Zack Snyder’s NSFW Batman and Catwoman Art Taken Off Twitter Due to Copyright Issues

Like explaining a plot thread from a DC Comic that is a hundred issues deep, buckle in, because this one requires some explanation. Last week one of the stories that dominated headlines for days was how the showrunners for Harley Quinn opened up about a sex scene that they were told to remove featuring Batman and Catwoman. The pair revealed that this moment was shot down because the sex act depicted was something “Heroes don’t do,” which quickly caught fire in fandom. One of the last people to put a button on it was Justice League and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice director Zack Snyder who posted art online of the two with the word “Canon.” Now though, that art is gone.

Since Snyder tweeted his image, which was not entirely sexually explicit itself but painted a major picture in the mind of the beholder due to the placement of the Caped Crusader between Catwoman’s legs, it has vanished. Snyder’s tweet is still available on Twitter but the image itself is gone with a generic “Media not Displayed” warning from the social media site. It further notes: “This image has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder.” Naturally the art can be found elsewhere on line, including some of Snyder’s other social media profiles, but it’s been removed from Twitter.

What makes this removal from the Twitter platform bizarre is that reverse-image searches on Snyder’s artwork at the time of his posting turned up no results, perhaps implying that it was something he had either created himself or had commissioned. This wouldn’t be the first time that a company had gone after fan art online, and some legal scholars would no doubt be able to argue that WB/DC Comics are within their rights to have art using their trademarks made without their consent removed, but that it is a piece originating from a filmmaker that already has a rocky history with the company adds another level of amusement/confusion to it all.

Snyder responded to the copyright takedown in a VERO post featuring a screenshot of the “Media not Displayed” message. The director captioned it “If I advance,” the first part of a phrase made famous by Henri de la Rochejaquelein in the French Revolution. The entire phrase itself reads: “Friends, if I advance, follow me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me!”

Even though DC Comics was apparently not amused, Snyder’s fans and the internet clearly was. At the time of this writing Snyder’s post on Twitter has over 90k retweets and over 330k likes on the platform.