The comic focuses on news and late night broadcasts.

The scene in which the Joker murders

all the people is based on an actual Letterman segment with a sexual psychologist.
The comic refuses to engage in flag waving nationalism (like some others), instead bringing
nationalism and questions of state violence into distinct focus. The comic frequently draws
comparisons between superheroes and state sanctioned violence.
Superman is engaged in state sanctioned interference in overseas wars, while Batman is
engaged in paramilitary vigilante violence on the streets of Gotham. There was a strong
distrust in America of the presidency of Reagan.
Elements of culture are flattening and merging in this period, with the text somewhat
predicting the Iran Contra affair.
Corto Maltise or whatever it’s called becomes a standin for the treatment of certain Central
American countries as receptacles for proxy wars countries during the cold war.
Remember that Reagan started his career as an actor. His ascent to the presidency marked a
shift between the fictional world of Hollywood and the real world of politics. Oh hey.
The graphic novels of the period were generally interested in postmodern concerns. They
challenged ideas about grand narratives and ideologies, and the idea that truth is something
stable and fixed. Just look at Watchmen. Or this book.
Some important ideas:
Mediascape – the idea coined by JG Ballard of another world on top of the globe which is the
global media.
Hyperreality – the idea that there is only signifier and that the signified has been lost. Comics
have an inherent idea of depth though – they necessitate some layering, some reality under
the signifier.
Speed – the idea that technological development has greatly enhanced the rate at which things
seem to happen.
Heterocosm – the idea of potential other worlds. This is another alternative universe in which
Batman exists, in a different way that Batman exists in DC comic main canon. Comics do this
fucking constantly as I’m well aware.
In this comic, Superman stands for the rule of law and Joker stands for absolute chaos.
Batman sits somewhere in the middle. He is chaos when he fights Superman and order when
he fights the Joker.
Batman is not media savvy. He cannot see outside of his obsession or work his own public
image.
Batman is black and white, both in his colour palette and in his thoughts. He has hard lines
that he will not cross, no matter how ridiculous. Normal people are more realistically
coloured in – they have more meaningful beliefs with actual nuance.
Size of panel can give an idea of the time over which that moment takes place, space is used
to represent time.
Closure is the work done by readers to make sense of the panels and connect them
temporally. When the grid of panels break down it takes more effort for the reader to connect
panels, and in that there is a sense of inherent chaos.
Thierry Groensteen talked about how comics are made up of interdependent images that must
exist together to be comprehensible, whether or not they are sequential.
Braiding is the repetition of images throughout a comic, probably with the intent to create
some kind of effect.
Matt does not know about the connection between the Mutants and X-Men, but he’s pretty
sure it’s not accidental, and notes that the depiction of the Mutants is quite ableist. Something
to think about.
Batman first appears in issue 27 of Detective Comics as just one of many detectives in the
anthology. He really started out as a marketing device, a new superhero as a counterpoint to
Superman.
We can trace his origins all over the place. Here are some:

The latter of these is really the origin of the Jonkler.

While Superman is all about justice for all, Batman can be read as the upholder of a capitalist
system.

The Batman has gothic roots, and we see him fighting vampires in eastern Europe early in his
existence (Detective Comics #30).
Batman is a spectral figure who means different things at different times to different people.
The contradictions within the Batman mythology allow creators to pick and pull at it to
reflect on those tensions and explore the gaps in the mythological framework.