Batman Gets Joe Chill

[informationgeek]

The following is an excerpt from Batman #763, part of Grant Morrison's run.





















What do you all think of this particular scene? I never particularly liked this one at all.

Comments

[lego_joker]

Guh. I think this is my number-one antipathy about pre-Crisis Batman: the whole web of BS that's grown around the guy who shot Batman's parents. It's like writer after writer decided a mere mugger wasn't "good enough" to have made Batman, and just have to turn it into a giant conspiracy.

(A close second in antipathy: Thomas Wayne being the "original" Batman. Surely there are better ways to give him actual character?)

[dr_archeville]

Exactly! Joe Chill being a random mook with a gun was the entire point, to show that "Crime" and "Criminals" are big, tangled, hard-to-confront things which cannot easily be confronted, let alone defeated.

[sadoeuphemist]

Where's the conspiracy here? He was a mere mugger who shot Bruce Wayne's parents, who then found success later in life.

[lego_joker]

I admit Morrison isn't *quite* as bad here as certain other writers were, but I rather dislike the idea of even giving the mugger a name, let alone having Batman facing him as an adult.

For my money, I still prefer how Miller handled the matter in DKR: Bruce never met the guy again, but in his old age eventually grew to realize the mugger was just another scared, desperate soul, not the Ultimate Evil.

[sadoeuphemist]

That seems to be going too far on the other end. The guy who shot Bruce Wayne's parents was a person, and had a name, and a life, and all of that.

Like, in the scans above Joe Chill grows into a mid-level crime boss who ends up anxious and helpless while Batman psychologically tortures him into committing suicide. There's nothing mythological or conspiratorial about Joe Chill. The only thing remarkable about him is that Batman really goddamn hates his guts.