Week 13: "The Killing Joke"

For this week’s reading I read Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke. This graphic novel tells one of the darkest (if not the darkest) Batman stories of all time. It is one of my favorite graphic novels that I tend to keep reading over and over again. I tend not to read something more than once unless. That however, isn’t the case with “The Killing Joke”.

This story focuses on Batman and Joker and how one of them is going to have to kill the other in the end, hence the name The Killing Joke. At the same time, The Killing Joke gives us a glimpse into the past through flashbacks of the Joker before he went all crazy. It’s nice to see an origin story for this infamous comic book villain as his origins, prior to this was shrouded in mystery.

The illustrations in The Killing Joke have a lot of interesting line work and coloring to them. It is very dark-lit and dramatic for such a story as this. The camera angles of each panel worked very well in the telling of the story. That combined with the beautiful illustrations made it very interesting to read. That is one of the main reasons, aside from the story of why I find The Killing Joke so enjoyable to consume. The drawings are quite detailed and have a sort of ominous feel to them which helps set the tone for the story.

If you haven’t read The Killing Joke I highly recommend that you should. It is one of the best Batman stories that I have ever read. The story sets itself up in a dramatic deathly tone. Aside from the story itself, the dramatic and detailed illustrations are very interesting to look at and are quite the page turner. We also learn about the Joker’s origins for the first time and how one bad day drove a simple man mad.