The Killing Joke

I have been a Batman fan for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I used to watch Adam West as the caped crusader every night before dinner. “Same bat time, same bat channel,” as they said at the end of every episode. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I started reading graphic novels. I was kind of pissed no one had given me one sooner. The artwork, the subtlety of the storytelling, the way the work trusts the reader to fill in the spaces between the limited text. I loved it. I’m not the type of comic fan who can quote canon (in fact, I despise the notion of canon, because storytelling should be fluid and free to change over time), or tell you all of the story lines Batman has ever had. But I love to read graphic novels and I adore the Batman. I only just read The Killing Joke about four years ago, and it stuck with me.

The Joker is probably the most beloved, or at least most popular, Batman villain of all time. He seems to pop up in every Batman reboot that comes out. Even to the casual fan, it sort of seems like Batman can’t exist without the Joker. He is the archenemy who comes back and back and back. Batman knows this. And in The Killing Joke, he decides he must talk to the Joker and try to find common ground. Batman knows that one day, one of them will have to die. It is the only way things can end between them.

It’s not stated in this storyline, but it’s stated in other Batman stories that Batman refuses to kill his enemies. He sends them to Arkham because murder is his hard line. If he were to cross that line, he’d be no different than the Joker, Poison Ivy, Penguin, or any of Gotham’s other foes. He wants to reason with the Joker. But one cannot reason with a madman, as the Joker shows us.

As the Joker sets up his latest lure for Batman, he shows us his tragic backstory. He had a wife once. A baby on the way. He left his steady job to try and make it as a comedian. Life was hard and growing harder by the day, so he decided to help with one big criminal job to get enough money to start his life over. His wife and unborn child die in a tragic accident. The job goes sideways. And the Joker is born. It’s a sad story, and maybe we could almost believe it. If it weren’t the Joker telling the story. You see, he’s an unreliable narrator. We know he’s insane.

There are some panels when the Joker is leading Batman through the funhouse and speculating as to what made him become Batman. He lists various traumas and losses. At the end of the rant, he says “Something like that happened to me, you know. I . . . I”m not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another . . .”

The Joker is crazy. His narrative, untrustworthy.

I love the way the entire story is put together. The drawings do their job. We feel the ambiance of Arkham as Batman goes to visit the Joker on the opening pages. Both of their faces are in shadow as Batman waxes philosophical. The white streak on Batman’s glove is the first indication that something is out of the ordinary. Then there is the washed out look of the flashbacks. I really love this technique. It’s a visual clue that we are somewhere else. In many of the panels, there is a tiny splash of color. It builds from a faded peach to the deeper red of the red hood. And finally, to the full-color panel of the Joker in all his madness and glory. The story also begins and ends with the same shot of a rain-dappled puddle in the night.

The Killing Joke

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