Finally Got Around To Properly Reading “batman: Under The Hood” (or “under The Red Hood” Idk

finally got around to properly reading “batman: under the hood” (or “under the red hood” idk man i’ve seen it both ways) and this right here made me so viscerally sick when i saw it i had to take a moment

(under the cut cause this gets long)

for context if you haven’t read, or just don’t remember, this is from issue #13, the crux of the the bruce/jason/joker storyline. prior to this panel, jason expresses his anger and hurt from bruce not avenging him after joker killed him. he asks bruce why joker is still alive, why he hasn’t killed him yet. bruce explains it would be too easy to put him through all the pain and torture joker has brought upon to others (which, btw, very intimate details here. something about how sex and violence go hand in hand with them, blah blah blah i’m crazy) and to kill him. jason shoots back that this isn’t someone like penguin, scarecrow, etc. it’s the joker. in jason’s words, a “psychotic piece of filth” and “death-worshiping garbage.”

jason says, “doing it [killing joker] because… because he took me away from you.” and that’s when bruce delivers this killer in the panel above.

and i have never felt so sick upon seeing a panel before when i saw this one.

cause it reminded me so much of this panel from the killing joke:

the way both joker and bruce are facing off to the side, obscuring their bodies from the person they’re speaking to, that person being such an important fixture to them. how both of them reject what the other person is asking of them, to compromise everything they believe and know about themselves for what can be seen as the greater good. there’s something to be said as well about how the panels parallel each other, but the enemies are facing opposite directions. bruce turned to the left, joker to the right. maybe something about opposing moral stances, opposing sides of justice. something about being both opposite and yet the same.

you might be thinking “isn’t it a bit much to say this made you feel sick?” well. probably. but they make me feel sick all the time. and there’s something about this pinnacle moment in under the hood mirroring the pinnacle moment from the killing joke. two comics that play such a big role in shaping bruce’s relationship with joker and with his family (in relation to him and joker, if that makes sense).

anyway. i’m sure this was an intentional reference, i’ve just never seen it discussed before. thought i’d share it here cause i can’t stop thinking about it (and i don’t have enough characters on twitter). i hope any of this is coherent. idk if i even got everything i wanted to say about this parallel cause my brain is so scrambled rn.