I got into a discussion a couple of weeks back on whether Alan Moore's The Killing Joke (one of the most famous graphic novels of all time, focusing on the Batman-Joker relationship and detailing one of the Joker's possible origin stories) was originally meant to be canon or not, and thought the information I dug up would be worth posting here.

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Question: Was Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke" really considered 'non-canon' until it became popular, at which point DC decided to run with it and more or less integrate it into the main DC universe continuity?

The short answer: we don't know with absolute 100% certainty, but the sources, interviews, and comments available to us point to the idea that TKJ was originally conceived of as an out-of-continuity 'mythos reinterpretation' story that had such an outstanding cultural impact on the comic community that it was integrated into canon in the years after, specifically the events of the story as pertaining to Barbara Gordon (with Ostrander and Yale's rehabilitation of Babs as a character and her introduction as Oracle).

For this question, I'm turning principally to various interviews and comments given by the people directly involved in TKJ's publication: writer Alan Moore, artist Brian Bolland, and editor Denny O'Neil.

Anything Moore has to say on the matter is like pulling teeth because he notoriously doesn't comment on TKJ anymore due to his dislike of the comic; he doesn't like it and has never liked it, despite writing it:

"Actually, with The Killing Joke, I have never really liked it much as a work – although I of course remember Brian Bolland’s art as being absolutely beautiful – simply because I thought it was far too violent and sexualised a treatment for a simplistic comic book character like Batman and a regrettable misstep on my part. So, Pradeep, I have no interest in Batman, and thus any influence I may have had upon current portrayals of the character is pretty much lost on me."

However, we have three interviews where he indicates that he never intended TKJ to be a part of DC’s ‘in-continuity’ stories and that he saw the whole thing as an experiment: the first is the infamous ‘cripple the bitch’ interview he did with Wizard Magazine back in 2006, where he details the initial process of why he even came to be writing a Batman book in the first place:

“I wanted to do something with Brian Bolland and DC suggested a Batman story. Brian’s interest was more with the Joker, and I said, “Fine, I’ll come up with a story that sort of foregrounds the Joker.” So I read up on what was known about the character, what the established continuity was and then, without contradicting that established continuity, I tried to expand it. I tried to give a sense that if the Joker was the Red Hood before he was the Joker, who was he before he was the Red Hood, and how did he come to be the Red Hood?”

This implies that he wasn’t really tasked with writing something that adhered to continuity (as it even existed at that time, since the universe-rebooting story Crisis on Infinite Earths had just happened two years before); he just sort of went ‘I want to do a Batman-Joker story’ and DC was like ‘Cool. Fine. Whatever…have at it.’ without any real desire to make sure that it wouldn’t cause ripple effects in the future (which, spoiler alert, is exactly what it ended up doing anyway). Moore deciding to loosely adhere to the established continuity doesn't change the fact that DC editorial was rather flippant about the book adhering to canon.

(Sidenote: the interview is infamous and caused a lot of uproar in the comics community at the time because in it Moore relates a story where he went to editor Len Wein to ask if he could actually write the Joker shooting Barbara Gordon or if that was off limits, leading Wein to reply 'Yeah sure...cripple the bitch.')

In a 1987 interview about DC and censorship of comics, he offhandedly mentions TKJ within the same context as The Dark Knight Returns...which is itself a non-canon 'dark alternate future story':

Now, regarding Batman, for example, I suppose you could say that is traditionally a children’s comic book character. At the same time, me and Brian Bolland have got a graphic novel coming out sometime early next year, I believe, which is certainly just as disturbing a portrayal as in Dark Knight. Maybe even more so. I mean, there are some scenes in there I found quite horrific.

He also did an interview with Kurt Amacker for Mania.com in 2009 where he talks about what he was actually doing with his books:

KA: And, it’s left a legacy where it seems like almost all heroes follow the model you created with Marvelman and Watchmen. Instead of a “straight ahead” approach to heroism like you’d find in the Silver Age, all the heroes are psychologically damaged. They all have drinking problems and sexual dysfunctions and broken marriages. And, it’s almost become a new status quo in and of itself.

AM: Yes, it has. And, can I just say I’m sorry? That was never my intention for every book to be like that. The reason I wanted to do them like that was because nothing else was like that. I wanted to do something that was different. If I were, god forbid, still doing superhero comics today, just like my ABC work from a couple of years ago, they’d be very very different from the Watchmen or Marvelman template....I think, ultimately, that approach that I brought in—taking previously existing characters and reinterpreting them—has probably led to very grim and very un-enjoyable comic books. I didn’t want everyone else to copy what we were doing....Yes, there were some very grim passages in all those books, but there were also passages of great joy. And, it seemed to me that people basically took from it what they were able to take from it—mostly a slightly depressing atmosphere and the idea that everybody had to be a grim, ruthless psychopath.

Even characters like Stanley and His Monster—should they be reinvented as grim, brooding psychopaths? That completely robbed comics of a lot of the charm that, for me at least, they once had. Again, it was never intended as a blanket approach for all comic books. It was just an experiment that I was trying, and it worked better in some cases than it did in others. Yeah, Marvelman and Watchmen—those are pretty good books. On the other hand, where I was doing the same things in The Killing Joke, it was entirely inappropriate.

.......It was a disappointment to me, how Watchmen was absorbed into the mainstream. It had originally been meant as an indication of what people could do that was new. I’d originally thought that with works like Watchmen and Marvelman, I’d be able to say, “Look, this is what you can do with these stale old concepts. You can turn them on their heads. You can really wake them up. Don’t be so limited in your thinking. Use your imagination.” And, I was naively hoping that there’d be a rush of fresh and original work by people coming up with their own. But, as I said, it was meant to be something that would liberate comics. Instead, it became this massive stumbling block that comics can’t even really seem to get around to this day.

I will also note here that Moore was not known for writing 'in continuity' stories: he was writing stuff like V for Vendetta, Watchmen, and Swamp Thing, none of which were considered part of the traditional DC Universe at the time (Swamp Thing was part of the DCU but was written largely as a stand-alone, Watchmen was considered a completely separate universe that was simply published under the DC banner, and V for Vendetta was one of the earliest books published under DC's 'Vertigo' imprint). The stuff he wrote for DC outside of TKJ were largely a bunch of 'imaginary stories', one-offs, and separate continuity stories, "For the Man Who Has Everything," "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?," and "Mortal Clay" to name a few....usually framed stories from an alternate future looking back on the past, but not always. Finally, I’ll note that despite writing it, Moore has no actual say in whether TKJ is considered canon or not; that's an administration and editorial decision, not a writer decision.

(continued below)

Week 54

 

The end of the Great War came to the Italian political world as more of a surprise than a relief^1 and those who had hoped to find in peace a restoration of the national spirits witnessed instead the social and political ground unravel and come apart in rubble as if taken by a rainstorm after years of prolonged drought.

The experience of the conflict had removed the traditional internal fluidity of the italian political system – which had been one of the key factors in the viability of long tenured Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti's system of power, based on the frequent recourse to personal “gentlemen” agreement and an indefinite parliamentary majority which fluctuated around a moderately liberal political platform (as we will discuss, another major blow to the old liberal majority would come from the introduction of the proportional system in 1919) – by solidifying it around a pattern of new political tendencies, of themes, of promises, of demands; all dominated by the divide between interventionist and neutralist fractions, the largest, most evident crack. The only one to appear clearly in times of war, with all the interventionists banding together in one front against the “defeatists” and the neutralist – liberals, catholics or socialists – all pushed together under the pressure of the “national” forces. And yet the inherent weakness of interventionism and neutralism as political ideas and identifiers was going to become apparent quite soon, revealing the many other fissures that the proclamations for national unity could no longer hide.

Nonetheless during the first months of the post war, there was a tendency to preserve or to attempt an evolution of the fractions built around the war experience into permanent, proper political organizations – often for the intended purpose of calling those energies to action in a reform of the social and political system, inspired by values revealed and tested during the war. But, despite such positive aspirations, the result was often to paralyze any concrete political initiative as well as preventing the chance for a convergence over a program of national reforms (a program that would have required in all likelihood an unprecedented coalition of liberals, catholics and socialist reformers; as well as the acceptance of a platform of democratic reforms – something, as we'll see in the future, that the elections results made numerically possible, but a fairly remote thought in the mind of most of the Italian political leadership), since each force was limited and constrained by the position it had taken in the Great War political front line. An expression both of the deep structural weakness of the political system emerging from the war, of the inability of the Italian society to resettle into a peace time climate despite the apparent desire to do so (see also the brief discussion of the demobilization process given in last week), and of the intention of certain (minoritarian) forces to prolong the war experience, furthering its transition, one way or another, into some form of national renovation.

But the persistence of the interventionist themes was not enough to ensure the survival of the interventionist block, nor its ability to exert a coherent political action. By January 1919, the Fascio Parlamentare di Difesa Nazionale - the interventionist concentration created within the Parliament as a reaction to the “defeatist” threat in the immediate aftermath of Caporetto – was falling apart. Too many different souls, too many horses pulling in opposite directions; the left interventionists, socialist reformers and democratic liberals, trade unionists, revolutionary syndicalists on their own divergent paths between anti-national and national ideas, nationalists, conservative liberals and extreme radicals. On November 20^th former Prime Minister Antonio Salandra, who had played such a large role in bringing the country into the conflict, explained that the Fascio needed to continue its action, since the War did not allow for a return to the old: “the war” - he explained - “had a deep significance of world renovation”.

But a memorandum for the Ministry of Interior, dated November 21^st , explained that:

The Fascio Parlamentare is in a state of complete meltdown […] During the meeting held this evening in the Chamber [...], the first issue was exactly that of whether the Fascio should continue or not its existence. By a large majority, especially thanks to the efforts of the senators in attendance, it was voted not to dismantle the Fascio organization. But it's impossible for it to last much longer. The cracks are showing everywhere and one should not have to wait long for [...] a division of the parties which concurred to the formation of the Fascio […] During the meeting it was observed by many […] and especially those of the extreme left [...] that the function of the Fascio had to be considered accomplished with the end of the war. The Fascio is not a political party but a conglomerate of men belonging to different parties who may have agreed on the need for a coalition during the war period to fight back the efforts of those who did not want war or tried to sabotage it, but now that every party is forced by social and political events to take a clear and firm stance on the issues arising from the war, it's only natural for them to feel the need to go back to their own place; even more prominent this need appears to those of the extremes who are in closer contact with the masses and therefore are bound to larger responsibilities in front of [their support basis]. In fact it is reasonable to expect that […] the scission will take place because of the departure of these extreme left elements: independent socialists, ex reformer socialists, republicans and radicals [that is of the old Partito Radicale]. Tonight a sort of preliminary program […] for the new elections had to be debated. No agreement was found. Divergent views soon were on display, concerning both the reform of the electoral system and the economical matters. The proposed suggestions were so conflicting, so far apart from each other that in the end the majority chose to postpone the assembly and the vote indefinitely, for the sake of maintaining peace between the groups.

 

Conflicts between the political forces which had joined the Fascio in the immediate aftermath of Caporetto had actually been going on for a while, usually taking a concrete form in a minor Government crisis or leaving trace of themselves in private correspondence – so generic had been the political action of the interventionist concentration, that it would have been close to impossible to derive anything from their proclamations, except their being in favor of the war and against any form of “defeatism”. War after all was not a time for political programs.

During the new half-crisis of October 1918, when the main issue had been the choice to resume the offensive, the Fascio had pressured Prime Minister Orlando to side with Foreign Ministry Sonnino – the closest thing to their representative in the Government - and Bissolati who, for almost opposite reasons (Bissolati, an old socialist reformer, converted to the nation since the days of the Libyan War, was the strongest proponent of the principle of self-determination within the Government and intended the offensive as the last push towards the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while Sonnino looked at it as a way to give Italy more bargaining power with the allies as well as securing those lands promised by the Treaty of London) demanded the Italian return to offensive operations. Of contrasting opinion was the Ministry of Finances, F.S. Nitti, who argued that the decision should have been left entirely to the judgment of the High Command (but as a matter of fact Nitti knew that Chief of Staff Armando Diaz was against the offensive). There again the contrast took the form of interventionists, that is pro offensive, and neutralist, that is favorable to keep the defensive positions; with Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando called to mediate between the two groups.