Big news! Billy is a dad! Because of that, the email exchange below almost replaced the podcast this week. But Billy and Dave managed to sneak into the studio during one of Billy’s daughter’s naps, and here we are with a new episode! Is it a little late for this week or a little early for next week? You decide!
But before you enjoy the podcast, please enjoy the following email exchange between Billy, Dave, Nick (occasional Tuesday Night Comics guest host) and Bryan (Billy’s cohost on The Billy and Bryan Show) about The Killing Joke, Alan Moore, John Byrne and Supergirl.

From: Bryan
To: Billy, Dave, Nick
Subject: Newswire: Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy reunite for Batman: The Killing Joke animated film [feedly]
In the words of Joe Biden, this is a big fucking deal, right?
Newswire: Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy reunite for Batman: The Killing Joke animated film
http://www.avclub.com/article/mark-hamill-and-kevin-conroy-reunite-batman-killin-233778?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds— via my feedly newsfeed

From: Nick
To: Bryan, Billy, Dave
I would normally be excited about something like this but man, do I hate the Killing Joke.

From: Bryan
To: Nick, Billy, Dave
Oh yeah? I thought it was one of the big ones. (I mean, if I’ve heard of it, it must be something.) Do most people like it?

From: Nick
To: Bryan, Billy, Dave

It is one of the “classic Batman stories” but I don’t like it – I think I’m probably in the minority, though. I definitely do not need to read a story featuring (technically) children’s characters where (spoilers for a nearly 30 year old comic) Batgirl is paralyzed and possibly sexually assaulted and Commissioner Gordon is sodomized by circus people, all in the quest of being “edgy.” Again, though – people do seem to like it, and it is Alan Moore and the art is great, but…yeah. Not my thing.

COMICS EVERYBODY

From: Dave
To: Nick, Bryan, Billy

 Yeah, I think it does a lot that has influenced Batman and the Batman seen in other media but as the decades pass there a parts of it that really don’t hold up. Especially the stuff that Nick points out. I do want to read it again because it has been ages since I have read it.  I remember reading and article and I think Alan Moore uses rape quite heavily in his work.

From: Dave
To: Nick, Bryan, Billy

This isn’t the article but it does give a good list of all the rape/sexual violence scenes:Let’s look at it by the numbers. There’s been an instance of sexual violence (much of it shockingly offhand and quickly dismissed or forgotten) in every major work Moore has written and in many of his minor works. Every volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen contains one instance of sexual violence (almost all aimed at Mina Murray). Lost Girls, his long germinating erotic adventure, veers between joyful sex and sexual violence so rapidly that I found myself wondering (however momentarily) if Moore even remembers the difference between the two. Neonomicon, his ode to Lovecraftian horror, features a grizzly rape. Tom Strong, his attempt to write an old-fashioned superhero comic has a rape (which is actually played as a punchline).
Even his earlier works (which in my opinion tend to be better than his offerings from the last ten years) have a disturbing pattern of sexual violence. Watchmen, V For Vendetta, Killing Joke, Miracle Man each features a scene of sexual violence.