

Interpreting language is not all about written words. A large majority of what people see today is in fact visual stimuli; these visual stimuli can come in all forms, like commercials on a TV, ads in a magazine, billboards on a highway, or comics. Actually comics have been around for less than 100 years and yet they are some of the most striking visual texts people may come across. One such comic is the comic “The Killing Joke,” published by DC. In the comic, DC employs tactics such as symbolism and panels in conjunction with dialogue to show that Batman killed the Joker.

The particular part of the comic analyzed here is the end. At the end of “The Killing Joke,” Batman and the Joker are fighting. Batman kicks the Joker through a window and he lands on his back. Thought to be possibly incapacitated, it is revealed that the joker has a small pin which is has a paralytic toxic on it. Batman sees this and kicks away the pin. Batman then lifts up the Joker as if to punch him, the Joker then messes up Batman’s mask, disorientating him, which allows the Joker to pick up a piece of lumber, and smash it on Batman’s head. He falls down, but is seen looking into his hands as if he picked something up when he fell. He blocks a knife by the Joker with his left hand and then punches him in the abdomen with his right hand. The Joker drops the knife and is then punched by Batman with a huge right hook sending him flying through a window. Batman follows but the Joker pulled a gun on him; however, it is fake. The Joker is now kneeling on the ground while Batman stands over him, and they have a personal conversation about why Batman does not want to continue to fight the Joker. This ends up with the Joker telling joke about two lunatics escaping a prison. Both of them laugh at the joke and Batman is seen reaching out to the Joker (who is laughing hysterically), and the camera pans down over the next panels to show the Joker’s hand, both of them standing in a patch of grass, then lower and eventually to rain alone. The laughing stops suddenly when the reader no longer sees either of their feet.

The symbolism is strong in the end of the comic. The primary example of symbolism is with the rain drops and the poisoned pin. The last panel of the comic shows rain drops splashing on a road or something of the sort, and the look exactly like the pin: a line coming out from concentric circles. The big debate about this is whether or not Batman killed the Joker. Batman did kill the Joker because of this imagery. Previously in the fight, Batman was seen looking at his hands. That was where he picked up the pin and concealed it in his hand just in case he needed. In fact, he did. When Batman is seen reaching out to the Joker, that is where he stabs him with the pin, even though the reader cannot actually see it happen because they two characters are silhouettes. This comes back to the rain drops. Because the rain drops look exactly like the poisoned pin, the reader can infer that Batman used the pin to kill the Joker.

The second piece of evidence for the Joker’s death is how the dialogue and panels work together. It is like the panels reinforce what the characters are saying. The best example of this is how the Joker tells Batman to just kill him, but Batman does not want to. The Joker then tells an ambiguous joke about two insane men, implying that he himself is insane, which means he trying to tell Batman that there is no hope for him recover, so Batman must kill him. Another example of this is when the laughing abruptly stops. The laughing occurs when the panel show them, but as soon as they are no longer in the shot (the camera panned down), the laughing stops, showing that Batman killed the Joker with his paralytic toxin. Then camera shifts the focus from Batman stabbing the Joker, to the Joker’s hand stiffening, to their feet, and finally to the rain drops. This is because the characters are no longer the focus. The laughing became non-important because the raindrops splashing did. They look like the pin that Batman used to stab the Joker. 

Overall, DC used a combination of symbolism and dialogue in conjunction with panels to create the complex story that ultimately lead to the Joker’s death. More visually stimulating texts will come about, but this one definitely was a staple of how to write a good comic.