![](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEiZ2Kum5f6r5X5OlTSvzaInjxzooDCo4-uxd9JyqOtMgU2OY-yhrAUPBotCtdL7S4TkWjMYkNo6tQMefPEWkbH_1VWSO5kZCVR-dGEWaESR1wgAgLqjcVOGXED-pscCwY2MpxwGja4z64XakhR1rFIE6Q6rVA87O0c95BRkwxx8DV8Mtn-jAL7vqLEvuEQB\/w640-h242\/658b%20the%20guy%20who%20shot%20batman's%20parents%20detective%2033%201939.JPG\" "\\"the")
<\/a><\/div>\nCan’t believe that I didn’t think of this before but The Guy Who Shot Batman’s Parents a) should already be here and b) is representative of a class of plot devices I’ll be calling Narrative Footballs. Narrative Footballs are big pivotal events, usually related to a character’s origin in some way, that get more and more significant over time and eventually become something that can be pinned to a villain in order to lend them a bit of gravitas<\/i>. Sometimes they don’t even start out as the actions of a person: while the the Explosion of Krypton eventually becomes a very popular item on various villains’ C.V.s, it isn’t even blamed on Kryptonian society for the first decade or so. <\/p>\n
The Guy Who Shot Batman’s Parents is just a guy until 1948, when he is identified as Joe Chill. I think he’s mostly Joe Chill still, but sometimes he’s the Joker (Batman <\/i>(1989)) or Joe Chill was working for a big bad guy etc etc. I have no evidence here but I’ll bet a dollar that there’s a comic somewhere where it turns out that Ra’s al Ghul was behind it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Detective Comics 033, 1939) Can’t believe that I didn’t think of this before but The Guy Who Shot Batman’s Parents a) should already be here and b) is representative of a class of plot devices I’ll be calling Narrative Footballs. Narrative Footballs are big pivotal events, usually related to a character’s origin in some way, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,60,17,290,23,20,291,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-69","category-batman","category-dc-comics","category-guy-who-shot-batmans-parents","category-minor-super-villain","category-murderer","category-narrative-football","category-the"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEhHDwUyf-oqyvv7eicYlB0oT08PYuufr9N7_Df102JkXapwsxQhODC8CR8UYtSlnMfJ-9gw2pPiyRFcWu8SMXtL5qAVN4EMDY-7Y-_A1Myq02nqCpV3KBMftcp1btrhZgDDMZMOnPQrOKZGt20w5aDCXNnYL_SGZ8ovhL69_mkgw-MS1unqMwDdm6bYetLm\/w640-h448\/658a%20the%20guy%20who%20shot%20batman's%20parents%20detective%2033%201939.JPG\" "\\"the")
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