Written by Alan Moore

Drawn by Brian Bolland

The Killing Joke is an exceptionally dark graphic novel as would be expected with Alan Moore behind the wheel.  Brian Bolland in this case makes an exceptional side seat driver with the brutality and grit of his artwork.  In many of his panels you feel the fear of Joker’s victims and even the insanity behind both of the masked men.  To say Batman is sane, well… then we’d lose the glory of the modern day Dark Knight that takes us through the areas of grey morality better than a tour guided my Saddam Hussein and our dear G. W. Bush.   Though, there’s more LSD in the ways of the Alan Moore’s Joker. 

There’s an intense beauty to the way the story is written, it captures a nihilist philosophy that beyond the violent and depraved actions of the Joker, ring true in some aspects of our world.  The ideal that one day can be so horrible that it turns a person insane if they haven’t the strength to put one foot in front of the other?  Or the ideas that we are more like our enemies than our friends.  Even that we as humanity are weighed down by our choices and moralities.  In these philosophies we’re asked if we’re truly living up to our natures, what is right and wrong in the minds of those who cannot tell the difference.  And if they can be rehabilitated or want to be. 

The novel itself leaves little question to that overdone notion of choice.  It doesn’t need to be outlined for us that our choices in life define who we are.  It’s a tale told in the shadows, this is the Batman we never wanted to see and the Joker we’ve been anxious to see.  It’s a psychotic comic romp through our imaginations that will leave us loving the Batman series with greater intensity while making sure that we will have nightmares.  It’s a gift only Alan Moore can give us. 

I know I won’t be taking my sleeping pills tonight.