Batman: The Killing Joke

Hello friend

Hope you are doing well!

I am bringing a new article. Happy reading....

Batman: The Killing Joke is a one shot graphic novel published by DC Comics in 1988. It features Batman, his arch enemy the Joker, and Police Commissioner James Gordon, father of the super heroine Batgirl. The ending is left ambiguous.

The story begins with the back story of the Joker. He is an unnamed engineer who leaves his job to become a comedian, only to fail. Running out of money and desperate to support his pregnant wife, he guides two criminals through the company where he worked earlier as they wish to rob the gambling den beside it. The police inform him that his wife died in a household accident. Grief stricken, but unable to back out, he goes through with the plan, donning the mantle of a criminal, “Red Hood”. There is a shootout at the gambling den and the two criminals are killed. Terrified at being confronted by Batman, he leaps into the chemical waste pound in order to escape. When he emerges, his hair is green, lips are red, skin is bleached white, and he has been driven insane. Blaming Batman, he names himself the “Joker.”

In the present day, Batman visits Arkham Asylum to speak to the Joker about their decades long feud, only to find that the Joker has escaped and put a decoy in his place. Realising that the Joker is going to wreak havoc in Gotham City, Batman rushes out of Arkham Asylum. The Joker barges into Gordon’s house and shoots his daughter, Barbara Gordon, secretly Batgirl, through the spine, paralyzing her. He then commands his goons to tie up and beat the commissioner, before dragging him to an amusement park where he binds him to a giant roller coaster. In his determination to prove that “one bad day” can turn an ordinary man insane, he forces Gordon to view giant photos of Barbara, lying on the floor naked and in pain. Batman arrives and begins to hit the Joker with the intention of beating him to death. Despite his torture, Gordon retains his sanity [proving the Joker’s theory wrong] and demands that Batman show him “our way works”. The Joker advises him not to get wrapped up in his duty of saving the world, saying that the world is “a black, awful joke”. Batman attempts to reach out to the Joker, offering him a final chance at redemption. He apologetically declines, stating that it is too late, and the situation reminds him of a joke: two loons climbed to the top of their asylum hoping to jump over to the next building. One safely got across but the other was scared. The first one promised to shine his flashlight, but the man rebuffed him, stating he would turn it off as soon as he was halfway across. The two old foes laugh, and the story ends as the laughter dies away abruptly.

The ending is left ambiguous to allow the reader to decide what happened. There is a theory that Batman breaks the Joker’s neck off- panel, hence “The Killing Joke”. I disagree as he appeared in subsequent stories. What do you think?

Thank you!

I hoped you liked my article!