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 1-4012-0927-0).
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[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 disguise 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, having his midget helpers strip him naked and caging him in the park's freak show. He then chains him to one of the park's rides and cruelly forces 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" (possibly suggesting he does not want to return to sanity). He then tells Batman a joke that was started earlier in the comic, and the pair laugh together as police cars arrive.
[edit] The joke
The joke told by the Joker is a common one:
"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 on to the roof, and there, just across the narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in moon light…stretching away to freedom.
Now the first guy he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend daren’t make the leap. Y’see he’s afraid of falling… So then the first guy has an idea. He says “Hey! I have my flash light with me. I will shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk across the beam and join me.” B-But the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says …he says “What you think I am crazy? You would turn it off when I was half way 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. Upon learning that his wife has died and then surviving his own traumatic accident, the Joker goes insane. In contrast, Batman had also once experienced what the Joker terms "a very bad day" when his parents were murdered, but he instead chose to fight for good causes. Throughout the story, Jim Gordon is made to suffer extreme trauma but does not lose his sense of self; he insists 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!") is effected toward creating a more three-dimensional depth for the character.
Another theme explores the possibility that Batman is just as insane as the criminals he faces ("You had a bad day too, once, didn't you?" The Joker asks him), 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 humorous closing anecdote relayed by the Joker explores this theme symbolically: the first inmate offering a beam of light for the second inmate to walk on is analogous to Batman offering an impossible hope of redemption to the Joker earlier in the story, and in trying to purge Gotham of crime; the second inmate represents the Joker, who is equally insane for believing it possible to walk across the beam of light, but it is his mistrust in humanity that prevents him from striding Batman's hopeful path. Where Batman attempts to convince the Joker that it is not too late to change his villainous ways, the Joker conversely tries to use conflict to show Batman that the world is too inherently sick to be worth living in. Toward that end, the Joker subjects Gordon to demoralizing tortures as a symbolic demonstration: if a decent, "average" man can be made to snap after one day, what is the point in trying to live in a society of rules and order?
The Joker's underlying motive is to illustrate the inherent insanity of Batman's mission: dressing up as a bat to fight criminals. It is only when Batman renders the Joker helpless and his extended assistance is rejected that the Dark Knight comes to appreciate the madman's aim, reacting just as the Joker would: Batman laughs hysterically.
The Joker also serves as an unreliable narrator. While the story conveyed of his origin turns out to be true (canonically speaking), he admits to his own uncertainty as he has varying memory 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'!") It must be noted though, that it is in no way said that the background supplied is anything but the story told out of an observers point of view, and if one believes it is the Joker's version of what happened, one would find oneself in lack of proof of this. Furthermore, even if those recalled events actually occurred as depicted, his motivations may have been less than blameless: Was he really forced into crime against his will, or was he a willing perpetrator?
[edit] Critical reception
Although this comic book was a one-shot, it 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 that 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 color the book himself (John Higgins was the colorist). 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. Moore's rendition uses elements of the 1950's story "The Mystery of the Red Hood" (Detective Comics #168), which established the concept of the Joker originally having been a thief known only as The Red Hood, and whose real name was unknown. The tragic and human elements of the character's story, coupled with his barbaric acts as the Joker, portray the Joker as less of a one-note monster and more like a three-dimensional (if irredeemable) human being. Quoting Mark Verger: The Killing Joke "provid[ed] the Joker with a sympathetic back story as it presented some of the villain's most vile offenses."[3]
A revisionist take on the first Batman/Joker encounter later presented in issue #50 of Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (Sep. 1993) corroborates the events of The Killing Joke: when Batman faces the Joker for the first time, he recognises him as the Red Hood, whom he thought had drowned.
Much of the Joker's story from The Killing Joke was also confirmed as being correct in 2004's "Pushback" (Batman: Gotham Knights #50-55; reprinted with #66 as Batman: Hush Returns [ISBN 1401209009]), where the events were observed and reported by a third party — Edward Nigma, a.k.a. The Riddler — having no reason to lie. However, other details contradict Moore's tale in several respects: Nigma recounts that the Joker's wife was kidnapped and murdered by the criminals in order to force the engineer's compliance. The man hired by the criminals to perform the deed was a Gotham PD officer, Oliver Hammett. In this version, the Joker was called "Jack" (as in a flashback scene of Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie, where the character was named "Jack Napier"). Fan reactions to the story were mixed at best.
Tim Burton claimed that The Killing Joke was a major influence on his film adaptation of Batman: "I was never a giant comic book fan, but I've always loved the image of Batman and The Joker. The reason I've never been a comic book fan - and I think it started when I was a child - is because I could never tell which box I was supposed to read. That's why I loved The Killing Joke, because for the first time I could tell which one to read. It's my favourite. It's the first comic I've ever loved. And the success of those graphic novels made our ideas more acceptable."[4]
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 film.
An episode of Batman: The Animated Series, "Harley's Holiday", features Harley Quinn being discharged from Arkham. Due to a series of events, none of which being Harley's fault, she goes crazy again after Batman chases her down to try and calm her. By the end she remarks about the bad day she was having and is placed back in the Asylum by Batman. There he remarks that he had a bad day too once to which Harley replies that nice men like him shouldn't have bad days before giving him a long kiss goodbye.
The theme of "one bad day" is also present in the (ongoing) 2004 The Batman animated TV series, particularly at the end of the first season when Joker tortures Detective Ethan Bennett and states, "All it takes to separate the nuts from the normals is one rotten day. Well, in my case, one rotten day and a chemical bath."
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.
- ^ Tim Burton, Burton on Burton: Revised Edition (London: Faber and Faber, 2006) 71.
[edit] External links
- 4ColorHeroes Alan Moore's Killing Joke
- The Killing Joke at DC Comics
- Alan Moore interview
| Batman | |
|---|---|
| Creators: | Bob Kane • 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 |
