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Rating:  -
Yesterday I picked up The Killing Joke and loved it! Its a thin 46 page hardcover but, you wont notice how short it is since the illustrations will captivate you making the book seem twice as long. The first two pages haven't even one word but, I doubt you will notice since the expressions and body language tell a story that dosn't need words! I love Alan Moore's writing style; he creates characters with deep and complex personalities whom stand out from other comics with two dimensional personalities. I bought this book since Moore wrote it but, the detail and effort that went into illustrating real people and real emotions is what made me love this book! After I put it down, I skimmed through it and realized just how short it actually was and how much the graphics were the story!
Rating: -
An Excellent addition to the world of Batman. This wonderful revamped colored edition of a great comic book is made even better by reviews from others in the industry. The classic story telling of Alan Moore is unparalleled in the comic book world.
Rating:  -
The Killing Joke is one of the more significant Batman graphic novels. It is a little on the short side and feels rushed but the art of Brian Bolland combined with a quality Joker origin story makes it a winner. Putting the cripplingof BarbaraGordon into regular Batman continuity helps the story as well. Asolid piece of work
Rating: -
The artwork in this comic book is amazing with terrific transitions between colored panels depicting the present, and black and white panels depicting the flashbacks. The writing however is not up to the same standards thought. There are some clever lines, but the story on the whole is too predictable (except the very end).
Rating:  -
Alan Moore has long repudiated The Killing Joke. "I have to say it's not one of my favorite works. Pretty far from it, actually," he says. "I thought that it was very, very nasty...Whereas in "The Killing Joke," what you've got is a story about Batman and the Joker, and while it did draw interesting parallels between these two fictional characters, at the end of the day that's all they are, fictional characters. They're not even fictional characters that have any bearing on anyone you're likely to meet in reality." That's essentially the problem from the author himself.
In the beginning of the story, Batman goes down to Arkham Asylum to have a personal heart-to-heart chat with the Joker. Only it isn't the Joker he quickly discovers. He would have shown the impostor the kind of brute justice the real Joker and like minds would appreciate if not for Gordon's intervention. The message is obvious: Bruce Wayne is completely nuts. Brutal interrogations of the same sort are repeated by the Joker upon the Gordon family and if the parallel of madness wasn't clear to you before, make no mistake that all the Joker's dialogue to Batman will be about how crazy he is in case you somehow need more confirmation on the story's theme. It's a winning formula but you want more.
To actually say it has a plot is something of an overstatement really. For all the emphasis on adult material present, you can probably start reading at the halfway point without suffering any loss in coherence. As a result it feels more like a Saturday morning cartoon than anything else. I think maybe that's going a bit too far even since Saturday morning cartoons can be quite charming at multiple viewings no matter your age.
But don't get the wrong idea. The Killing Joke is fun to read the first time. Brian Bolland's artwork is superb save the atrocious Batmobile design next to some of the more typical comic book character designs like the Joker's chin and his freak posse lacking the exquisite splendor of other artists and the coloration is great. The Joker's dialogue during his attack on Barbara Gordon reminded me of the cruelly appealing magic trick in The Dark Knight and he is a spectacular character to observe from beginning to end. His origin story is later revealed to be possibly farcical but that doesn't make it any less terrifying if only because he could simply imagine such a horrible scenario for himself. His later attacks on Batman and Jim Gordon are much alike the tyranny wrought in that movie too, nevertheless on a much lesser scale here. Unfortunately, that's part of the problem.
What this comic book amounts to is very little. The Joker attacks the Gordon family, Batman rushes in and saves the day. There's plenty of killings and torture abound but so what? Jim Gordon's dialogue after being saved by Batman is too quick and too sane despite what he went through, almost to the point of Pollyanna-styled goodness. Alan Moore's intent for this as a non-canon entry in the Batman saga cements the inconsequential feel of the story since after reading this, there's no doubt it was dark but at the end of the day it just feels like nothing mattered. Barbara Gordon was not to become scarred from the Joker's attack in the ongoing Batman saga, that was just some editing done by the folks at DC Comics to canonize this story against the author's intent past its publication. That something so important in her life happened in such an irrelevant story nevertheless adds to the comic's mythic reputation. The reputation may be one of The Killing Joke's greatest strengths which when discussing a comic considered one of the greatest Batman stories by one of the most acclaimed comic book authors ever to live is inexcusable.
Looking back on it all, I can't see what the point of The Killing Joke actually is. The parallel between Batman and his enemies has been done before and even if it wasn't, why should that message alone excuse fluff in the form of violence? Better comics have been done before in the form of Preacher, The Sandman, and Watchmen while containing far more both narrative-wise and thematically angled too.
Kierkegaard said about love and charity that what matters most is that people should be merciful. You can be rich and give out a lot in aid but if you're not merciful when you do good, then people are simply being distracted by style over substance and not focusing on the real core of the issue, which is that people should be merciful to each other without succumbing to vanity through good works. In like manner, when people read this book they'll be floored by the violence. But all that violence is just a shoddy paint job that peels quick to show how this book's core is a case of two little kids squabbling, "I know you are but what am I?" over and over again.
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