Sweet Jesus.

I never said anything of the sort. Of course you can infer things from an artist’s (writer, painter, musician, etc) work. You can infer anything you want. You can infer that Alan Moore has seventeen nipples and a penchant for midnight dolphin masturbation. That doesn’t mean you know what the hell you’re talking about.

A more realistic example: you can infer that Judas Priest encodes secret suicide messages in their songs in order to seduce vulnerable teenagers into killing themselves in the name of the great Satan, and that Rob Halford is the most macho and heterosexual man alive, as people have done in the past. Except, oh wait, neither of those things are true, and the people who thought that were kind of idiots.

I’m not saying that Moore isn’t saying anything with his stories and I’m not saying his work doesn’t provide clues to his personal life and experience. In fact, I think a lot of personal stuff comes out when art is created. What I am saying, is that we shouldn’t automatically assume that we know what he’s saying or his intentions behind his message (if there is one, or if it’s the one we think it is, with our flawed and painfully uninformed and subjective interpretations). And we sure as hell shouldn’t assume we know his whole life story and what he’s like as a person because of some stories he wrote.

And finally, I’m also saying, good Lord who cares. I think more trouble comes out of this kind of hypothesizing than good. You make a good point, and I think analyzing art is a worthwhile pastime…but I think over analyzing it is a horrible waste of time.

Thanks for your comment, though.

Doesn’t mean she was raped.

She was brutalized and victimized, yes. I still don’t buy the rape, for many of the solid reasons Caeser has already listed. Also it’s hard not to notice how there are numerous condemning points he’s made – to your argument – that you haven’t really responded too…. Something Caeser has already pointed out … and you didn’t respond too…. I tease because I love, haha….

Now, a few things. As for your comment about “Why is he undressing her?” Well, what’s going to traumatize Gordon more? Pictures of her fully dressed in some blood soaked clothing that give you no idea of the damage? Or pictures of her undressed that show exactly how (and where) she is damaged? That being said, even though I don’t think she was raped, I can’t help but agree that just by removing her clothing he has sexually violated her (if not necessarily attacked her).

And even though I am mostly on Caeser’s side, the liberal arts/film studies student in me does want to argue for the right to interpret things that leave room with it. Then again, I once read a paper that argued the alien ship the crew finds on that planet in the movie “Alien” looked like a woman with her legs spread open…. so there’s only so much interpretation I am willing to take

Finally, I’m also inclined to agree with Isaac about DC’s official stance being she wasn’t raped. There’s a reason after all “Identity Crisis” was such a HUGE deal to the DCU (and the industry itself a bit) – because it was the first time rape was really dealt with – for better or for worse – and a villain resorted to that.

Which brings me to my final point. Your argument makes sense that some of us may not think Joker raped her because we think it’s not something he would do as a character. The reason we think that though is because of the character has been written. Yes, he has done insanely violent things, but he has never (to my knowledge) committed any sexual crimes, let alone barely shown any serious examples of being a sexual being. We’re going by the history of the character – created by the writers himself – not just by our perception of his character.

I think most people don’t see my reading because for some reason they think that the Joker wouldn’t do it. He might blow up a school bus full of children or disfigure a corpse, but he wouldn’t do THAT. Then why is he undressing Barbara? To my knowledge he’s never done that before or since. He could just take the pictures with her clothes on if he wanted to hurt Gordon.

Joker stripping Barbara already brings this act to the realm of sexual violation, so I think my original point is still valid. Moore has Joker sexually violate Barbara Gordon for no other reason than to act as a motivator for Batman and Gordon. It’s another in a long line of Women in Refrigerators that people just seem to overlook because they like Alan Moore’s writing.

No, at one point you said her rape was “more than implied.” I’m saying that an act can’t be more than implied unless it’s shown or told. Which it wasn’t. Also, foreshadowing is a COMPLETELY different thing and doesn’t relate to anything we’re discussing here.

And “the expression on her face suggests something more heinous than you think?” That’s even more absurd than saying something is more than implied!

A) I cannot imagine you are such an expert on facial expressions that you can distinguish between the expression of a young girl being raped and a young girl with a bullet in her spine, and

B) There is an upper limit to how much a face can express. Tell someone their mother died and they will look very sad; tell them their father died immediately after and they likely will not look any more sad than they did before they knew they just became orphaned.

You mention DC didn’t know what to do with it: bullshit. I feel confident in guaranteeing you that the official stance of DC is that Barbara Gordon did not get raped. Let’s say that Moore wanted her character raped in The Killing Joke (which he might have), DC would have flat out said no. There’s very little rape in the major comic publishers; and 99% of the time it does happen, it’s not main characters. Off the top of my head I can only think of one, Black Canary, yeeeeeaaaars ago. And DC editors would have been right to nix the rape idea, since it’s against the Joker’s character.

Of course, you’re going to think what you want to think, and your opinion is as valid as anyone else’s. If you choose to think Gordon was sexually violated in The Killing Joke, that’s fine. Your crime here, in my eyes, is that you’re taking your opinion on a subjective matter of which there is no proof, and not only claiming to know what’s ‘really going on’ so to speak, but also judging a writer’s personal character because of what you’re “seeing” with your insight.

But it makes for lots of comments and dialogue, yes?

Between this thread and the thread on my Facebook there have been something like forty responses and replies to this article. I think the article works out to about 450 words, I’ve probably written 4,000 or more in response. And, yeah, I knew I was poking a bear, but I think this is a bear that needs to be poked.

I honestly couldn’t get far enough into Top 10 to judge about the characters. There was nothing about the first issue that grabbed me, but I did read it four or five years ago, so can barely remember. And from everything I’ve heard it does steer clear of a lot of problems I have with his work.

My one main quibble is that you imply that Alan Moore hates every character he writes about. I’m not quite clear as to whether you mean only in “Watchmen” (in which case I don’t really agree, but I think you could make a pretty solid case which could be debated for quite some time back and forth with either side never really winning), or if you mean in everything he’s written. Should you mean the latter I strongly disagree and don’t think you have much of a case. After all, Moore clearly loves Quartermain and Mina in “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”, he certainly loves V in “V for Vendetta” and he seems to love the whole damn cast of “Top 10″. But I’m betting that you meant only in “Watchmen”. Because otherwise that would be crazy.

Lastly, the second I saw this article go up I knew it would be a fun one for the comment board. And I’m betting you knew it too.