

Visual attractions and manipulations have always held a special place for people. The visual world itself is something that encompasses people’s everyday lives and is something people rely heavily on. In the words of Plautus “One eye-witness weighs more than ten hear-says. Seeing is believing all the world over.” This saying holds true with most people. The same common phrase a picture is worth a thousand words comes to mind. In this fascination and dependence on visuals one finds great mediums such as film and material arts to comfort and intrigue. One such medium is the art of the graphic novel. The graphic novel takes literary works of text and transposes stories and ideas through both images and words that come together most often in a form otherwise recognized as comics. Comics are a now timeless art that originated in the 30’s and held waves of popularity through WWII into even being sought after today. Comics are most notable for their superhero tales that gave rise to such famous characters like Superman or Captain America. The popularity of these comics and their message to young readers often deemed comics to be on a more childish or lighter hearted side as opposed to the heavy and intricate world of other serious literary texts. However, comics and graphic novels began to expand since their inception into deep and intense works that had powerful and important themes buried within them. For example, Captain America came about as an inspiration to patriotism and as a symbol against Hitler during WWII. Another such important and famous hero was Batman. 

A masked detective who dressed up as a bat to help defend Gotham city from all evil alike. The dark and vigilant bat fought many villains, but none so most notably as the Joker. The Joker being a truly twisted and psychotic clown that find horrible humor in the atrocities he committed. In the comic The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bollard we come to the possible last fight between the Joker and Batman. This comic in particular creates a new and untold spin on the classic hero versus villain story by making a controversial decision to possibly have Batman finally kill the Joker once and for all. It creates this controversy through dialogue and text, but arguably more so through the use of images and symbols.  One of Batman’s rules as a vigilante that he became very well known for was his refusal to ever actually kill his enemies unless totally necessary. This more passive and disciplined nature of batman came to define him as the resolute and solid hero his fans knew him to be. The beauty of The Killing Joke not just derive from the dialogue, but what the medium of still images brings to each scene. The controversial end to which both characters meet is debated on using visual evidence. The end to the comic itself only holds a picture of Batman clutching the Joker by the neck and then rain pouring down while the Joker laughs and laughs until the laughter stops. This break in the laughter, the title, and the tone of the comic lead many to believe that Alan Moore and Brian Bollard intended to have this be the end to the Joker. Whether or not the joker actually dies as intended is somewhat irrelevant when you bring in the audience’s interpretations and take always. Many experts have come together to debate this issue and weigh in their own beliefs as to the fictitious and dark end. 

As striking and debated the ending is we can see visual cues to a change in the typical tone of a hero versus villain narrative from the start when Batman enters the Joker’s cell at Arkham Asylum. Here he is greeted by the Joker who says “There were these two guys in an insane asylum…” as the start of a joke. Alone we would just view this quote as what it is, the start to a joke, but with the visual we see both batman and the joker in an eerily similar stand point. Both character’s faces are not visible as the only light shines on the Joker’s game of solitaire. This joke about two people in an insane asylum refers to the fact that both the Joker and Batman are two characters in an insane asylum with more similarities than one would think. Batman always being the hero and the Joker always being the villain we don’t often think about the strange similarities between the two. Both are characters living in extremes, one good one bad. This opening moment in the cell goes to show us just how easily a crazed man in a bat costume could end up being defined as lost and violent as the Joker. 

From the starting point on the comic subverts from the typical plot to bring in backstory to the Joker. The Joker’s story of course done in gray gives us a sympathetic look into his previous life. The Joker not being a bad individual, only getting caught up in criminal activity to get money for his pregnant wife who tragically dies the night he is turned into the Joker by way of a chemical accident. In the scene before the Joker’s wife dies one extremely noticeable visual symbol is the use of the color red on the crawfish the villains are eating. In most visual analytics the color red is often used to signal death. This use of color foreshadows the Joker’s wife’s death and also the Joker’s death as an ordinary person in the chemical factory when the helmet he wears is blaring just a red hood. The shading and timing of the Joker’s flashbacks leads the reader to find not just a bit of empathy for the misunderstood villain, but to also question the hero’s motives and origins. How come no one ever helps the Joker if he is so obviously mad? Batman at the start of the comic begins his conversation with the joker about the two men in the insane asylum by telling him that is inevitable that they will have to kill each other. A very serious start to a comic with much more thought provoking dialogue and tone than one would expect. The gray area that the comic delves into is heavily illustrated using the various dark and morose color scheme, even the settings such as a dilapidated carnival evoke a sort of sadness and nostalgia. The insanity of the Joker is matched by the iron will of Batman to uphold his belief in not to truly harm someone if he doesn’t have to. 

Things take a turn for the even more grim and disturbing as the Joker executes his final plan for Batman and for commissioner Gordon as he shoots commissioner Gordon’s daughter, crippling her, and then taking pictures of her naked as she lays shot. The Joker then shows those photos to commissioner Gordon as he’s also stripped naked within the freak show the Joker himself puts together. Here we find illustrations and visuals that are wildly disturbing and creepy. Cupid like minions, who wear women’s clothing, but have the wild eyes of deranged killers drag Gordon through the Joker’s nightmare. The Joker himself tells Gordon about how his madness is akin to Gordon’s own crazy life as an ordinary man, all while appearing on a throne of discarded baby dolls. The visuals we receive here take us into a strange and unsettling place that again leads us ever closer into the mind of the Joker. The fall from Joker as an ordinary man parallels Gordon in his own ordinary life only again illustrating the fine line between crazed and sane. The Joker again gives us light onto how fragile we really are and how the usual hero versus villain dynamic is not as black and white as we always think. 

One of the very last images the reader sees is one of the most powerful. Both Batman and the Joker locked in that eternal battle between hero and villain, dark and light, but in this still Batman is the one in the outright violent pose draped in black just like the Joker. Holding the Joker by the neck in rage the infamous Batman himself is even broken. With all the evidence and suggestion that Batman kills the Joker we find that if he does the Joker played the biggest and most disturbing joke of all. The Joker turns his polar opposite and the hero of the comic into something he himself is shamed for being, a murderer. The clarity of roles in the story is then forever blurred by Batman’s corruption in breaking his one rule for which he states his honor and integrity by, not to kill. The title of the comic being The Killing Joke is wildly appropriate as to the sadly humorous state of role reversal. The Joker in all his depravity shows us the fragile line ordinary people walk and the gray area for which there is much more room than most realize. In another scene the Joker talks to Gordon about how any sane man under these circumstances goes mad and how easy that is, he then shows us the Batman for which he drove mad through his own actions. The Joker’s final moments and the comics come to a close with the sad and confusing ending of simple images of rain and the Joker laughing at this grim joke. 
