White Knight and the Art of Ruining Batman - Part 2/3
[Part 1 here]
Characters
If it wasn’t enough for Sean to drop every single theme from a 40 foot cliff, he has to go and run the characters too.
Bruce Wayne
Bruce Wayne in this comic doesn’t care about victims and causes insane amounts of property damage
The worst part is that as bad as Bruce is in this comic, he never properly sees repercussions for his actions. It could have been some sort of statement in the comics if there was change, or even an acknowledgement that Bruce’s reactions are wrong.
Bruce’s blatant disregard for civilian lives makes Dick decide to help the police turn him in. When he makes bridges fall down and collapse on people he gets arrested, but even that is nowhere near a reckoning. Several characters point out he could very easily break out of the prison cell he gets thrown into, and he himself admits he’s just there waiting for the Joker to come to him for help to take down Evil Harley. Then he does exactly that with no apologies and everyone magically forgives him. He basically uses his sojourn in jail to brood.
There are a few pieces and panels that bring back the Bruce we know but those are few and far between. They ring so hollow because none of the themes or actual plot at all reinforces them.
“This isn’t out of a duty to avenge my parents” okay why did you literally want to kill someone for changing your perception of the Wayne legacy.
“I want to leave a safer Gotham that you can be proud of”. Literally how. All you’ve done is beat the shit out of the joker and not respect Babs and Dick. He's not really shown prioritizing saving civilians. The only thing he doesn't to protect Babs and Dick is to keep them off cases but it seems like its more because he doesn't want to work with anyone.
Other than Frank Miller's version, this is the first version of Bruce that I simply can’t bring myself to believe that he fights for his children and for justice.
Harley Quinn and Neo Joker
Everyone knows the story of Harley Quinn. A woman in an abused relationship who falsely thought her abuser cared about her until she broke free from an abusive relationship and - oh
Okay I guess she was right about her abuser caring about her?? I guess it was fine that she was in a toxic relationship for years, because actually deep inside, there was a caring man and she had to find him. That’s what White Knight tells us, even this rhetoric is literally what many abuse victims falsely think about their abuse and leads them to staying with their abuser longer
This is something that continuously gets stated throughout the book. Even Batman agrees that Harley's role “balancing” the joker was essential.
To reiterate - Batman thinks it's good that Harley stayed in an explicitly toxic relationship where her partner was in love with someone else (Batman) and also a murderer and made her the accessory to her actual crimes because it made the partner in question less violent. Literally reducing Harley's life’s importance to be the emotional regulator of her abuser…
What about the other Harley (later dubbed Neo Joker)? She’s evil. Straight up. She never gets to see the redemption the actual joker gets despite the fact that her background is genuinely chilling
Before she is the second Harley Quinn, she is depressed, cutting herself, working at a bank. Emotionally vulnerable, which is how a lot of people fall into abusive relationships.
Its a tale as old as time, villain breaks into bank and you are so terrified that you would do anything and pretend to be anyone to live and oh wow now you are dating huh
The text of course insists that the Joker is not at fault for the birth of Neo Joker.
“She could leave at any time”, “She chose to continue to be Harley” The text wants you to take these bits from the narrative and blame Neo Joker for deciding to be Harley Quinn when she's an emotionally vulnerable woman who was terrified of the joker and then treated to the first pieces of kindness she's been treated to. Most victims of domestic abuse can also leave at any time as well. Does that make them responsible for being groomed?
“I know its fucked up that the joker completely rewrote a woman's name and personality but its okay bc she was depressed!!”
Later, when the Joker becomes Jack and becomes "good" this second Harley becomes Neo-Joker and tries to make Jack the Joker again, to belong with her again.
You would think that now that the joker is “cured” he would realize that the second Harley is a victim of his crimes as the joker. Just like how he blames Arkham for making him do more crime, he literally kidnapped and manipulated the second Harley into committing crimes. You would think he would realize this right?
But instead they redirect the faults. The make the second Harley comically evil, even implying her to be abusive in trying to keep the Joker the Joker. The book makes the joker the victim and erases his history of abuse at the expense of a women whose narrative arc is about escaping an abusive relationship. Despite the fact that he was responsible for Harley becoming “Neo Joker” in the first place, there is no sympathy for her.
There is no sympathy for the second Harley/neo Joker. Not from any characters, not from the narrative. We are treated to a horrifying backstory framed to take all fault from the joker, blaming the victim.
White Knight tries so hard to obscure the role of the Joker as an abuser and the Harleys as victims that it does a 180 spin and portrays the second Harley as his abuser and the reason he’s evil, blaming her for not being a perfect victim and emotional regulator like the first Harley. Its evil Harley’s fault Joker was evil 🙂
You heard it here first folks! When you get so traumatized you ruin your sense of identity to become a man’s old girlfriend, it's your fault. She should have been perfect and knew that the guy kidnapping her was a good person all along like the other Harley!
It drives me insane that neither Harley Quinns get the fact that they were in an abusive relationship acknowledged. The first Harley is rewarded for not leaving her abuser. The second Harley is villainized for being a victim.
Not only is this a horrifying portrayal of abusive relationships, it is a betrayal of the fundamental theme that Harley and the Joker have in literally every single piece of media.
Duke Thomas
Let’s start with what White Knight got right. Duke in the comics is a good leader and he was one in this book. That’s it. There is nothing in this Duke’s personality, jokes, general way of life that reminds me of my beloved comic Duke. When most characters in White Knight are out of character there is at least a lacroix taste of what the actual character is hidden somewhere in the book. There is none of this with Duke.
I also feel like in general, comics and many forms of media have an issue with aging up black characters. This happens to Duke in this comic, he’s Bruce's age, a military vet, and built like a tank. Nothing against tank characters but that's not generally Duke's body type either.
An example of a backstory change that Murphy has from the comics is that for some reason Duke’s home is called Backport instead of the Narrows. The Narrows are a fairly important part of Duke’s character in rebirth: it's Jason’s nickname for him and it has its own specific history within the context of Batman that gets touched on a decent amount.
Backport has no personality, so it doesn't make much sense to reinvent the narrows. I think I’ve figured out why he changed it though.
He didn’t know the narrows existed. I’m 95% sure this man has never read a single comic with Duke ever. Like not a single one. He read like the blurb on the back of his cereal box and made up everything else - from art design to personality.
To make this GodAwful joke:
He also makes Duke Joker’s main ally in changing the city.
You are going to strip Duke of his themes and his interesting parts and his symbolism and who he stands for as a hero to give it to THE ANTAGONIST in his story who gets a half assed redemption arc and you’re not even going to do anything interesting with it?!?
Duke says Jack has earned his trust little by little even though they just met, and compares his “rap sheet” and the “rap sheet” of people in the neighborhood, which is, yannow implied to be due to broken windows policing and nonviolence crimes TO THE CRIMES JACK COMMITTED AS THE LITERAL JOKER.
If Sean had read anything with Duke in it, he would definitely know that Duke Does Not Like Cops. He is the only Batfamily member to explicitly say so in the mainline comics, and he does so on many occasions. He does not subscribe to the idea of there being good cops, and he’s suffered at the hands of the system.
Though Duke expresses distrust for cops in the first half of the comic, its mostly because they didn’t let him join, and when they do let him join he’s ecstatic!
He also compares the police to the military. “Duke” may call cops pigs but he agrees that they should be policing like it's a war.
I just don’t understand what this book thinks people generally mean when they say ACAB means like at all or call cops pigs. Duke cannot say “there are no good cops” and also say “we should run the cops like the military” at the same time. Those are fundamentally irreconcilable ideologies.
Its just so jarring! Duke in issue 4: cops r pigs Duke in issue 6: im cop again eheheheh
According to Duke we’ve solved all the problems of Backport because we have black cops now!
changing the system from the inside (: of the super militarized cop group, explicitly stated to be corrupt on page and now with more weapons!!
(I feel anger at the implication every time that all this community needed was one white man to fix anything and also that white man was the joker)
@dukethvmas SAID "ITS ACTUALLY EVIL TO INCLUDE DOES WE ARE ROBIN MEAN NOTHING!!!!!" SO TRUE DON"T PRETEND U KNOW SHIT ABOUT DUKE!!!!!
Barbara Gordon
Babs is written as a quirky basic girl like some version of Batgirl of Burnside on steroids. She is the only one with brain cells in emotional situations.
The rest of the time she’s innocent or dumb as bricks!
She forgets to take her costume off when confronting a man about their meeting in her civilian identity. Do you… Literally 10 year old Barbara Gordon wouldn’t make this mistake.
You want me to believe she's an actual vigilante???? She solves cases and shit????
She goes to a lab and gets surprised when the rats get experimented on. In a lab.
Later in the second book, her identity gets out. It's to get back at Jim Gordon instead of being about her at all even though she is literally also a hero. Instead of responding by fighting back, coming up with a plan, doing literally anything with agency she cries and needs her dad to yell at Bruce for her.
As if the characterization wasn’t bad enough, they decide to recreate the Killing Joke in the comic by having Barbara have a spinal injury. Like a lot of things in this comic it's window dressing. There is no point to it and it further rubs salt in the wound that is that Babs is not allowed to be competent in any sense of the word, and especially not as Oracle
Its short plot you have a scene where she is shot, a scene where (she is pushed!) in a wheelchair at Jim's funeral, a scene of her in rehab but it's just about talking to Bruce about Bruce’s problems and then she's back in the Batgirl suit! It's never about Bab’s story, but about her in relation to Bruce and Jim.
White Knight takes a storyline that was problematic because it centered man in Barbara’s story and centered men again in Barbara’s story. It took a storyline that was problematic because it erases disability and you erase the disability.
Dick Grayson
Dick Grayson in White Knight is mostly just an idiot and very volatile.
[I'm out of image space again ::((((( continued in part 3: Dick Grayson and Why was this comic Like This?]
[Part 1 here]
