BATMAN versus RED HOOD

The Killing Joke (DC)
Where: Batman: The Killing Joke When: May 1988
Why: Alan Moore How: Brian Bolland

The Story So Far...
So this guy walks into a bar... He had a plum job working as a Lab Assistant for Ace Chemicals, but all he wants to be is a comedian. So what did he do? Up and quit his job to line up an audition! Only catch is: His girl Jeannie is waiting at home -- six months pregnant in a cruddy one-room apartment with the rent overdue!

So this guy goes to his audition with everything on the line. He's real nervous. He blows a punch line. He's dead! Nobody's laughing! The dream is over before it even began! He goes back home and all Jeannie can say is "oh". Guy feels like a total loser! She makes some joke about him being good in bed, but now all this guy can think about is needing cash. So where's he gonna come up with the loot? That's the joke!

After running around town humiliating himself the guy winds up right back where he started: Ace Chemicals! Only this time it's after hours, and a couple of mobsters convinced him to put on a tuxedo and red dome to guide them to the card store next door. It was bound to go bad, but at least it'll make a great story!

Tale of the Tape...
Strength: Batman 3 (Athlete)
Intelligence: Batman 5 (Professor)
Speed: Batman 3 (Athlete)
Stamina: Draw 5 (Marathoner)
Agility: Batman 4 (Gymnast)
Fighting: Batman 5 (Martial Artist)
Energy: Batman 4 (Arsenal)
Total: Batman 29 (Metahuman)

The dynamic between Batman and The Joker is fairly well established.

The Joker rarely poses any significant physical threat to the supremely trained & conditioned Batman. Instead, he thrives on tormenting the razor sharp mind of The Dark Knight Detective with his own brand of demented genius.

This legendary arch-rivalry has been one of the most studied here on Secret Wars on Infinite Earths. In the last encounter we looked at: The Joker finally broke his losing streak with a rare draw found in Crisis on Infinite Earths #2!

That cosmically assisted escape was a change of pace from the one-sided beat downs we've usually seen. Typically if a fight has broken out, Joker has already lost a bigger game. Detective Comics #781 showed Batman dominating his nemesis in the prison yard. Even with the Injustice League surrounding him, Joker was still isolated for a swift kayo in Justice League of America #15.

The most popular examples of Batman's supremacy remain those that explore a finality that can never really come about: Batman #614 presents a moment of violent contemplation and restraint, while the alternate future of The Dark Knight Returns #4 reveals an endgame that The Joker chooses to bring about.

Today we're exploring a very different perspective of the Batman/Joker rivalry: the beginning!

This time the man who will become Joker is merely a hapless, wannabe comedian dressed up as The Red Hood. Red Hood is a domed, tuxedo-wearing patsy cooked up by mobsters as a phantom target for cops. Not to be confused with Jason Todd, who adopted the vacant moniker of his one-time killer later.

Red Hood offers no real advantage or unique abilities. In fact, there seems to be an issue of restricted vision to consider. Otherwise, this is an inexperienced and reluctant criminal far more green than he'll become as Gotham's Clown Prince of Crime. No matter how early Batman is into his career, he's a clear favourite!

History: Batman (7-0-1)
The Tape: Batman Ranking: Batman (#1)

What Went Down...
Barely able to see through the narrow lens of the crimson dome stuffed over his head: Red Hood gingerly negotiates the steps to Ace Chemicals Processing Plant with the aide of the criminal cohorts ushering him into this life of crime.

The roles are soon reversed as the trio relies on the former Ace employee's insider knowledge to lead the way through the facility.

Things go bad almost immediately as a voice from the gloom orders the crooks to freeze! They're caught dead to rights in the gun sight of a security guard on a nearby elevated runway -- an unforeseen change, according to the Red Hood!

The sound of gunfire echoes inside his dome as Red Hood finds himself caught between armed guards and angry mobsters!

Returned fire gives the trio a chance to flee from their precarious predicament, while the security guard radios for backup. Their efforts once again undermined as the panic-stricken Red Hood finds himself unable to see clearly enough through his helmet to guide them to safety.

The mobsters swear bloody murder as they run aimlessly through the plant, but the hapless Hood is the only one who isn't caught in a sudden hail of bullets!

Extra security guards mow the quickstepping crooks down with a wall of gunfire -- but the Red Hood is rescued by straggling behind!

One of the mobsters only takes a bullet to his calves and attempts to play the Red Hood's unscathed survival as part of a master plan! He completely sells the Hood out as the mastermind the guards want, but is still shot dead as he fingers at the pistol in his coat.

Still in a panic -- Red Hood darts for a nearby ladder to an overhead gangway while a bullet clips his flapping cape! He's still within range when a cool, commanding voice dissuades them from further shooting. Enter: The Batman!

The Dark Knight looms for a moment before leaping over the heads of the huddled security guards. He rushes down the gangway, unaware his prey is not the same Red Hood he previously encountered. It pushes Red Hood to the edge!

Completely losing his cool, Red Hood opts to jump over the rails rather than face the punishment of the dark avenger descending upon him!

Batman lunges to catch him, but it's too late! The Red Hood plunges into the chemical waste filter and washes out of the building through a drainage pipe!

Crawling onto the outer bank doesn't end Red Hood's suffering. His body stings and itches, his hands burning as he scrambles to remove the suffocating dome that hides a horrible truth.

Hunched on his knees, he sees himself distorted in a puddle puckered by the spitting rain. For a moment, he holds his head in silence, absorbing the pallid reflection staring back at him. He lurches to his feet, staggers, and laughs...

The Hammer...
As time marches on: I'm beginning to realize I prefer to think there is a true origin story behind The Joker, even if his in-fiction past is lost to bleached skin, and a poisoned body that no longer offers any valid genetic identifiers.

I don't necessarily need intricate details. The growing tendency to over-work key milestones in comic book history has become a real drag. Most often in life, major events just happen -- and while it's satisfying to have stories eventuate with later payoffs -- we don't need to constantly relive our history, bogging it down in an increasingly absurd mess of retroactive, future entanglements.

All I really need from a good Joker origin is a simple, mythic transformation: A vat of chemicals, an unfortunate fall, and a lanky man emerging from the mix with ghastly white skin, green hair, and 'a nice big smile'.

The Killing Joke's backstory contains most of these elements, but almost goes too far away from them. The iconic details of Joker's fall are glossed over. We don't really see his fated plunge into the weird stew. This telling dwells more on what brought him to that moment, and his emergence from the waste water.

Maybe some of this glossed take speaks to the first-person perspective of The Joker. Batman is only seen on a single page, obfuscated by shadow, motion, and the narrow red-tinted lenses offered by the Red Hood's dome.

In the four panels he appears in; Batman is mere shoulders & cowl, a hunched and almost beastly leaping figure, a demonic shadow seen in double, and a hand -- too late to stop the Red Hood's doomed leap over the gangway rail. He is humanoid, but reveals no clear human face in any of these panels.

It could be taken that these are the memories of an unreliable narrator, but I also wonder if established understanding had an impact on Alan Moore's script, and Brian Bolland's pencils. After all, much of the Red Hood sequence can be traced back to its introductory origins in 1951's Detective Comics #168.

"The Man Behind the Red Hood" was a Bill Finger story that saw repeat reprints every decade after its original run. It was even collected in The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told the same year as The Killing Joke: 1988 - a good year!

The story finds Batman & Robin reopening a cold case with university students, inadvertently coaxing The Red Hood back to action after ten years in obscurity. It has its Scooby Doo red herring moment before The Joker is finally revealed, and explains some of what's retold in The Killing Joke.

The Red Hood identity is a pretty strange convolution to layer on top of The Joker's origin. If you were reading The Killing Joke years after the fact, you might've mistaken it for a post-modern appropriation of an earlier Detective Comics story. In truth, it has all the hallmarks of a story ten years into an established character's history. It awkwardly adds something new to obscure and refresh a quantity as well known as The Joker. Even as the first reveal of the Joker's largely unimportant origin, it's still a little odd and cluttered.

That obscuring aspect is also part of what lends the story to the idea that it could be a lie. A contrivance played with in later retellings that arguably enhances the myth of The Joker as the ultimate intangible and unknowable villain for The Dark Knight Detective. A crime that won't be solved.

You'll note in the images above that the majority of these flashback scenes in The Killing Joke have an almost sepia tone. Red is the exception, highlighting the Red Hood's cape and helmet. It's not until his transformation into The Joker that colour invades the world as his suit turns purple, and hair goes green.

It's a nice little Wizard of Oz type technique that could be subtly informed by the stages of Joker's metamorphosis, but maybe it also reflects a filter of doubt on the telling of the story. The picture is drained of truth until The Joker shows up bloodshot and laughing maniacally [above].

Hopefully at some point we can revisit the subject via Detective Comics #168 and the present-set story that also unfolds during The Killing Joke. There's certainly plenty more to say!

If you'd like to take a closer look at The Killing Joke yourself, you can grab yourself one of the many printed editions currently available via the Amazon links provided! If you do, Amazon will help support the site at no extra cost to you!

You can also find more combative featured fights involved Joker, Batman, and more by following links throughout this post -- or by diving into the Secret Archive for a complete index of battles by publisher, series, and issue!

Follow Secret Wars on Infinite Earths on Twitter and Facebook to get links to daily fights inspired by the topics of the day! Be sure to throw in a like, comment, and share to boost your favourite battles!

Winner: Batman
#1 (--) Batman
#407 (--) Joker

QUICK FIX: RORSCHACH vs MOLOCH
Absent Friends (DC)
Where: Watchmen #2 When: October 1986
Why: Alan Moore How: Dave Gibbons

THE TAPE...
Strength: Rorschach 2 (Average)
Intelligence: Rorschach 4 (Tactician)
Speed: Rorschach 2 (Average)
Stamina: Rorschach 3 (Strong Willed)
Agility: Rorschach 2 (Average)
Fighting: Rorschach 4 (Trained)
Energy: Rorschach 2 (Projectile)

Math: Rorschach
Ranking: Draw (Not Ranked)

THE FIX...
When it comes to matters of broad significance, you'll often find on the Infinite Wars a conversational fascination with the reactions of audiences, as much as any material itself. As millions cram in to theatres to see the Watchmen film, the opinions the story generates are potentially of as much interest as the book.

Revered as the 'greatest comic book of all time,' Watchmen is not the type of story people would typically go to a Superhero Fight Club to read about.
I like to think our discussions and musings about the superhero condition often expose and explore many multi-faceted and intelligent concepts, but I make no illusion about the station of this website. Superheroes are what we're about, and while this might not be the first source people look to for information on the epic tale, fortunately for me, it's very much a superhero matter!

For some; Watchmen stands as a lasting general criticism of the superhero concept. Responsible, in large part, for provoking an age of cynicsm and "grim and gritty" in superhero comics, Watchmen does indeed expose bold feet of clay in each and every one of it's Charlton-inspired heroes.
The narrative invests heavily in noting the frailty, deviancy, and tyrrany of it's starring heroes, but actually appears to deliberately inflect very little method of judgment into their portrayal. In expressing these elements of the human condition through their extraordinary cyphers, Moore (and Gibbons) appears to attempt to relate to the superhero concept through familiarity, borrowing not only from life, but also heavily from various eras of comics previous (to the 1986 release), writing an eventuating love letter to the superhero super-genre.

Modern readers have benefitted from twenty-plus years of Watchmen's influence.
For better, (or worse), publishers have absorbed many of the tropes emphasised in the book's examination of humanity, superheroes, and comic book fiction.
Anyone who has read characters like Batman, Daredevil, Blue Beetle, or The Question, is already well primed to have a sense of familiarity for what Watchmen is credited with purveying.
This is far from any kind of cricitism, but for those embarking on a first reading of the collected tale, with those modern exposures in mind, can not possibly fully appreciate what the story must have meant to those who read it in 1986.

Spotlighting this particular encounter allows us to talk a little bit about the most iconic character from the series without feeling overly concerned about spoilers. Not that the specifics of the fight are all there is to discuss. Honestly, while I'm reluctant to hold the story in the esteem many do, I find myself indulging the story with such a sprawl of subjects that I'm forced to question my own doubt.

Arguing against the significance Watchmen has had to the world of comics is a bit like trying to convince the world the Arctic isn't cold. Even if they've never been there, most people are pretty comfortable with their certainty of truth.
That recognition alone of the popular title is more than justification for it's reverence not only as a story, but as a totem through which the medium has been engendered to so-called "important" sources. With the days of pulp nerds pummeled into historic footnotes by Frederic Wertham, a work that reminds the world of the adult potential of comics is welcome.

That agreed, I simply cannot read Watchmen without finding myself objecting to the unique praise heaped upon it. No, I would not decry the quality of the tale. Moore (and Gibbons) cram sufficient degrees of quality into their story to be worthy of praise. I suppose it's more the lack of perspective in widespread acclaim that bothers me more than the relative familiarity of the content.

As a modern reader versed in a basic 101 of the past and present of comics, I'm of the opinion that we should all be reading this material with enough imagination to indulge similar concepts of humanity that makes Watchmen and it's characters so significant. Forthcoming in it's nature as a derivative work, it is undoubtedly this inflection of humanity and frailty that creates Watchmen's legacy. While this quality has existed for as long as superheroes themselves, the references that build Watchmen's human condition and the conflicting archetypes of it's characters are particularly well done. While not responsible for inventing the practise, it no doubt helped permeate a sense of depth in superhero comics.

Rorschach has become one of the most popular cyphers for the exploration of ideals that Watchmen presents. Based on The Question, with heavy influences from another subversive Ditko creation of objectivist leanings, Mr. A; the character is memorable for an arc that allows readers to feel the gamut of emotion for a man who is disturbed, maladjusted, and quite possibly the greatest hero of this alternate New York.

As an uncompromising individual of unwavering certainty where matters of morals are concerned; Rorschach possesses an edgy intrigue reminiscent of The Dark Knight's counter-cultural revolutionary, Joker, which makes his renewed popularity with pubescent males wholely unsurprising.

In a world without widespread superheroics, Rorschach's greatest "powers" are will and dedication to the pursuit of justice through physical means. As a power fantasy, he is a highly achievable ideal of moral purity, intent on pursuing justice without compromise. Of course, this same narrow focus is revealed through the story to be seeded in the very dark psyche of a man who began with good intentions, but became something very different.

Pursuing the character's origins, Moore reveals a history that might suggest something about the state of mind necessary for someone to actually stand in the street and go the extra mile to become a masked vigilante.
What ever the intended point, it was the noir-inspired grim and gritty outlook of the journal scrawling narrator, in tandem with DKR's Batman, that helped produce a generation of violent psychopathic heroes in the 1990's.

In today's featured scene (from the second issue); Rorschach has embarked upon a process of fact finding, in response to the murder death of former costumed hero cum government enforcer, Edward Blake, aka; The Comedian.

Initially interested only in the investigation of an extravagant homicide, Rorschach stumbles upon the hidden closet of Blake's alter-ego, leading him to jump to the conlusion of a possible plot against masked vigilantes.

Outlawed by the Keene Act legislation of eight years prior to Blake's death, most costumed heroes have retreated into retirement by this time. Only Rorschach remained defiant of the ban, joined in activity by Blake, and Dr. Manhattan, who entered the employ of the United States government as a physicist and superhuman deterrent to the Soviet Union with whom this alternate United States has maintained Cold War tensions with. Rorschach visits Manhattan, and several other retired heroes, in the interest of warning them based on his potential theory. He does so, even though no leads present themselves when he probes the criminal petri dish of local bars.

As would be logical of any conventional superhero mystery, Rorschach seeks out one of the Comedian's nemesis with which he shared a rivalry for four decades.
Edward William Jacobi, better known as Moloch the Mystic, is a pale shadow of the colourful villain that menaced New York, when Rorshach comes to see him.
Now a tired old man, Jacobi is no better prepared to resist the shock arrival of Rorschach, than he would have been the might of the physically impressive Blake.

Rorschach hides in Jacobi's refridgerator, leaping out to pin him to the ground and begin the wild ride of interrogation. With a knee in Moloch's back, he probes for details about his relationship with Edward Blake, revealing an unlikely meeting between the villain and a drunken Comedian. Rorschach pins the villain to a wall, sparing him brutality to hear the details of a terrified hero's night visit to a man who spent countless hours trying to kill him.

Rorschach's physical domination of Moloch gives him a level of information he requires. He allows the villain to escape unpunished, promising a subsequent visit.

In many ways, it was Rorschach's violence and introspective disillusions that caught on over the course of the medium's most infamous age. Moore's design for the hero presents a multi-faceted interpretation that allows Rorschach to fill the conventional slot of an urban superhero protagonist, while also possessing dimensions that reveal one particular version of this type of human being.

With any luck, this fate will not befall superheroes in cinema, who have much less quantity to weed out unfortunate trends such as these. In an act of something akin to reverse-evolution, the failure of the recent Punisher movie might have afforded us the opportunity to avoid the cinematic equivalent of the proliferation of internally absorbed maniacs. If only comics were so lucky.

In wrapping up this tremendously late feature, it might be nice to make some reference to the film. Script changes to the ending have been a popular point of subject for many. More prominent is the removal of the "squid" from the movie ending, but as disappointed as I might be by the specifics of that change, it perhaps more troublesome to learn that Rorschach's conclusion is no longer played out alone.

There was something very poetic and human about the way Rorschach ends his role in the story. In the book, the masked anti-hero makes his final appearances in the last issue alone, save for his final antagonist. If you're wondering, yes, he does finally uncover the truth behind the mystery of Edward Blake's death, but his last contribution in the story is as a character, and human being. His final appearances are punctuated by his uncompromising focus and the fact that while he finishes the story as one of the most powerful individuals in the situation, he also does so alone, completely feeble as a result of his steadfast morals.

I expect we will elaborate on those final scenes at some point in the future.
While I am very reluctant to hold Watchmen in the untouchable regard that is known of the pseudo-intelligencia, herded sheep, and peripheral poseurs, I have to agree that it is an incredibly satisfying superhero tale. And a superhero tale it is, indeed. Unashamedly.

If you've found yourself bewildered by the changes made to the film's conclusion, then you might like to check out the two-hour Q&A podcast with screenwriters David Hayter and Alex Tse, from Creative Screenwriting magazine. The podcast, (dated 03/26), offers candid discussion about the motivations of the changes and exactly what they entail. Be warned, there are spoilers aplenty, so if you haven't had the chance to draw your own conclusions by reading the book, I strongly suggested you rectify that first. Watchmen is available super-cheap via Amazon, and by using purchase links provided on this site, you help sponsor future entries. For reasons that may not corroborate with popular opinion, this almost certainly is a twelve issue comic book every reader should find their way to.

I'd like to give the Watchmen screenwriters the benefit of the doubt, because under the pressures of a live podcast, they certainly don't seem to sell the motivations of their changes very well. Personally, I think the discussion reveals fundamental misconceptions about the nature of what's being presented, even on very basic levels, like the origins of the so-called "squid ending." Justifications made to reject acceptance of what is on the page, and make shifts, seems to completely undermine a subtle context made very appropriate by the comic.

I will leave you to draw your own conclusions, however, and look forward to any opinions you might have to share. I'm sure what little criticism I have been able to articulate about the book, will be divisive.

The Fight: 4 The Issue: 5.5
Winner: Rorschach

Who watches the Watchmen?
While the epic DVD release of the eagerly anticipated film (released March 6) is a couple of months away, you needn't wait that long to get your Watchmen movie fix! Available on DVD and Blu-Ray, Tales of the Black Freighter elaborates on the comic-within-the-comic that resonates with events in the Watchmen universe. While it might not carry the weight of expanding a sense of humanity in a group careening toward doomsday, it is sure to be an interesting addition for any Watchmen fan's collection! Also featured is a special expanded feature based on the Hollis Mason biography famously quoted in the back of Watchmen #1 and #2; "Under the Hood." By using purchase links provided, you help sponsor future entries in the Infinite Wars! Cheers!