Batman: The Killing Joke

I've been owning the newly reprinted Deluxe Edition of The Killing Joke for almost a year now, and despite its short length I never got around to picking it up and actually reading it. Well yesterday I finally read it and like anything else I've read from Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell) it's absolutely bat-shit (pun intended!) insane amazing. It's not only the amazing story centered around Batman and Joker, it's also the stunning art-work from Brian Bolland as you can see for yourself, which completely makes this one of my all-time favorite comics that I have ever had the pleasure to read. I've seen some images of the original coloring of the first print of this comic and thank god that Brian Bolland completely re-did the coloring for this hardcover Deluxe Edition. Not only are the colors more subdued and use darker tones but they also manage to be really colorful in all the right places with a composition that is really stark and telling. In short, the presentation is among the best one I've seen in a comic book up until now.

This is the Batman that I love; the pissed off dark knight that you will never even think of laughing at, the one you see in Christopher Nolan's new movies, the one I experienced while playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, the dark lonely and moody avenger Batman with no campy side-kicks like Robin and Batgirl. This is basically the ideal Batman story where violence is not held back, where crime actually feels as horrible, ugly and brutal as it's suppose to. But just focusing on Batman would be unfair in a comic which is clearly centered around the origins of The Joker. However The Joker serves as an unreliable narrator as he admits to his own uncertainty of the single event that made him to what he is, or as he puts it "Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!" and much like Batman this Joker is also like a definitive Joker interpretation. This is not the nice campy funny Joker of say Adam West's Batman, this Joker is a psychopathic homicidal maniac with no regard for human life and when he's funny it's in a dark hopeless way.



The story is simple, clean and very short but it's a truly masterful telling - largely thanks to Brian Bolland's artwork. However this is clearly Alan Moore at work when it comes to the plot with well-written dialogue, smart usage of themes and events left for interpretation of the reader. The basic premise is that The Joker has escaped from Arkham Asylum and has kidnapped Commissioner Gordon to prove a point to Batman, that point being that anyone having one bad day would go insane as The Joker did. The underlying motive being to illustrate the madness of Batman's mission; dressing up as a bat to fight criminals ("You had a bad day once, am I right?... Why else would you dress up like a flying rat?"). The whole comic feels like a tribute to the conflict of these two characters and Joker's relentless desire to break Batman and have him admit to being just as mad as him while Batman constantly tries to prove to Joker through his actions that he's nothing like him and will never bend on his rules for anything.

Simply put The Killing Joke is an amazing work of fiction and anyone even remotely interested in Batman lore should start here. I'll end this entry with the joke that was started at the beginning of the comic and which The Joker tells completely to Batman at the end: See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum... and one night, one night they decide they don't like living in an asylum any more. They decide they're going to escape! So, like, they get up onto the roof, and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in the moon light... stretching away to freedom. Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend didn't dare make the leap. Y'see... Y'see, he's afraid of falling. So then, the first guy has an idea... He says "Hey! I have my flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk along the beam and join me!" B-but the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says... He says "Wh-what do you think I am? Crazy? You'd turn it off when I was half way across!"