Steve Ditko's Killjoy
Feb. 3rd, 2016 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

As dedicated an objectivist as Ditko has been, bringing the world such sombre and verbose ideologue heroes as Mr. A and the Question, he's also recognized that comic books should still be, well, comic at least some of the time. So it was that during his time at Charlton, he created the satirical strip Killjoy, which ran as a backup feature in E-Man nos. 2 (Sept. 1973) and 4 (May 1974).
The premise was simple: silent superhero Killjoy captures a criminal, then disappears and (it's implied) reappears in one civilian guise or another. The criminal and his or her minions weep and wail over Killjoy's violation of their inalienable right to commit crimes, as do the liberal activists Mr. Hart and Mr. Sole. Lather, rinse, repeat with other criminals.
( Subtlety? What's that? )