>>462710
The Joker didn't exist in the 1930s. He was invented in 1940.
>>462713
Batman only used a gun very sparingly for a very short amount of time. Even then, IIRC he never shot regular people. He shot some of Hugo Strange's Monster Men, but they weren't regular men. He did kill some other people early on, like he kicked Boss Zucco in the head and broke his neck. But this was pretty much his last instance of significant deadly force, and it was only like 11 months after he debuted. Once Robin was introduced (Boss Zucco is the guy who killed Robin's parents) things became much more lighthearted. That was the point of introducing Robin. It made things appeal to a younger audience.
In-universe, this would later be explained as Robin actually having that influence on Batman, and helping him walk away from darkness that was consuming him. They also say Robin is the one who named all of Batman's gadgets. Batman just called things "the car" or "the cave," but Robin called them "The Batmobile" and "The Batcave."
Also, it was eventually retconned so that the Batman who killed people in his very early adventures was actually a different Batman from a different universe called Earth-Two. All (or at least most) very early DC comics actually took place on Earth-Two, as an excuse to explain early issues that featured odd things that didn't match with later continuity, such as Batman using guns and killing, when later issues established that he would never use guns and never kill. There is no specific point when stories stopped taking place on Earth-Two and started taking place on Earth-One. This was all a retcon introduced in 1960 and fleshed out over the next few years. For some characters who were fully rebooted, like The Flash, it was simple. For characters who just continued uninterrupted, like Batman, it was trickier.
The main Batman, from Earth-One, had very similar adventures as the one on Earth-Two, all those comics are still pretty much canon, but he never shot guns or killed people. He might have still killed those Monster Men, though. They don't count. Boss Zucco was still dead, but he probably died some way other than Batman kicking him in the head. They probably did do an Earth-One version of Robin's origin that featured Boss Zucco dying, but I wouldn't know which issue. It just sounds like something they'd do.
Earth-Two Batman went on to have his own career and actually age in real-time. So they said he wasn't the main Batman, but he was the original, and treated with some reverence. His Catwoman eventually reformed. Basically, in the '40s there was an era when Catwoman reformed for an extended period of time, but eventually she relapsed. Later, in the '70s, they said that the moment when the issues stopped happening on Earth-Two and started happening on Earth-One was during this era. So basically, Earth-Two Catwoman never relapsed and stayed good. Anyway, this Batman and Catwoman eventually had a daughter, Helena Wayne. Batman retired and Bruce Wayne became the police commissioner. Robin never became Nightwing on Earth-Two, he just became an adult Robin and joined the Justice Society (the original, Earth-Two version of the Justice League). Around 1980, Catwoman got blackmailed by some thugs who wanted her to help them on a big heist, forcing her to go back into action. She got killed on the job. A couple of years later, Bruce also had to go back to his old ways for one last case, and also got killed. Helena Wayne became a superhero called The Huntress and teamed up with Robin to become a new dynamic duo.
A couple of years after that, in 1986, The Anti-Monitor tried to destroy the multiverse. Earth-Two was one of very few worlds that survived, but only by merging with Earth-One. Earth-Two Robin and Huntress found they didn't fit in this "New Earth" because it was really Earth-One with the other surviving universes merged on top of it. This meant Batman and Robin and Catwoman were still young. Robin was Nightwing now, but the point is there were two Dick Graysons, and the one from Earth-Two didn't have a place in this universe. This Batman and Catwoman were not Huntress's parents, and she didn't make sense here. Conveniently, shortly after realizing this, both Robin and Huntress were killed fighting the Anti-Monitor's forces.
However, a new Huntress appeared. This one was called Helena Bertenelli, and was the daughter of a big time gangster, but she didn't like her dad's line of work, and became a hero to oppose him. She looked very much like Helena Wayne, but did not have her history. Other Earth-Two characters did continue to exist in New Earth, though, like most of the Justice Society. Just not the ones who had the same secret identities, or were closely linked to characters with the same secret identities, as other characters on Earth-One. They just continued with little change at all. A significant exception is Fury, the daughter of Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor of Earth-Two. She kept existing, but now her parents were a new character called Fury who was retconned into the past, and a different guy also named Trevor. But all her stories still happened, just she had a different backstory now.
20 years after this, in 2006, the ghost of Batman of Earth-Two appeared in one Justice Society story. Nobody remembered he ever existed, because he didn't just die, he was not part of the history of New Earth, but his ghost still existed, even if nobody remembered him. A similar thing happened with Supergirl of Earth-One, who wasn't part of New Earth history, but appeared as a ghost once or twice, even though nobody remembered she ever existed.
In 2011, The Flash went back in time and accidentally changed history. After this story, suddenly Huntress wasn't Helena Bertenelli anymore, but Helena Wayne. But not Helena Wayne of Earth-Two. Now she was Helena Wayne of Earth 2, a copy of Earth-Two created in 2006 and changed significantly by Flash's time travel. Earth 2 is similar to Earth-Two but explicitly not the same thing. In fact, when The Flash changed history, Earth 2 changed quite significantly.
Anyway the trick here is that they were acting like this new Helena Wayne (Helena Wayne 2 rather than Helena Wayne-Two) had actually just been using the stolen identity of Helena Bertenelli, so those old stories with Bertenelli weren't invalidated, but at some point she apparently died and got replaced with Wayne 2. Precisely when is not specified. I figure the simplest thing is to say it happened right around the time Flash changed history (so you're not actually retconning Wayne 2 into earlier stories, even though that may have been the intent), but it could be earlier. This Helena Wayne at one point meets Damian Wayne, son of Batman of Prime Earth (which was previously called Earth 0, which was previously called New Earth, which is a continuation of Earth-One, so really this is Batman of Earth-One), and it's established that they're alt-universe versions of each other. Huntress is just a couple of years older. So basically Batman of Earth-One has now aged almost to the point of where Batman of Earth-Two was when he died, but due to sci-fi and fantasy stuff, he's also stayed physically younger. But Damian is only a bit younger than Helena was when she became Huntress.
Anyway I just wanted to get autistic about comics.
And oh yeah, it wasn't quite the conservative church ladies that censored comics, and it wasn't in the '40s. Batman became more kid-oriented in the early '40s, but that was simply a creative/business choice. Other dark comics continued. In the '50s, a guy named
(((Fredric Wertham))) helped to spark a moral panic about comics with his book "The Seduction of the Innocent." This resulted in congressional hearings that spooked the comic industry into creating a self-censorship board, the Comics Code Authority (CCA), very much analogous to the MPAA (for film), PMRC (for music), and ESRB (for video games). Wertham was very much a progressive of his time. His "work" on the negative impacts of racial segregation (I put in quotes because not only is psychology largely bunk, but this guy was known to falsify data for his political ends) was cited in Brown v Board of Education. He was a defense witness for serial killer Albert Fish. He opened a charity clinic in Harlem "specializing in the treatment of Black teenagers."
The media tries to act like it's conservatives always pushing the censorship, but not only is that plainly untrue today, but it's untrue at least with the big acts of censorship throughout the 20th century, and it goes beyond comics. Everyone knows Tipper Gore was behind the efforts to censor music in the 1980s, eventually leading to the creation of the PMRC. It really shows how stupid people are that they could be convinced the wife of then Senator, soon Vice President, later Democrat presidential candidate Al Gore was somehow a right-winger. Al fucking Gore, the presidential candidate that to this day the left said had the election stolen from him (even though you're not allowed to say Trump had the election stolen from him). Absolute hero of the left. But apparently we're just supposed to sit here and pretend he married the most right-wing woman of the 1980s. No, Tipper Gore and the big push behind the PMRC was incredibly left-wing.
So was the ESRB. On this site of all places we should be aware of Joe Liberman leading the call to censor and ban video games in the 1990s, leading to the eventual creation of the ESRB. You know, Joe Liberman, the guy so right-wing that he was Al Gore's VP pick in 2000. No, again, the push to censor video games was lead by major left-wingers. They try to get us to act as if Jack Thompson is the guy responsible for censorship of video games, when he never made any headway at all. He was never anything more than a laughing stock. The most he did was get Rockstar to do an extra printing of San Andreas with some dummied out data actually deleted off the disk. But Joe Lieberman and the current lefties censoring vidya actually did have concrete impacts.
And I haven't looked into the history of the MPAA before, but I'd be willing to bet it's the same situation.