Superhero stories usually end with the hero defeating the villain, which is what many THINK happens at the end of The Killing Joke. Although the comic looks as though it ends that way, it didn’t. The Killing Joke uses visual elements like color, hand gestures, and shadow to show that the Joker never died, but rather that both Batman and the Joker fled. 

The comic uses color in the final frames to ultimately show the police cars arriving to the scene of Batman and Joker laughing. In the scene, the Joker was about to tell a joke, then started laughing which triggered Batman to start laughing along. The color behind the two of them standing in the street has the characteristics of a pleasant sunset, but is actually police car headlights approaching. With this color scheme present is it easy to see that laughing Batman isn't grabbing the Jokers neck to kill him, but rather “slapping the joker, like a friend, on the back, as they chuckle over the Joker’s bleak joke” in a nice sunset-like lighting (Darius 168). The Joker’s life in this scene is up to the mercy of Batman, so his neck could've been easily snapped if he wanted to truly kill the Joker. Aside from Batman’s general moral to not kill, the Joker didn't die because in the last frame the color shows that the headlights go away and there is no body left on the ground at the end, which insists that the two enemies both escaped without fatal harm.

There is a large presence of small details such as hand gestures in the The Killing Joke, which helps to add to the interpretation of what is going on in the scene with Batman and the Joker. Hand gestures help show what the character is doing while talking. The panels showing hands are very unique to this story because they show what is happening in the environment as the dialogue goes on. By looking at the hands in the panel showing the Batman and the Joker making physical contact at the end, “It doesn’t really look like a blow, nor does the Joker die instantly, as he would if his neck were snapped” (Darius 168). Batman’s hand is on the Joker’s shoulder/neck area, made clear by the hand detail in the frame, but there is no sound effect or anything that symbolizes that the Joker has been killed. The small details like Batman’s hand truly help to see that the Joker wasn’t killed by Batman in The Killing Joke, but was unharmed, since Batman was actually offering the Joker help to rehabilitate him!

Lastly, Batman is a superhero that is usually accompanied by darkness and shadow, like a real bat, so there are many shadows in this comic that help to show the Joker’s fate. The shadows in The Killing Joke help to show that the Joker was never killed or even turned into the arriving police, but actually left unharmed. At the end of the scene, the last three frames only show the ground and shadows of Batman and the Joker. The shadows overlap a beam of yellow, which symbolizes the police cars arriving with their lights on. In the last frame the shadows and light vanish, leaving only black concrete with rain falling on it, which hints that both Batman and the Joker vanished. For Batman this is not a surprise as he usually exits scenes by suddenly vanishing, but for the Joker this is a rare occasion. The comic provides crucial detail like the shadowing in this scene that proves the Joker didn’t die.

In The Killing Joke, there are many visual elements that help to interpret the comic. The pleasant color scheme in the end shows how there isn’t a conflict between Batman and the Joker. Also, the gentle hand movements in the scene prove that there was no fatal physical harm done to the Joker. Lastly, the disappearing shadows in the final scene demonstrate that both characters escaped the scene of arriving police cars. There are many interpretations of the ending of The Killing Joke that claim the Joker is killed by Batman in the end, but the color, hand gestures, and shadowing prove both Batman and the Joker fled.