Batman: White Knight - SJW Joker

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>For Batman: White Knight, writer-illustrator Sean Murphy (The Wake, Punk Rock Jesus) created a version of Gotham with real, modern-day problems, and then let Batman solve them by making him the villain. How? In the comic mini-series' alternate-reality, it's the Joker—cured of his insanity—who sees that Bruce Wayne is just another part of the city's vicious cycle of crime and sets out to stop him.

>"My main goal was to undo the comic tropes while changing Gotham from a comic book city into a real city—a city dealing with everything from Black Lives Matter to the growing wage gap," Murphy says. "[But] rather than write a comic about the wage gap, I gave those ideas to the Joker, who leads a kind of media war against Gotham's elite by winning people over with his potent observations and rhetoric."

>Despite the fact that their roles are reversed, having heroes and villains who exist as a response to the current political climate is very much on-brand for Batman. For nearly eight decades the Joker and Dark Knight have faced off in the comics and onscreen, and each time, whether they're brooding or cartoonish, they've come to represent the kind of good or bad guys their audience needs. In the 1940s, when the Joker was introduced in Batman #1, the idea of having a masked vigilante face-punching foes seemed like a good way to fight crime. But in the decades since, society has learned that's not always the best course of action. "It's sexy to think crime can be stopped with a fist, but the real solution is a lot more boring than that: education, increasing wages, and building trust," Murphy says. "The line Batman rides between 'noble vigilante' and 'overzealous oppressor' will always be shifting as our own society changes."

Oh dear.