Daily Batman: Heart of darkness edition

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

(Joseph Conrad.)

In many ways it is like the Slaughter of Innocents or Rape of the Shire. It is no kind of lesson to those experiencing it, not in the heat of the moment. Rather, it is a warning to those who read, and, as Scott McCloud justly points out, tacitly and with secret relish add their knives to the resultant “blood in the gutter.” Murdering the Object: it is still a Thing.

Daily Batman: Outtakes

Yvonne Craig (Batgirl) and Adam West (Batman) goofing around on a publicity shoot.

Batgirl appeared only in the final season of the Batman series, 1967-68, but Yvonne Craig stayed attached to the character. The Joker shot Barbara Gordon, paralyzing her from the waist down, then kidnapped and stripped her father, forcing him to view blown-up shots of his suffering daughter (also mainly undressed) in Alan Moore’s 1988 graphic novel The Killing Joke — over which people are often divided; I think it’s a masterwork — in order to prove to Jim Gordon and Batman that all it takes is “one bad day” for a man to be driven mad. After reading The Killing Joke for herself, Yvonne Craig complained to DC about what she viewed as the character’s egregiously cruel fate (the wiki).

Bonus Trek connection:

Yvonne played Marta, the Orion asylum inmate with green skin and sexy dance moves, in “Whom Gods Destroy,” Star Trek TOS, Season 3, Episode 15 (1968).