"Batman: The Killing Joke" by Alan Moore & Brian Bolland

As regular readers will have noticed, I've been reading a lot of stuff by Alan Moore lately. Moore is widely credited with revolutionising the comics medium over a series of works, and I'm finally beginning to catch up with them. Most of his stories are wholly original tales, such as Watchmen (the most praised of them all) or V for Vendetta; when not, they're usually his own tales from re-used material, such as From Hell (a take on Jack the Ripper) or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which takes Victorian literary characters and makes a superhero team out of them). In this context, The Killing Joke is a rarity, because it's a Batman story -- a well-established existing character, obviously. Published in 1988, the 46-page tale is from the same era as Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, and not long after Watchmen -- all part of the growing-up and 'darkening' of comics in the '80s. Arguably this can be seen in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film, but with 2006's Batman Begins taking elements from Year One and Dark Knight Returns and the forthcoming The Dark Knight reportedly using Killing Joke as the basis for its version of the Joker (not to mention Watchmen finally being released next year), it seems the full effect of this particular movement has taken a bit longer to hit our screens.

But enough of that, what of the tale itself? It has two prongs: a 'present' element, in which a recently escaped Joker kidnaps Commissioner Gordon and psychology tortures him, attempting to prove that anyone can be driven mad as the Joker was; and a past thread, in which a young father-to-be has quit his job to be a comedian, but is considering a crime to make ends meet... Within this, Moore packs in all his favourite regular tricks and techniques: there's the opening few panels that pull out from extreme close-up to long shot; two stories told in parallel, one revealing the past of a character; a version of match-cutting in and out of these; zooming in and out of items/faces across multiple panels; retaining the same static 'shot' across multiple panels, often while something develops in the background; long passages with no dialogue; using several panels to show a character performing a simple action; an act of sexual violence as a key plot point; a deliberate blurring of the line between hero and villain; long, wordy, philosophical speeches; and mirroring techniques in the structure -- here, for example, the opening line of the finale is inserted as the book's first line, while at the same time Batman's opening dialogue is repeated over the climax. To say Moore is repetitive or constantly copying himself may be a bit much, but he certainly has a tendency to re-use a certain set of techniques in new arrangements to craft his tales (a bit like Steven Moffat with Doctor Who, then).

The story aside, Bolland's art is fantastic. Stylistically, it looks like it was drawn now, not 20 years ago, which in part must be due to fresh colouring. Bolland was never happy with the original colouring of the book -- he was scheduled to do it, but ran out of time and so it had to be completed by John Higgins, who didn't have the same vision as Bolland -- and so he was glad to have the chance to re-do it for this new edition. I haven't seen the original to compare fully, and it will surely upset some purists, but it looks brilliant. Bolland has clearly utilised all the modern computer-based techniques available to colourists, creating a subdued pallet that suits the story's nature. While the gaudy colours of Watchmen create a thematic counterpoint to the grim, realistic story, here I think such a technique would just undermine the point, so Bolland's new work fits like a glove. From the odd frame I've managed to find of the original colouring online, I'd actually quite like to get hold of that just for the sake of comparison.

IGN voted The Killing Joke as the 3rd greatest Batman story ever. I'm yet to read most of those that surround it on that list, so can't really comment for myself, but, in spite of Moore's increasingly familiar tropes, it's an engrossing story. The recent oversized hardback re-release, called The Deluxe Edition on the cover, is certainly worth owning -- while its £12 RRP is steep for a 46-page main story, 8-page second strip, and 6 pages of other stuff, it can be had for less and seems worth it to me.

While I'm primarily reading Watchmen at the minute, don't be surprised if more graphic novel reviews -- primarily Batman ones, I expect -- crop up over the next week or two.