lowkey ship-them and even wrote them once or twice... though not quite in this dynamic of course.
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