The KILLJOY series, consisting of
exactly two stories appearing respectively in issues #2 and #4 of
Charlton’s E-MAN, was a rarity for author Steve Ditko: a comedic
superhero. Ditko often used elements of comedy in his “straight”
superheroes, most notably the original Spider-Man feature, and he
sometimes included little japeries in his self-published comics. But
KILLJOY was a lighter look at the artist’s professed Objectivism,
though it was no less scornful than his serious works of societal
irrationality.
The main joke in the first KILLJOY is
that the red-clad avenger lives in a world constantly menaced by
super-villains, all of whom firmly believe that they’re fully
entitled to steal from hard-working citizens. When the hero—who
never speaks while in costume, and whose face-mask features a frozen
smile—jumps in and defeats such evildoers as Robber Hood and
General Disaster, the defeated fiends whine and cry like little
babies. Ditko gives the hero no defined alter ego, though he does
present three possible candidates for Killjoy’s secret ID, in such
a way that the hero might be all of them, or none of them.
KILLJOY 2 works in a few more
variations. The story opens with a maddened criminal holed ip in his
hideout as he exchanges gunfire with cops. He boasts, “I swear no
one is taking me, Killer Ded, alive!” Killjoy steals in the
hideout, disarms the crook, and sends him down to the cops with a
little parachute attached to his belt. Ditko uses this running joke
three more times, each time ending with the desperate criminal
thoroughly humiliated by being taken alive.
Page two is devoted to the entitlement
of the disenfranchised, as Killjoy rescues a solid citizen from a
horde of thieves who all spout things like, “Your selfishly earned
money rightfully belong to the unselfish, we who have not earned it.”
The hero has a tougher time, though, with an elastic-bodied robber,
S.S.S.Snake, who defeats Killjoy twice. These defeats occasion
celebration from a protesting malcontent, Mister Hart, who rejoices,
“The guilty have a right to succeed as well as anyone else! Why
should the true always be right?” This bleeding-heart then meets
his perfect complement in another rabble-rouser, Mister Sole, who has
the same arguments: ”Nobody has a right to own property—anything!
Everything belongs to everybody!”
For his next crime, Snake attempts to
steal a valuable diamond, but about ten other crooks show up, all of
whom are diamond-themed villains: “Diamond Eyes! Captain Diamond!
Blue Diamond,” etc. However, Killjoy is on the scene, disguised as
a diamond merchant (in which guise he utters the only words that are
unquestionably from his own mouth), and the hero unleashes a trap
that confuses all the diamond-hunters and neutralizes Snake’s
elasticity.
In terms of delineating Ditko’s
Objectivist philosophy, there’s nothing in either KILLJOY tale that
didn’t appear in superior works like THE DESTROYER OF HEROES. Crime
is irrational untruth and crimebusting is the reassertion of
objective truth, as is shown by the final panels, where Killer Ded
finally can’t take the constant humiliations any more and resigns
himself to serving out his jail sentence—after which the last panel
shows the silhouette of Killjoy’s smiling visage. It’s
interesting that a face with but one expression connotes for Ditko
the same rational imperturbability as faces with no expression, as
seen in The Question and Mister A. But even if one doesn’t agree
with Ditko’s fetishization of law and order, the recent George
Floyd protests have shown the artist to be a prophet with regard to
the pernicious entitlement of citizens who have no ability to discern
any kind of truth from any kind of experience.
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