Batman: The Killing Joke is one of the most iconic Batman comics of all time. It's also one that I like the least. It's solid and poignant, especially since it would eventually lead the crippled Barbara Gordon, formerly Batgirl, to become Oracle, one of my favourite DC Comics characters of all time. But, I don't like it, because, along with Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, this book ruined the characters of Batman and the Joker. Before 1986 when The Dark Knight Returns Batman was a grim, dark vigilante, but he never brutalized the criminals he fought. He simply outsmarted them, punched them a couple of times and then left them for the police to put in jail or in Arkham Asylum, depending on who the bad guy was. Same with the Joker. He murdered people, but he never brutalized them the way he does with Commissioner Gordon and Barbara.
I'll bring this up again when I review Watchmen, but comic books are supposed to be entertainment. The Killing Joke, at least to me, isn't entertainment. It also isn't entertaining. It's brutal, twisted, and something that DC Comics should never have allowed Alan Moore to write as a Batman story. I get that the world was changing, and that movies and TV shows had become more "adult" and darker, but the point of these entertainment mediums is that they're supposed to be an escape from the harsh realities of our lives, even if it's only a temporary reprieve from our problems. However, stories such as Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and The Killing Joke aren't any such escape or temporary reprieve. Instead they are stories that mess with your head and subvert your perception of comic books. But, do they actually subvert anything, or do they simply change what comic books are from the point of their publication, onward? And are these stories mentally healthy for people to read? Especially people such as myself who sometimes prefer entertainment over good storytelling and characters with depth to them? I don't have the answer for that. Only that, I personally prefer the lighter side of things, simply because the world is dark enough as it is, especially these days, and I'd like to escape that darkness from time to time rather than live in it through my entertainment.
In The Killing Joke Batman is concerned that he and the Joker are going to eventually have to kill each other because he fears that he is running out of options given that the Joker refuses to be rehabilitated despite being sent back to Arkham Asylum everytime Batman catches him. This is of course the only time this concern of Batman's has ever come up as it doesn't even come up in Batman: A Death in the Family, which started being published as Batman #426 to #429, not too long after this book came out. At the same time the Joker remembers that, according to Moore, comic books are stupid and he should actually attack and brutalize people the way he would if he were a real person and not just a comic book character, just to prove that all it takes is one bad day to make someone go insane. To this end, he shoots Barbara Gordon through the spine, paralyzing her, and takes pictures of her naked, injured body. Then he kidnaps Commissioner Gordon and forces him to see the pictures in a perverted funhouse that he created from an abandoned carnival. Batman tracks him down and saves the day, proving to the Joker that not everyone's mind is fragile that only one bad thing breaks them. Or, proving to the Joker that he's an idiot who should apologize for doubting the validity of comic books as they were. I honestly don't know, I'm just a blogger who shares his thoughts on movies, TV shows and comic books.
As I said, the only really good thing about this book, for me anyway, is that it did lead the paralyzed Barbara Gordon to become Oracle, showing that she's still useful as a superhero, despite being confined to a wheelchair, and that there's more to a person than just their body. It shows that handicapped people, and women in general, have their brains and can use them in a positive way. As someone who is physically handicapped as well as mentally challenged, I appreciate the way Oracle was handled during the 23 years that she was around, before DC decided to reverse that decision and reverted Barbara to being Batgirl again for the New 52 in 2011. A decision that I'm still salty about nine years later, for reasons I will get into when I review Bryan Q. Miller's run starring Stephanie Brown on Batgirl, which ran from 2009 until 2011 when it was cancelled in favour of the New 52 Barbara Gordon series that launched in September of that year.
For some reason the late '80s were really trying to show that the Joker should be more realistic by making him as brutal as he could possibly be in real life. Luckily this only lasted until after A Death in the Family when he murdered Jason Todd, the second Robin, because by the time I started reading Batman comics in the early '90s, during Knightfall, the Joker had been dialed back to being the more cartoonish version of himself that I was familiar with from the 1966 TV show, the 1966 movie, and the 1992 animated series. Though the New 52 would also attempted to bring Joker back to reality by making him more brutal and disturbing again. That's where I stopped reading Batman stories with the Joker in them so I don't know what he was like during DC Rebirth or what he's like now during the post-Rebirth era.
Batman's concern in this book is also way out of character for him. Yes, he's made a conscious decision to not kill his adversaries, but he's never shown concern that he might have to do so to the point where he makes an effort to convince a criminal to reform himself before it's too late. That's not Batman. That's more like something that Superman might try to do, though I don't think we ever see Superman grapple with that problem very often either. At least not at the point when this book was published. Maybe it's something he deals with currently in the post-Rebirth era, but I'm not sure. Either way, this is very out of character for Batman and proves that Moore just doesn't like certain comic book characters. Or at the very least doesn't understand them very well.
The artwork in The Killing Joke is probably the thing I like least about the book. While The Dark Knight Returns maintains that more cartoony style that has been the hallmark of comic books since the mid '30s, The Killing Joke actually makes it more realistic and nuanced. While that kind of works for this book, it's not an art style that I like in comic books. Especially when the artwork helps to maintain that escapist element that made me fall in love with comic books in the first place when I was a kid. It also just doesn't fit the Batman corner of the DC Universe very well. Brian Bolland is an amazing artist, he just doesn't fit that well with Batman.
It's kind of how I feel about Alan Moore as a writer. Moore does a much better job at writing his own characters or writing characters that aren't as popular as Batman and Superman are. For example, I've read a couple of issues of his work on Swamp Thing, a character that has more of a niche following than Batman does, and I actually prefer those issues over this book. Same with Watchmen. While those characters are based off of a group of characters that DC Comics had acquired the rights to in the '80s from a defunct publisher known as Charlton Comics, they're still Moore's creations rather than the Charlton characters. And somehow, even though I also think that Watchmen shouldn't be called entertainment, I think it works a lot better than The Killing Joke does, simply because while he's subverting what comic books are perceived as, for all the good it did the comic book industry, it's doing so with characters that aren't as important to the wider pop culture as Batman is.
In addition to reading the original edition of The Killing Joke for this review, I also read the Deluxe Edition hardcover that was published in 2008. The only difference between the two editions is that the artwork has been digitally recoloured in the Deluxe Edition version. Also while in the original edition Batman has the yellow oval behind the bat symbol on his chest, it was removed for the Deluxe Edition. Which kind of removes the story from canon, or alters the continuity since Batman had added it sometime between Batman: Year One and Batman: Year Two, though a panel in Batman #416 shows him without it when he's with the original Robin (Dick Grayson), and later issues, starting during Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying shows him without it until sometime during Dick's time as Robin. Aside from that little piece of discontinuity, this is a really nice edition of the book.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall I can't really recommend The Killing Joke to people unless they're into this sort of story. Due to the adult themes in the book, it should definitely not be given to kids to read unless you want to scar them for life. I'm glad I didn't read this book until I was an adult, because it might've frightened me away from comics altogether. At least away from comics apart from Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation and possibly Star Wars comics as well. The fact of the matter is, I just don't like this book. It's part of what ruined Batman for every writer who wrote the character after this, because you can't bring the characters back from this book. It would've been okay if this book was outside of canon like The Dark Knight Returns is, because it is a fairly self-contained story and could work as a standalone thing. However Batman #426 brings it up right after this in a conversation between Batman and Commissioner Gordon when they're looking at the Joker's latest escape from Arkham Asylum. Also bringing the handicapped Barbara into continuity and specifically mentioning that the Joker shot her, brings this book into the DC Universe proper. I'm giving The Killing Joke 5/10 stars.
DC Universe Wiki Links: https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Batman%3A_The_Killing_Joke
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