Batman: The Killing Joke
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Batman: The Killing Joke is a one-shot superhero comic book written by Alan Moore and drawn by Brian Bolland, published by DC Comics in 1988. In 2006, it was reprinted in the trade paperback DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore (ISBN 1401209270).
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The plot revolves around a largely psychological battle between Batman and his longtime foe, the Joker, who has escaped from Arkham Asylum. The Joker intends to drive James Gordon, the Police Commissioner of Gotham City, insane, in order to prove that the most upstanding citizen is capable of going mad after having "one bad day." Along the way, the Joker has flashbacks to his early life, gradually explaining his origin. (However, this origin may be false - see Themes below.)
The man who will become the Joker is an unnamed engineer who quits his job at a chemical company to become a stand-up comedian, only to fail miserably. Desperate to support his pregnant wife, he agrees to guide two criminals into the plant for a robbery. During the planning, the police come and inform him that his wife has just been electrocuted in a household accident involving an electric baby bottle heater. Grief-stricken, the engineer tries to withdraw from the plan, but the criminals strong-arm him into keeping his commitment to them.
At the plant, the criminals make him don a special mask to become the infamous Red Hood. Unknown to the engineer, this is simply a way to implicate any accomplice as the mastermind of a crime to divert attention from themselves. Once inside, they almost immediately blunder into security personnel, and a violent shootout and chase ensue. The criminals are gunned down and the engineer finds himself confronted by Batman, who is investigating the disturbance.
In panicked desperation, the engineer deliberately jumps into a toxic waste vat to escape Batman and is swept through a pipe leading to the outside. Once outside, he discovers, to his horror, that the chemicals have permanently stained his skin chalk white, his lips ruby red and his hair bright green. This turn of events, compounded by the man's misfortunes on that one day, cause him to go completely insane and result in the birth of the Joker.
In the present day, the Joker kidnaps Gordon, shoots and paralyzes his daughter Barbara, and imprisons him in a run-down amusement park, stripping him naked and caging him in the park's freak show. He then chains him to one of the park's rides and cruelly forced him to view giant pictures of his wounded daughter in various states of undress. Once Gordon completes the maddening gauntlet, the Joker ridicules him as an example of "the average man," a naïve weakling doomed to insanity. Batman arrives to save Gordon, and the Joker retreats into the funhouse. Gordon manages to stay sane despite the torture and insists that Batman capture the Joker "by the book." Batman enters the funhouse and faces the Joker's traps while the Joker tries to persuade his old foe that the world is inherently insane and thus not worth fighting for. Eventually, Batman tracks down the Joker and subdues him. Batman then attempts to reach out to him to give up crime and put a stop to their years-long war. The Joker refuses, however, ruefully saying "It's too late for that... Far too late." He then tells Batman a morbid joke about inmates in an asylum, and the two old foes laugh together as the police arrived to take the Joker back into custody.
[edit] Batman: Gotham Knights # 50-55
The story "Pushback" (Batman: Gotham Knights # 50-55), tying Moore's story when a witness (who coincidentally turns out to be Edward Nigma, a.k.a. The Riddler) recounts that the Joker's wife was kidnapped and murdered by the criminals in order to force the engineer into performing the crime. The man who the criminals hired to perform the deed was a Gotham PD officer Oliver Hammett. In this version, the Joker was called Jack.
[edit] The joke
The joke told by the Joker is a common one, in which two inmates are trying to escape a mental institution. They are trying to work out how to get over to the next building, outside the institution, one inmate leaps across, but the second is afraid of falling. The first says "I'll turn on this flashlight, and you can walk along the beam of light to get across." The second inmate replies, "What are you, crazy? I'm not falling for that; you'll turn the flashlight off when I'm halfway across."
[edit] Themes
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The Killing Joke could be considered a meditation on the relationship between comedy and madness. Likewise, it could be considered an insight into character, and a person's moral fiber. For example, upon learning that his wife had died and going through a traumatic accident, the Joker went insane. Batman, however, also had what the Joker termed "a very bad day" when his parents were murdered, but he instead chose to fight for good causes. Jim Gordon went through extreme trauma, but did not lose his sense of self; he insisted that Batman capture the Joker "by the book" to "show him that our way works," remaining true to his faith in humanity and thus disproving the Joker's theories.
The exploration of the Joker's origin and the grim, hopeless outlook on life that belies his "evil clown" persona ("Madness is the emergency exit — you can just walk out on all the horrible things that happened and lock them away forever!") and went a long way toward making him a more three-dimensional character.
Another theme explores the possibility that Batman is just as insane as the criminals he faces, but manifests insanity in a different way. For the decade or so following publication, this theme became central to Batman's character in mainstream stories, but following Infinite Crisis in 2006 has been downplayed in favor of a more heroic motivation (i.e. Batman fights crime to protect the innocent from his fate, rather than merely to exorcise the pain of losing his parents). The story told by the Joker at the end explores this theme symbolically. The first inmate who offers the beam of light for the second inmate to walk on represents Batman offering this false and insane hope towards the second inmate. This represents how Batman offers redemption to the Joker earlier in the story and is trying to purge Gotham of crime. The second inmate represents the Joker who is just as insane as Batman because he believes that he can walk across the beam of light, but it is his mistrust in humanity that prevents him from walking the hopeful path that Batman walks. Throughout the story Batman tried to convince the Joker that it was not too late to change the path he was on, while the Joker conversely tried to use conflict to convince Batman that the world was too inherently sick to be worth living in. The Joker tried to use Gordon as a symbol; if a decent, "average" man could snap after one day, what was the point in trying to live in a society of rules and order? The whole time, the Joker's motive was to demonstrate the inherent insanity of Batman's mission: dressing up as a bat to fight criminals. It was only when Batman had rendered the Joker helpless and been rejected in his plea to save his old foe that the Dark Knight could appreciate what the Joker had been trying to do. When he did so, Batman reacted just as the Joker would: he laughed hysterically.
The Joker acts as a sort of unreliable narrator. While the story he tells of his origin turns out to be true (canonically speaking), he admits that he is unsure that it is, as he has several different memories of the single event. ("Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another...If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be 'multiple choice'!") Furthermore, the events could have been the same, but the motivations might have been different (e.g., was he really forced into the job against his will, or was he a willing perpetrator?).
[edit] Critical reception
This comic book, although a one-shot, had an extraordinary impact on the DC universe. Most significant was Barbara Gordon's paralysis, which ended her career as Batgirl, and eventually led to her role as Oracle.
Despite its popularity, Alan Moore himself would later find much fault with his story, calling it "clumsy, misjudged and [devoid of] real human importance."[1]
In his introduction to the story in the DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore trade paperback, Brian Bolland disputes the widely-held belief that the story started off as a Batman annual story and ended up as a prestige format book. Bolland recalls that the idea for a one-off Batman story focusing on The Joker - with Batman more of an incidental character - was his. Bolland says that in 1984, DC editor Dick Giordano told him he could do any project for DC he wanted, and Bolland requested to do a Batman/Joker prestige book with Alan Moore as writer. Bolland has also expressed dissatisfaction with the final book, and regrets that its impending schedule for release meant he couldn't colour the book himself (John Higgins was the colourist). Bolland says that "The end result wasn't quite what I'd hoped. I don't think it rates with some of the highlights of Alan's career."[2]
This was not the first time the Joker was given an actual origin. In fact, it should be noted that the Joker was honest enough to be very uncertain of the truth of his recollections about anything before the accident which disfigured him. Using elements of the 1950's story "The Mystery of the Red Hood" (Detective Comics #186), which established the concept of the Joker having originally been a thief known only as The Red Hood, and whose real name was unknown. The tragic and human elements of his story, coupled with his barbaric acts as the Joker, portray the Joker less like a one-note monster, and more like a three-dimensional (if irredeemable) human being. Says Mark Voger, The Killing Joke "provid[ed] the Joker with a sympathetic back story as it presented some of the villain's most vile offenses."[3]
Since then, (in 2004's Batman: Gotham Knights #54) much of the Joker's story from "The Killing Joke" was confirmed as being correct (since the events were observed and reported by a third party—Riddler—with no reason to lie). A revisionist take on the first Batman/Joker encounter in #50 of Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (Sep. 1993) corroborates the events of The Killing Joke: when Batman encounters the Joker for the first time, he recognises him as the Red Hood, whom he thought had drowned.
Tim Burton claimed that The Killing Joke was a major influence on his film adaptation of Batman. Director Christopher Nolan has mentioned that The Killing Joke will serve as an influence for the version of the Joker that will appear in The Dark Knight.
The book's front cover is one of the most enduring images of the Joker and one of Brian Bolland's most memorable pieces of art. Incidentally, in posters of the cover and in the cover's reproduction in the DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore trade paperback, an exclamation mark has been added to the Joker's "SMILE" phrase.
[edit] References
- ^ George Khoury, ed., The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore (Raleigh: TwoMorrows, 2003) 123.
- ^ Brian Bolland, "On Batman: Brian Bolland recalls The Killing Joke," DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore (New York: DC Comics, 2006) 256.
- ^ Mark Voger, The Dark Age: Grim, Great and Gimmicky Post-Modern Comics (Raleigh: TwoMorrows, 2006) 33.
[edit] External links
- 4ColorHeroes Alan Moore's Killing Joke
- The Killing Joke at DC Comics
- Alan Moore interview
| Batman | |
|---|---|
| Creators: | Bob Kane and Bill Finger • Other writers and artists |
| Supporting Characters: | Robin (Tim Drake) • Nightwing (Dick Grayson) • Batgirl • Batwoman • Alfred Pennyworth • Lucius Fox • Barbara Gordon • Commissioner Gordon • Harvey Bullock |
| Villains: | Bane • Catwoman • Clayface • Harley Quinn • Joker • Killer Croc • Mr. Freeze • Penguin • Poison Ivy • Ra's al Ghul • Red Hood (Jason Todd) • Riddler • Scarecrow • Two-Face • Other villains |
| Locations: | Arkham Asylum • Batcave • Gotham City • Wayne Enterprises • Wayne Manor |
| Miscellanea: | Batarang • Batmobile • Batsuit • Popular media • Publications • Storylines • Alternate versions of Batman |
