Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke is a favorite of many, but also a tough read more many others. And perhaps there’s some overlap.

In this episode we meet two who both spoke on this book at recent Batman in Popular Culture conference in Bowling Green, Ohio:

* William Weaver on the book’s portrayal of people reacting to trauma, something that Batman and the Joker have in common with virtually every hero and villain; and

* Tricia Ennis on how a book reviled by many as a prime example of the “women in refrigerators” trope — where a woman is harmed solely to get at a man in her life, not because of who she is — led to the much-loved heroine Oracle. How can something you hate be the cause of something you love?