Did DC censor 'gay' Joker?

[cyberghostface]

This isn't new information but it's something I recently discovered. Scott Snyder as you know has written Joker as being romantic towards Batman with plenty of innuendo. For the trade of 'Death of the Family' however the trades seem to have removed all of Joker's 'flirting'.

Some examples:











It seems like editorial deliberately went over and removed every bit of sexual innuendo from the Joker. Scott Snyder specifically said he views the story as being a "love letter to Batman from the Joker" so you have to wonder what was happening behind the scenes.

Comments

[themajesticmoose]

Either DC are full of homophobes behind the scenes and hated even the implication of gayness here or they had concerns about whether making one of the only gay characters in their comics be a serial killer who cut his own face off

I'd like to think it's the latter and they were worried about what kind of unfortunate implications this would have but given DC's past and present actions I'm leaning more towards the first option

[shakalooloo]

Mm, it's probably not a good look to have Batman beating up someone that's making romantic overtures to him. Out of context, one might think that he's fighting Joker BECAUSE of Joker's advances.

[cyberghostface]

Idk if I’d go that far. If anything I’ve seen the opposite with many thinking Batman likes Joker more than he lets on. At one point for example when Joker threatened to shoot himself this happened.

[crinos]

I don't think that means Batman likes the Joker, I think it means Batman doesn't want the Joker to die.

Batman is a hero, he tries to save people. Even people like the Joker. Its who he is.

Yeah that may not make sense with someone like the Joker, but that's kind of why I hate how they made Joker such an over the top monster. No one was asking for that, no one wanted it. If he was just a clever unpredictable criminal than the above scene would make a little more sense.

[silicondream]

Seems to me that Batman works extra-hard to save the Joker because he hates him so damn much, and he won't allow himself to act out of malice. If Darkseid or the KGBeast or a random man-bat dies, well, shit happens. But if the Joker dies, it can only be because Bruce deliberately let him die, and that's unacceptable.

[crinos]

Well this kind of ignores all the times where it seems like Joker has died because he fell off a cliff or something.

And of course this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn50MlLHVAA

Harley: PUDDIN!
Batman: At this point he probably is.

Like fucking ouch. Of course I think Joker would have at least been happy he got Batman to crack a joke at his expense on the way out.

[themajesticmoose]

Yeah if that was there reason for changing it I would agree that was a good call

[chalicother]

I mean the Joker isn't the only gay characters DC comics, which isn't alot..but still.

I always thought the Jokers romantic feelings toward Batman had bad implications because of the bad trope of the Joker being gay and express those feelings towards Batman being seen as one of flaws.

It's one thing if Joker was gay and that was outside of his villainy , it's another when it's usually depicted as one sided and Batman( usual seen and depicted as heterosexual), beating the crap out of him and being sick of him

[cyberghostface]

IMO the only time where I could see it having those implications was when he grabbed Batman's ass in Arkham Asylum and that was less to do with him being gay and more to do with him trying to agitate Batman who in that book was supposed to be sexually repressed (according to Morrison).

And more recently it's been used for moments like this where it's used to make him sympathetic.

[fra080389]

Is this the story where the Joker is eventually "cured" and quiet and old widow Selina goes to hug and kill him because Bruce is dead and he can't protect him anymore?

[kurenai_tenka]

I think it's just part of King's endless run, in the run-up to the 'wedding'.

Unless that was part of a flash-forward, I didn't read most of it.

[cyberghostface]

No I’ve never heard of that one. This is the one with Dave McKean.

Edit: sorry was responding from the email and forgot I included that page. No this was from Batman #49 when Joker tried to stop the wedding.

[kurenai_tenka]

Eh, I mean, he beats the shit out of all (non-Selina) villains, regardless of sexuality or attraction to him.

Equality lol!

[chalicother]

I shall play dumb, but what other villains have an attraction to Batman and are homosexual ?

I can only think of the Joker.

Also has Batman beaten the heck out of Posion Ivy or Harley the way he does Joker ?

I am agreeing with you, but the questions come to mind.

[cyberghostface]

You probably won’t see it as much because even though they’re both mass murderers people would get upset if Batman punched out a woman. But he’ll do it if the situation calls for it.

[fra080389]

Ivy looks... thrilled to be beated...

[kurenai_tenka]

Well, my point was more that other characters that aren't attracted to him/aren't gay get the same treatment.

Regarding Harley and Ivy- in my original comment I wrote 'male' rather than 'non-Selina', but I kind of flip-flopped on it. I'm sure there has been times where they've been punched in the face etc, so I think it still qualifies, though overall I think comics are less likely to show a male hero pulverising a female villain (they can barely stand to let women keep being villains... they always seem to end up with redemption arcs).

As for other male villains being sexually attracted to him... I think there are some characters obsessed with him/Bruce to the point that it starts erring on that (Hush comes to mind, and recently Ghost-Maker), and then villains like Hatter where there might be a temporary 'attraction' (him wanting Batman to be his Alice of the week), but I think it's mainly Joker? At least as far as long-term villains go. But even with Joker, as above, they're pretty committed to plausible deniability most of the time.

[icon_uk]

I would definitely NOT class the Joker as homosexual, he's a homicidal maniac and psychopath first and foremost, as was noted even back in the 80's when Wally talked about it in front of Hartley "Pied Piper" Rathaway (Who used the moment to come out himself)



Or as Grant Morrison suggested the Joker's apparent sexuality at any moment is 100% performative and is based on the principle of "What will freak the person I am talking to out most".

[chalicother]

I guess that's more of what my argument is.

Maybe DC is realizing that having the Joker using his sexual or emotional attraction to Batman as a way to freak him out may not be the best message to send.

Giving the idea that the Joker can freak out Batman, by acting or showing his attraction to him could be taken offensively...

[cyberghostface]

That’s never been how their relationship has been depicted. Joker doesn’t use it to freak out Batman and Batman doesn’t get freaked out by him period. At most Batman just gets annoyed.

[icon_uk]

He certainly uses it to try and get an emotional reaction out of Batman, of any sort, but Batman never responds to it.

[cyberghostface]

I just don’t get why Poison Ivy and Harley can be homicidal manics and gay but Joker can’t be both.

[icon_uk]

Because they're at different levels of disconnected with reality, and whether they can be classed as homicidal maniacs any more is definitely debatable.

It depends on the writer and iteration, but certainly more recent versions of Harley have been dangerous and unstable but rarely homicidal, and never to the extent the Joker consistently has been for forty years or so. (The "Harley distributes explosive games consoles" might be seen as an outlier and I don't think it's ever been referenced again, has it?)

Ivy ditto. Both have been shown to be indifferent to the deaths of others, but not as obsessed with causing the deaths of as many people as possible as the Joker. Both have formed emotional attachments with people that are close to healthy, or at least not actively toxic, and seem genuinely fond of each other.

The Joker hasn't been shown to be even "fond" of anyone in decades. Everyone is disposable to him and sooner or later will be disposed of.

[cyberghostface]

certainly more recent versions of Harley have been dangerous and unstable but rarely homicidal

She referred to herself as a mass murderer just this past year.

Ivy ditto. Both have been shown to be indifferent to the deaths of others, but not as obsessed with causing the deaths of as many people as possible as the Joker

Ivy would kidnap random innocent people and feed them to her Venus flytrap and make snuff films out of their deaths. This was according to her a “guilty pleasure”.

She also once dismembered a guy with an axe starting at the feet because he bulldozed a forest area and made a quip about how you could use his severed body parts to build a house.

[filthysize]

IIRC, Snyder claims it wasn't editorial but he himself who often makes dialogue changes for the trade. I believe it wasn't just the flirting stuff, either. A LOT of dialogue was changed for the trade for all the characters, not just Joker.

[repto]

Are changes for the trade a common thing? I only buy trades, and I've always assumed they're just strict reprints of the original comics.

[cyberghostface]

It’s rare but it happens.

There was an issue of The Walking Dead where a death scene happened on a right page which may have spoiled it if you were turning the page so Kirkman added a few extra panels before and after on the trade so it would be on the left.

[alicemacher]

Occasionally, a trade restores content which had been cut either from the original issue, or which had been present in the original issue but not in earlier collected editions. This content may be as little as a "Next issue" caption (something DC used to routinely excise from trades in the late 80s/early 90s but no longer does), or as much as a page or more.

An example of restoring pages present in the original issues but cut from early trades: the first two or three trade editions of Moore's Swamp Thing run cut a page each that had run in Issues 30 and 31. Both pages featured early (pre-Crisis) appearances of the Monitor and Harbinger in their satellite, reacting to Arcane's atrocities. Maybe DC editorial felt, at the time of the first trade editions, that those cameo scenes would confuse readers who hadn't read the Crisis mini (which may not have been collected yet). More recent trades restore those scenes.

[stubbleupdate]

Ex Machina was about Mayor Hundred audioning a creative team who wanted to write a comic about him.

BKV and Tony Harris appeared prominently in the issue. The final pages were the in universe comic strip, drawn by Jim Lee. The very final page had the credits that always appear in comic books, crediting Jim Lee on art and Garth Ennis on story.

In the trade, there are no credits. It removed a great joke that underpinned the whole point of the story. Absolutely ridiculous.

[filthysize]

I think it's more common than people realize, I know several writers like Kieron Gillen who admits to it, but it's mostly a sentence here and there so they go unnoticed for the most part.

Snyder does it a lot, I think, and I remember that for some reason he chose to do major changes with this trade in particular, enough that everyone noticed. There is a page of dialogue in the ending between Bruce and Dick that he just rewrote entirely:

<img src="https://i.imgur.com/6PuLYnM.jpg>

[kurenai_tenka]

I guess they needed to address the oversight that Bruce would actually apologise for something.

But seriously, the new dialogue just sounds really awkward in parts ("before I woke").

[icon_uk]

I remember they made a good many to Infinite Crisis to tidy some of the conversations up, correct some writing errors (like references to Tempest and Dolphin's daughter, when they had been established as having a daughter) and to remove rather important sound effect during a scene where Batman tries to shoot Alexander Luthor for nearly killing Nightwing

A very comprehensive breakdown of the changes is here.

http://everydayislikewednesday.blogspot.com/2007/02/infinite-crisis-20-completely-complete.html

[beyondthefringe]

To me, that feels disingenuous and a little wishy-washy.

I can accept changes for stylistic reasons, to fix typos and errors, to address editorial mistakes, or to fix something problematic.

But to put out a story, and then change dialogue or whatever for the trade, for no stated good reason?

Let the story stand as it was released unless there's a good reason. Stand by your initial work.

I mean, when I publish stories, and then sell them to another market later as reprints, I assume that the reprint won't have any significant changes unless it's to clear up an overlooked typo or maybe, just maybe, tinker to meet fresher sensibilities.

[kurenai_tenka]

Yeah, I have both versions and it winds me up.

Also I don't necessarily believe that it *wasn't* due to homophobia, especially considering they nixxed one of the issues' covers for being a bit too ~romantic.

[kjn]

Whatever the reason, I think it's speaks to poor storytelling instincts among DC's writers and editors to remove wholesale clear references to the emotional relation between two characters or their motivations.

It's literally gutting the core themes of the characters and their story.