Anyone here read J Michael Straczynski's BatB story 'Ladies Night'?

There are some things I'd like to discuss - but I don't want to spoil for any who haven't read it (recommend it, btw).

So...

What are your thoughts on the apparent anachronisms in Ladies Night (the iPhone, the song 'Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)')? Are they goofs? Or does it fit with the 'floating timeline' idea of DC continuity?

I've always thought of The Killing Joke as occupying a pretty special place in Batman's continuity. There's nothing in the original story to tie it down to a particular date (although it was first published in 1988), only that it's obviously pretty well into Batman's career (Moore even apparently 'jokes' about Batman's fluid timeline; when Gordon's looking at a news-clipping of one of Batman's earliest appearances (the accompanying 'photo' in fact being the cover pic from Detective Comics #27, 1939), he asks himself "Now what year was that?"). So I've always seen TKJ as a story out of time, about an eternal struggle that we all know is doomed to repeat itself - no matter what Crises/reboots may come.

Given that Ladies Night was first published in June 2010 (The Brave and the Bold #33) and is set shortly before the events of The Killing Joke, if the 'anachronisms' aren't anachronisms (the iPhone first appeared 2007, 'Single Ladies...' was released 2008) but are actually in keeping with both when Ladies Night first appeared and when it's set, that would indicate that The Killing Joke has indeed 'floated' along the DC timeline to later on in 2010.

Or if not, why the hell didn't Straczynski just use references that wouldn't seem out of place in 1988? 

Would welcome thoughts/opinions.





"A big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff" The Tenth Doctor explains all.