The Killing Joke

Stewart, Fletcher, and Tarr’s run on Batgirl won’t just be remembered for the iconic redesign of Batgirl’s costume, which has found its way into other mediums, like the DC Comics Superhero Girls toy line or the Batman Bad Blood animated film, or the cyberpunk-meets-Williamsburg aesthetic of Burnside. It will be remembered as a comic that showed that not all DC superhero books had to have art that looked like Jim Lee’s, kicked ass while still being stylish as hell, and most of all for having a diverse, multifaceted cast of characters that fans of all genders, races, sexual orientations, body types, and disability status could see themselves in.

Disclaimer: Before we get started, if you haven’t read The Killing Joke, stop reading this and run down to your local comic shop and pick it up. You won’t be disappointed. Ok, all caught up? If not *SPOILERS* for a 26 year old book… Ever since it’s release in 1988, people have been debating the end …

“All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.” The Joker said it. Alan Moore wrote it. By the end of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, Batman has had exactly that bad day. The chilling …

In the pantheon of Batman stories there’s a handful that come up every time someone ranks the best. The Dark Knight Returns, Batman Year One, and The Long Halloween usually all make the list. And then there’s the Killing Joke. The Killing Joke stands out from the crowd for a couple of reasons. For one thing, unlike the above mentioned stories, The Killing Joke is a graphic novel and not a collection of previously individual issues. For another, The Killing Joke isn’t really a Batman story. Sure Batman is in it, he even plays an important part;but The Killing Joke is above all else, a Joker story.