Killing Joke - Review

The Killing Joke is simply a masterpiece that was gifted to us by Alan Moore. His writing is absolutely stellar in this story. It would be a crime if I don’t mention artist Brian Bolland.

This is the quintessential story that defines The Joker and tries to decipher the motivation, if any, that works in his mind. The story consists of two narratives continuing side by side. One is present, and the other is past when Batman only started fighting crime. The beauty of the two narratives is that the shift between the narratives feels seamless. The art choice for these narratives is also quite captivating because the past is colored in grayscale.

Some people might focus more on the past because it sort of gives an origin story for The Joker. But, here we see Joker telling Batman that even he isn’t quite sure how he became the joker. So, the origin story, though a fascinating one, can be discarded like the different stories of The Joker portrayed by Heath Ledger in the movie Dark Knight. Dark Knight borrowed quite a hefty amount of inspiration from The Killing Joke. I personally think that The Joker previously being a struggling stand-up comedian and also a loving husband is a nice touch from the writer.

The crucial point of this story is what The Joker does to Commissioner Gordon and his daughter Barbara Gordon. Joker tries to torment Commissioner Gordon by shooting his daughter and taking pictures of her while she was lying on the ground. He further increases the torture by taking Gordon to a circus and showing his daughters agonizing pictures. All this was done by The Joker to drive Commissioner Gordon insane. He just wanted to prove that anyone can become crazy like him if they had a bad day, or maybe a really bad day. On the other hand, The Joker from The Dark Knight followed the same method to get to Harvey Dent.

This graphic novel poses a philosophical question about humanity and the thin layer of sanity that keeps us from causing havoc like The Joker. Are we all insane? Deep down, there lies a darkness that is only one step away from breaking free. Maybe we will never know what really what happened to Joe Kerr. He might have fallen into an acid container, his father might have done something horrible, or maybe he himself inflicted the scars on himself.

If someone hasn’t read The Killing Joke, he or she is not a true Batman fan, let alone a fan of Joker. This is a must read for all comic fans.

This was first published in March, 1988. Later it was re-mastered in 2008. This graphic novel received numerous awards including the prestige Eisner award.