Not Alan Moore's Best Work. Nor is it the best Batman story | Batman: The Killing Joke

Very Cool One-Shot | Batman: The Killing Joke | Alan Moore, Brian Bolland

books:


	• Batman: The Killing Joke Alan Moore, Brian Bolland DC Comics, 2008 - 64 pages average customer review:based on 150 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

It's a comic book.

Sorry, I'd never read a graphic novel, and was told this was a very good one. So I opened it up and it was a comic book. Great story. Great Joker origin. Great theme. But it was a comic book.

Everybody's ga-ga for the illustrations, but it's just a comic book. Even then, some of the characters just had creepy grins in place of actual everyday facial expressions (Joker's wife).

The entire angle that all it takes is "one bad day" to drive an innocent person mad is great though, and they transposed it onto two different characters in the new movie quite well.

But basically this is an illustrated children's book but with a neat premise and violence.

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Not Alan Moore's Best Work. Nor is it the best Batman story

As much as I enjoyed this comic, there's a limitation placed on a writer when he has to work with established characters. Alan Moore said in an interview that he created Rorschach in Watchmen on the premise that Batman really is a sociopath. However, when Alan Moore has to write Batman himself, he can't make Batman a sociopath. He gets to have some fun with Joker's origin story, portraying him as a nebbish who went mad from the chemicals that bleached his skin white and turned his hair green (the standard origin story for the Joker - one that they don't bother to repeat in the current movie). There's also a fun torture sequence (I can't believe I wrote that) with the Joker trying to drive Commissioner Gordon mad.

However, there's not much else to this comic. It's about 64 pages of the Joker being the Joker. The artwork is great. Batman and the Joker are again portrayed as two sides of the same coin, which is true but also a rather tired cliche in most crime novels (as in Red Dragon where Hannibal Lector taunts the hero by saying he's just like him - except for all the cannibalism). And for $10, I would expect something a little more substantial from Alan Moore.

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Very Cool One-Shot

There really isn't anything I an add that hasn't already been mentioned by other reviewer's: the comic looks great, the story is entertaining and provides (as far as I know) an unprecedented look into the origins of The Joker, and The Joker is just an awesome character in here. It is a bit short (you can probably finish it off in less than an hour, though I spent quite a bit of time examining the artwork) and a bit cliche (Batman and The Joker are the same) but still very enjoyable.

Check it out, it's well worth the $10 and the hour it takes to read it.

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Batman: The Killing Joke

Great insight into why the Joker may be who is is, very easy read should take about an hour.

My first comic ever...

My first ever comic. I loved it. Fell in love with it when I sat down in the book store to read it. I highly recommend it.

The Killing Joke, one of my favorite Batman stories ever, stirred a bit of controversy because the story involves the Joker brutally, pointlessly shooting Commissioner Gordon's daughter in the spine. This is a no-holds-barred take on a truly insane criminal mind, masterfully written by British comics writer Alan Moore. The art by Brian Bolland is so appealing that his depiction of the Joker became a standard and was imitated by many artists to follow.

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