I totally get the rationale Timm and Azzarello had with the whole Prologue. The irony is that the whole thing was basically constructed to placate the feminists who were pissed about this story being adapted, and it's so on the nose, too. Barbara Gordon is a victim of sexual violence, stripped of any power over her sexuality; Barbara Gordon is an independent woman in control of her own sexuality. Barbara Gordon is a helpless, crippled damsel; Barbara Gordon is a strong, capable heroine who saves Batman from certain death and beats a guy nearly to death while calling him a "misogynistic piece of filth." If some feminists can't tell that the whole sequence was crafted as a love letter to them by a couple of guys who were attempting to be thoughtful about a controversial work, I don't get it.
Personally, I would've cut the whole sequence. The Killing Joke is underestimated because of its length, but it isn't exactly a book that you just breeze through. It's pretty much like any other Alan Moore story in the sense that it's a relatively slow, ponderous story. Even though the actual adaptation was only about 40 minutes, it felt like 70, and the prologue just made it drag.
