Friday, January 2, 2009

Comics Review: Alan Moore & Brian Bolland, Batman: The Killing Joke

This review has been moved to the R. S. Martin website. Click here to read.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"the epiphany the two main characters share at the end--the preposterousness of the scene aside--is banal. Yes, Batman and the Joker will be antagonists to the very end."
I think you're missing the point slightly. The point of the story isn't that Batman and the Joker are always going to be enemies, it's that Batman and the Joker are very similar to one another, they're reflections of one another.
They're both lunatics driven mad by one bad day.

I can't say that redeems the story any, I still don't like it, but it's the almost universal interpretation of the thing, and I thought it was a little odd that you didn't mention it.

Inkwell Bookstore said...

While I agree with you that this is one of Moore's worst works, I did find a little more to like in it via your observation that Moore used a bit of his own life as a basis for the Joker's backstory. I mean, I've read Moore's bio info many, many times, but for some reason, I never thought to connect it to The Killing Joke.