Batman: The Killing Joke Questions

1. What is your reaction to the text you just read? 

 

 - Having heard about The Killing Joke, the not read it up to this point left myself as an individual with many expectations for the comic.  As the Joker is often shown throughout the Batman comics, The Killing Joke is unfiltered, strange and a little more than slightly terrifying if taken seriously. By setting up all these major characters that frequent readers know and love in horrible situations, the writers effectively make the reader feel very helpless. Also, the ending with the other no name criminal shooting batman is an incredibly striking image, even though its hypothetical it still gives an incredibly large emotional reaction seeing such an iconic character being struck down.

2. What Connections did you make with the story? Discuss the elements of the work with which you were able to connect.

 - The main connection the reader has with the work is the feeling of hopelessness and "random injustice" that comes from seeing their favorite characters going through these horrible situations, and the same hopelessness that it shows the Joker in his past.  This is to not necessarily give The Joker sympathy, (as the work mentions many times that what he's doing is very explicitly wrong and evil) but rather to show more of why he does these awful things and to show his point of perspective.

    The connections between Batman and The Joker himself are also pretty interesting as The Joker brings them up himself.  Being two sides of the same coin, both Batman and Joker had awful events happen to them, but instead of anger and twisted-ness like Joker, Batman instead turned to compassion and justice.  They are both locked into a balance of their own characteristics -- Joker will never stop being Joker, he will always strive to make others feel this random injustice, while Batman's sense of justice and true belief that he could rehabilitate The Joker keeps them at a self proclaimed stalemate. This in it of itself is the definition of madness - Doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.

3. What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? What changes would you make?

 - If I were to adapt this into another medium, I would probably try to adapt it into an animated short.  Honestly, having watched many comic book inspired animated films, I wouldn't try to change much about this classic comic narrative wise.  Recently, an animated movie of The Killing Joke was released, but it was controversial in the fact that because the book was so short, that the creators added a sub plot of romance between Barbara as Batgirl, and Batman.  This ruined the movie for many viewers, and I think just making the comic as a short and not trying to reach for that feature film length with unnecessary sub plot would give this classic comic the love it deserves.