The
Killing Joke, a Literary Analysis
For this literary analysis I chose to look at The
Killing Joke, written by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. Out of all the books
I own, my comic book collection makes up at least 75% of it. Out of that 75%, I
can honestly say that The Killing Joke
has drawn my attention more times than most. I am not one to reread novels, and
I find it hard to find one worth reading, especially in this day and age where
everything has a movie behind it. I always find myself watching those movies
and never picking up the book for fear of already knowing the ending; even when
someone says, the book is much better than the film. But that’s never the case
when it comes to comic book adaptations. There are so many variations of my
beloved characters and stories that it’s almost impossible to find a connection
between them and their film correspondents. Better yet, The Killing Joke’s ending always leaves me questioning what happens
after.
People are so quick to
disregard comics as a form of literature, not as often now, but they did even
more so when they weren’t being projected on the silver screen. However, when
we look at the history of the comic book, we can see that they have been deeply
rooted in our culture, and have been the benefactors of many novels we have
today. The Killing Joke was written
in 1988, and this was around the time that comics were taking a drastic
overhaul for a new age of readers. It’s important that Batman was no longer seen
as the detective portrayed by Adam West, but instead he was becoming much
darker and grittier. This was the style of Batman that our generation would
fall in love with and what would separate the darkness of Batman from other
such heroes as Superman and Wonder Woman. Together, these three would make up
the trinity of the DC Comics universe; each acted as a personification that could
cross the lines that the others couldn’t.
The
Killing Joke might not look like such a literary
piece from the outward perspective by reading it once through; honestly, 50
pages of mostly images and very few speech bubbles adds up to about 15 minutes
of reading. However, what is literary about it, are the 150+ pages of
descriptive writing that Alan Moore originally wrote for those images. As a
person who is interested in writing comics for a living, I have to take into
consideration that, although the format is much different than the average
short story or novel, in order to present my images I have to write in such a
way that the artist can visually see every angle of the character in the scene,
I have to describe the lighting, the tone, and present how I want this image to
lead into the next page; in actuality, the artist becomes my reader. Let’s look
at this example of page 5 of The Killing
Joke together in connection with what Alan Moore originally wrote.
“We have now pulled back further into the cell so
that we can see the Batman full figured as he stands facing us in front of the
now-completely-closed door, still with the light behind his head as he stands
with the barred window positioned neatly behind his cowl, throwing his face
into darkness. Right in the foreground of the panel we see part of the surface
of a fold-down card table that has been folded down from the cell wall and is
lit from above by the entrance of an off-panel wall lamp, weak and yellowish
and sickly. Entering the panel over on the right are the hands of the person
who is sitting just off panel in that direction, facing towards the left and
dealing out a hand of patience. The cards, some of which are visible to us
here, are spread out in columns on the small table before him, and he is
systematically picking up cards from the deck laying them down on one of the columns.
Here, we see him with a card poised, about to lay in down on the end row. His
hands have long and clever fingers as they deftly manipulate the cards. They are
also chalk-white and completely drained of any trace of living color. Batman
just stands by the cell door and stares at both us and the off panel owner of
the hands.
(No Dialogue.) (The
Killing Joke script – pg 10)
Now
that we have looked at an example of the correlation between words and images,
we can begin to understand what other aspects of literacy The Killing Joke has to offer us. The next step is to compare how
smoothly scenes in a comic blend into the next. While not as transparent in
other comics as it is in The Killing Joke,
we are able to transition from one scene into the next without confusing the
reader. Let’s look at an example of how this is done in The Killing Joke.”
Notice
how in the last two panels, you have the same elements from the past walking
the reader back into the present. This can be done in the same literary fashion
done in any short story or novel, but most of the time it is done by page
breaks. Throughout the rest of The
Killing Joke, every scene change is done in this similar fashion, although
not all are as easy to spot, and not all are done in a way that is visually
similar; just take a look at this scene for instance.
Their
first encounter is quite smashing, literally. Not only do the images show us
the raw power of Batman and the cowardice of the Joker but it gives us the
impression that the transitions from scene to scene have finally been broken
from this point forward in the story; and it’s not too much of a stretch to say
that we have really been reading two stories all along (but if you include the
Joker’s origin story, it’s really more like three.)
Finally,
we can take a look at spandrels, foreshadowing, and reoccurring themes that
appear in comics. The thing to remember is that when dealing with comics, ‘everything
ever written is a potential spandrel.’ Comics, when written well enough, become
‘cannon,’ or solidified as part of a character’s history. These ‘canonical’ moments
are what flow in between all of the smaller comics and are usually brought up
again at some point of time in the characters history, and most often it occurs
when it’s under the pen of a different author. This is a great tool that comic
writers use in order to keep their readers interested and coming back for more
each month with another publication. When Alan Moore wrote The Killing Joke he was out to write a great story that shared the
origin of the Joker; but from it he also spawned another ripple in the DC universe,
the paralysis of Barbara Gordon. Barbara Gordon, at the time The Killing Joke was written, was the
current Batgirl; but after her encounter with The Joker, she took on the persona of Oracle, a wheel chair bound
computer genius, who eventually trains another Batgirl and creates the team The Birds of Prey. It is hard to say
whether Alan Moore had anticipated that Barbara Gordon would be paralyzed for
as long as she was, but it was only until recent that DC Comics actually
rewound the clock on these stories in the “New 52” comic lineup.
Foreshadowing
and reoccurring themes play a large part in The
Killing Joke. Near the beginning of the book we see Batman, presumably
talking to the Joker, trying to avoid the inevitable.
What
is great about this scene is that, like most of Alan Moore’s work, we see in
the first few pages, the end of our story. This isn’t a bad thing by any means,
it just makes the journey of how we get there all the more memorable; and we
have new appreciation for the methodical nature that the author has for his
work. Here is the final confrontation in comparison to Batman’s, supposed,
first encounter with the Joker.
How
interesting it is that we have a reversal of roles here. Batman, who is never
seen to laugh, is laughing, and it is the Joker who is now on the receiving end
of a violent act. This makes a great twist of an ending that if very important
when making your mark in the literary world; doing the unthinkable. No one
would have ever guessed that Batman would end up doing this to the Joker,
although on page 7 he tells us right away that this story was going to end in
one of two ways, it’s just that we didn’t want to believe that this is how it did end. Not only does
this keep the reader’s attention and on the edge of their seats, but the way it
was executed leaves the reader guessing as to what comes next. Again, this
story is really about the journey and not the beginning or the end, because we
already knew that when started reading.
