Batman: The Killing Joke

AUTHOR: Moore, Alan

ARTIST: Brian Bolland (illustrator); John Higgins (colorist); Richard Starkings (letterer)

PUBLISHER: DC Comics

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1988

Publication History

Batman: The Killing Joke was published in 1988 in a single softcover volume by DC Comics. The artist, Brian Bolland, was a popular British artist most noted for his work on Judge Dredd in the late 1970’s. When contacted by DC and asked to illustrate a project, Bolland chose a Batman one-shot, written by Alan Moore, that differed from other Batman comics in that it focused on the Joker rather than Batman himself. Moore, a well-known writer, had already created some of his most lauded works, including Watchmen (1986-1987) and V for Vendetta (1982-1989). As Bolland was unable to do the coloring for the comic at the time, the novel was colored by John Higgins. Bolland later insisted on reproducing the work, revising some of the art and recoloring it personally for the twentieth-anniversary edition. The graphic novel received critical and popular acclaim when it was first released, and the later edition became a best seller in 2009.

Plot

Batman: The Killing Joke opens with a joke as Batman arrives at Arkham Asylum. Batman makes a plea to a silent Joker for an attempt at rehabilitation. Immediately, Batman discovers this Joker is a fake and the real Joker has escaped. Meanwhile, the real Joker purchases a derelict amusement park from an eager but anxious salesman. The story quickly transitions into a scene of a young man confessing his failure at a comedy audition to his wife, Jeannie. The flashback ends, and the Joker finishes his transaction by simply killing the salesman with his signature smiling poison.

Batman obsesses over the Joker’s whereabouts and his lack of understanding of the Joker’s motivation. Elsewhere, Commissioner James Gordon and his daughter, Barbara, have a conversation about the Joker. When Barbara answers a knock at the door, the waiting Joker shoots her. The Joker strips Barbara and renders Commissioner Gordon unconscious. In flashback, the young man seen earlier makes a deal to assist two men in a crime. The criminals assure him that he will remain anonymous because he will be wearing the costume of the Red Hood.

Batman arrives at the hospital and is informed of Barbara’s permanent paralysis and the likelihood that she was photographed in the nude by the Joker. Barbara tells Batman that the Joker has changed and will take his crimes to the limit.

At the amusement park, Commissioner Gordon is awakened by a group of deranged dwarves and paraded nude before the Joker and a crowd of deformed circus performers. While driving the beaten commissioner onward, the Joker describes the world as a collection of pointless tragic events and argues that maintaining society is futile. After placing Gordon in the car of an amusement-park ride, the Joker warns him of the brutality of life and insists that the only escape is to go insane.

In the past, the young man is finalizing his plans with the criminals when police officers appear and inform him that his wife and unborn son have been killed in a freak accident. While heartbroken and in shock, he is told that he must continue with the crime despite his loss or be killed.

The torture of Commissioner Gordon continues as the Joker describes the pointlessness of fighting injustice and touts the bliss of insanity in a song. During this performance, Commissioner Gordon is bombarded with images of his naked and bleeding daughter, flashed across the walls of the tunnel-like ride.

Batman feverishly searches for the Joker, but he is able to find him only when the Joker sends him a ticket to the amusement park. The ride ends, and after the Joker questions the commissioner and finds him completely unresponsive, he locks Gordon in a cage.

In the final flashback, the young man dons his costume and accompanies the criminals through a chemical plant, only to be spotted by security guards and Batman. During the ensuing panic, the man climbs onto a catwalk and falls into a vat of fluid before he escapes. The man removes his costume to reveal that the fluid has disfigured him, transforming him into the white-faced and green-haired Joker.

Batman arrives at the park and skirmishes with the Joker, who quickly flees to the fun house. The commissioner urges Batman to capture the Joker “by the book,” and Batman avoids the traps in the fun house and is able to subdue the Joker. Batman pleads with the Joker to seek help, for if their ongoing battle continues, the only possible outcome is death for one or both of them. The Joker remorselessly refuses the request and tells the joke that opened the book. As police approach in the distance, Batman and the Joker laugh hysterically.

Characters

•The Joker is the central figure. His green hair, white skin, and too-wide grin make him a garish parody of a clown. He most often wears a purple suit with green gloves. In this book, the young man who would become the Joker is a struggling comedian. This man has a long face and short-cropped hair and suffers from the anxiety of most struggling adults.

•Batman, a.k.a. Bruce Wayne, is the hero, but not the focus of the story. Driven by the murder of his parents when he was a child, he has sworn to rid Gotham City of evil. Though disciplined and highly trained, he often struggles with the possibility of killing his most destructive foes, such as the Joker.

•Commissioner Gordon is Gotham City’s aging police commissioner, recognizable by his mustache and large glasses. He is one of the few people Batman truly trusts, considering him to be one of the best examples of a good person.

•Barbara Gordon, a.k.a. Batgirl, is the daughter of Commissioner Gordon and has faced the Joker before, alongside Batman. Thus, her ability to notice the change in the Joker’s demeanor is particularly important.

Artistic Style

Batman: The Killing Joke is distinguished from other Batman comics through its use of vibrant colors. The Joker’s affinity for purple and other bright colors affects the depiction of all the characters, tinting them in his signature hues. Even the shading on Batman’s cape uses purple, rather than the classic blue, to indicate light, although blue also appears on his cape in other scenes. The drawing style stresses the elongation of the face and the tall, thin bodies of both Batman and the Joker. This style accentuates iconic features of both characters, especially the Joker’s smile and the ears on Batman’s mask.

The color scheme is also used to indicate flashbacks. The initial flashbacks are limited to only two or three colors, but as the flashbacks progress toward the present, more colors are introduced until the newly created Joker is unveiled in his full spectrum of colors.

This color scheme was changed drastically when Bolland recolored the art for the deluxe twentieth-anniversary edition in 2008. The flashbacks were depicted in black and white rather than the minimalist colors of the original version, creating a sharper contrast between the past and present and better representing the Joker’s distrust of his own memories. Bolland toned down the coloring of most of the book and removed much of the yellow, which Higgins used extensively to highlight when characters were in direct lighting. Bolland’s “noncoloring” also created better definition within the brightly colored objects, such as the Red Hood’s mask and the Joker’s hair. While the original version is visually consistent with the era in which it was originally colored, the deluxe edition appears much closer to the styles of the early twenty-first century.

Themes

With the Joker as the core of The Killing Joke, its themes revolve around his character, including his relationship with Batman and Gotham in general. Presented in the text is the Joker’s motivation to create insanity through the chaos of his own actions and its underlying cause, his personal trauma. This humanization of the Joker provokes sympathy, especially since it draws a strong parallel between the Joker’s and Batman’s origins. To a loyal Batman reader, the Joker’s motivation can be understood as a desire to prevent his own personal tragedy from recurring. His response to the loss of his wife and child contains the same sense of hopeless chaos as Batman’s response to the death of his parents, but while Batman’s pain motivates him to fight criminals, the Joker’s loss cannot be blamed on a concrete individual or group. The death of his wife and child was an accident, a completely unpredictable event in a chaotic world, and this fact causes the Joker to drift into insanity.

Batman’s repeated attempts to bridge the gap between himself and the Joker only reinforce the fact that the slight differences in their traumas led to drastically different coping mechanisms. By most medical definitions, the Joker is not coping and has simply slipped into a sociopathic delirium in order to avoid the emotional pain of his loss and his disfigurement. His actions force both Batman and the reader to consider the chaos of the world, confronting them with the possibility that adherence to the social contract is not truly the best way to survive.

Impact

Although the book was produced as a one-shot, the crippling of Barbara Gordon by the Joker became part of the Batman series canon and has affected later iterations of the character. Barbara’s paralysis led to the creation of her persona of Oracle, a character that has appeared in several DC Comics series, including Birds of Prey (1999). The portrayal of the Joker as a remorseless madman obsessed with subjecting others, especially Batman, to his own insanity has become the standard depiction of the character.

While various versions of the Joker’s origin story exist, the version in The Killing Joke is one of the most accepted. Despite this, the Joker’s motivations have continued to evolve since the graphic novel’s publication, and the character has lost any sympathetic features created by this portrayal of a tortured soul embracing insanity as the only option for living. Moore has come to dislike this work and does not number it among his top achievements. However, it continues to receive praise from critics and fans, with the twentieth-anniversary edition introducing the novel to a new generation of readers.

Films

Batman. Directed by Tim Burton. Warner Bros., 1989. Burton has claimed that his approach to portraying the Joker’s character, as well as the origin story depicted in the film, was inspired by Batman: The Killing Joke.

Batman: The Dark Knight. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros., 2008. The character of the Joker, played by Heath Ledger, is portrayed as uncertain of his own past, similar to the Joker of Batman: The Killing Joke.

Television Series

Batman: The Animated Series. Produced by Jean MacCurdy and Tom Ruegger. Warner Bros. Animation, 1992-1995. The series contains a number of episodes featuring the Joker, voiced by Mark Hamill. The style of the Joker character in the series is most closely associated with the Joker from Batman: The Killing Joke.

Further Reading

Brubaker, Ed, and Doug Mahnke. Batman: The Man Who Laughs (2005).

Loeb, Jeph, and Tim Sale. Batman: The Long Halloween (1996-1997).

Moore, Alan. V for Vendetta (1988).

Bibliography

Pearson, Roberta E., and William Uricchio. The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and His Media. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Wandtke, Terrence R. The Amazing Transforming Superhero! Essays on the Revision of Characters in Comic Books, Film, and Television. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007.

White, Mark D., and Robert Arp. Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.