I’m sure that several of you folks are familiar with a little program on the comedy channel by the name of South Park which is notorious for their crude but sharp humor and satire. The show recently reached it’s 200th episode which resulted in a cliffhanger involving the TRUE revelation of who Eric Cartman’s father really is. See, for over 10 years (yes, the show has been on the air that long.) we’ve been led to believe that Cartman’s father was, well, his mother who was once a hermaphrodite. Episode 201 revealed that this was false.

Now, South Park is the kind of show that really pokes fun at pop culture, but seldom do they delve into the world of comics quite like they did with episode 201. If you saw the episode, you would also have been delighted to see their direct homage to the classic Alan Moore story, Batman: the Killing Joke starring Scott Tenorman as the Joker. I gaped in wonderment once I saw Tenorman sitting atop a pile of baby dolls in a way remenicsent of the Joker as he began his torment of Commissioner Gordan in the abandoned amusement park. There was even a scene in which Cartman was taken on a roller coaster car ride while Tenormans face appeared on multiple view screens throughout the ride, but with ginger kids replacing the creepy little people from the book. This nod to the Killing Joke was overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the censorship of saying the name of, or showing the image of the prophet (censored) who is a member of the Super Best Friends and had been shown and named in previous episodes. That was all well and good, but I was too busy geeking out on a Killing Joke scene in a South Park episode. Oh yeah, as it turns out, Cartmans dad was actually Scott Tenormans dad, who Cartman had killed and fed to Scott in a chili in the episode, “Scott Tenorman Must Die.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time Trey and Matt have given a nod to fans of comics. One of my favorite characters, Butters, happens to dress up in a Doctor Doom costume and call himself Professor Chaos. Oh, hamburgers! And who can forget the episode that made Batman: The Dark Knight seem silly? Despite all the accusations of crudeness and controversy surrounding South Park, you can’t deny that it relentlessly prods pop-culture and society with utter glee. Comic books included.

-Jim