What Does The Killing Joke's Ending Really Mean?
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- Опубліковано 15 лис 2022
- Connor and Harry discuss Alan Moore and Grant Morrison’s iconic Joker stories, The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum.
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Batman says he wants to help Joker, rehabilitate him. Basically, he says he wants to be his friend. But Joker recognizes that Batman, like him, lives a life of pain ("Why else would you dress up like a flying rat?") and understands that, really, Batman is asking Joker if he wants to be _his_ friend. And in an unexpected act of humanity, Joker gives Batman what he needs most -- a glimpse of a normal life, one short moment where these two deadly rivals can pretend they're friends and share a laugh.
While the theory that it was the Joke that killed the Joker is fun. I always assumed the ending meant the cycle will repeat because both are insane. The last panel is like the first raindrops falling in a puddle.
I dont think the Joker's brief moment of "lucidity" is anything more than him being serious for a change. The Joker knows he's completely insane and can't be fixed. It's almost like he's trying to save Batman from a false hope, that being rehabilitation.
Batman laughing at the end is, to me, the realization and agreement that the Joker is right. He can't be fixed and they're going to continue this cycle until one of them breaks or dies.
Fun fact: Joker isn't actually clinically insane, rather he is what you could call "super-sane". Evidence by the fact that he is canonically aware to be a figure in a comic book, and broke the 4th wall multiple times.
If you know you're crazy, you're not crazy.
@@vahlen5281 he is insane
To me I think if the Joker is momentarily serious then it would make sense for Batman to have an equal and opposite moment of chaos. Joker is the epitome of chaos and batman the epitome of order just like ying and yang so if one changes then the other must follow suit. So when the Joker is not only serious but serious about how rehabilitation wouldn't work then batman, assuming he believes the Joker, knows that the outcome of this will be either the Joker continuing to killing the innocent and reeking havoc or he is stopped. The fact that we don't even know what happened is chaos that contrasts with the aforementioned seriousness of the Joker.
@@vahlen5281 so the people who say we live in a simulation are right...
It's not "BATMAN DOESN'T KILL WAHHH" Connor, it's that he shouldn't. He's a barely sane vigilante who dresses up as a bat to dole out his personal sense of justice with his fists. You referring to Batman killing as "capital punishment" misses the part where he's not part of the legal system. The point of his code is that Bruce is sane enough to recognize that he's not responsible enough as a broken man to decide who gets to live or die.
Well-said. Hope he sees it. Send this to Connor!
Exactly, he’s breaking the law just enough so that the justice system in Gotham can function. The villains in Gotham are too powerful, and the law enforcement of Gotham are too ineffective and/or corrupt. Batman merely takes down the villains and delivers them to the justice system so that the people’s representatives can decide their fates. If he were to start killing people, he would no longer be merely a criminal vigilante - but a violent criminal who no longer has any faith in the justice system and takes justice into his own hands.
If a "legal system" is so disfunctional and fake - it loses the right to be recognized as authority.
There is no in-Universe reason why the Joker is still alive. There is no need for him to kill because Joker isn't a super human that only people like Batman could kill. Even Batman used a gun on Darkseid.
@@MeanBeanComedy connor doesn't care, he is in zealot mode. connor is doling out takes left and right that effectivley make him the exact same as the insane religious right that led to the insane left taking cultural power
I never interpreted that ending as him killing the joker. I wasn't even aware that was a popular interpretation. I viewed it as basically the equivalent of having a laugh at a dark joke, and then getting really depressed as the humor fades and the dark kernel of truth of the joke remained. I mean, let's break down the joke. Batman is the one who jumped out of the insane asylum and is trying to coax Joker out with a ridiculous promise(to help cure him) and the Joker rejects it because of his twisted logic. They share a laugh at this as Batman's hope for the Joker fades into the white noise of the heavy rains of a dark night.
Joker is only one front to Batman’s code.
Given his experience of where killing leads to as he witnessed through his time with the league of shadows, I don’t think the Batman would break it.
The joke at the end is a metaphor for Batman and Joker. Batman laughs because he realizes how impossible what he proposed was.
Exactly. And that it illustrates that Batman is in fact just as crazy as the Joker.
"You had a bad day too, once."
@Jon Sweeney I've never agreed that Bayman is crazy at all. As an alternate universe story, okay, sure, but Batman at baseline, his mainstream priper interpretations are not crazy. He's a broken person, fine, but what makes him a hero is that he experienced that bad day, and it didn't break him. He learned how to overcome his past and use his pain to do something positive for the benefit of others. He stared into the dark abyss and didn't blink. Without that mirroring contrast between Batman many of his enemies, the whole dynamic doesn't really work.
I like how the Joker tells a joke about a crazed lunatic while sane enough to understand the humor in it, and Batman is actually caught off-guard enough to laugh at it.
for that one moment, we saw them a bit more similar to each other than we ever have.
Batman in very early interpretations had killed, but that doesn't mean Batman does kill. Batman has evolved to something beyond his early stories, his No-Kill legacy has cemented him to who we know him to be, mythologically speaking. That's how myths work.
The same holds true with Batman 89. Great film, but it was made when culture had not fully comprehended who he is as a character. It wasn't right for Batman to kill the Joker at the end.
@@SoundEngraver The "no-kill rule" existed for batman LONG before 1989, the earliest of which was in Batman #4 where he instructs Robin to only use the flat of his sword when fighting Pirates so as to not kill them, and that was all the way back in 1940.
Batman killing in 1989, 50 YEARS after his creation, was not due to some kind of misunderstanding of his character in the zeitgeist, Batman refrained from killing for decades by that point.
It was merely a different interpretation of the character where he does kill when he deems it necessary. (Which it was, otherwise the Joker was going to escape mere minutes after he had just gassed hundreds of people to death. That's hardly "wrong".) Nothing more, nothing less.
@@ericchung3177 I should clarify, by culture I mean more the filmmaking world at the time.
It's like saying that Joker isn't a psychopathic murderer because in the Silver-age comics he used mostly comedic gadgets, and was only in the gig for the money.
Superman couldn't fly in the earliest stories. He just jumped! These characters were slowly created.
Now that I've actually given this some thought beyond "Batman giving Joker affirmation so he hopefully doesn't break out so quickly," I'm pretty sure that the Two Lunatics "joke" is meant as a parable, especially given *when* it takes place. Batman, someone who, by even most normal people's reckoning is insane to a degree even if they won't admit it, has offered Joker a way out of the asylum, to give up the perception of being a madman. As part of his denial of Batman's offer, Joker provides his reasoning: the insanity he suffers means he can't believe that someone would genuinely want to help him. The logic makes sense internally, and even from the outside looking in you can get how the conclusion was reached, but Joker believes everyone to be like him somewhere in their core, meaning that nobody could willingly help another with no direct benefit to themselves
I think this is exactly it. But when the "batman" in the parable offers the flashlight as help it a serious offer of help in a way it is crazy to suggest but the "batman" character doesn't realize that because he is looney as well. The joke is an observation of their relationship and Batman finally picks up on it after a moment. You know, because he's the world's greatest detective.
I personally believe bats didn't kill him at the end, especially because of the ouroboros the first and last panels make, but in defense of the idea that he did I would suggest that the real killing joke of the title is right there at the end.
I interpreted the light fading at the end not as Joker being killed, but as any chance for rehabilitation being closed off. Batman giving up on "saving" the Joker, and accepting that the situation he described at the start, they go until someone dies, is just the way it is.
When Batman is talking to the imposter, he says something to the effect of "It may turn out in the end that one of us will kill the other and there's no way to stop it but I don't want that day to come without knowing I at least tried everything I could to prevent it."
I think when Joker rationally rejects Batman's offer, he knew there was no other choice, that death was the only escape for Joker. So he let him say his pieces and humored him by laughing at his joke before putting Joker out of his misery.
That's a really valid point, but I still think having Batman kill him defeats the point of the story. Joker won and proved his point. The fact that both are perfectly credible interpretations is a huge credit to the story's ending, though.
There's no indication he killed him. No indication either way. Just what people choose to interpret. A lot of apparently, nearly-blind [or coping] people are saying he grabs Joker by the neck or throat in that last panel. Put on some glasses and look again. He grabs him by the lapels. It's quite clear.
@@Tyler_W Joker did no such thing. His whole plan failed. He was wrong. Not everyone is one bad day away from going crazy like he did.
And that alternate Injustice comic proved that Batman would not in fact go insane if he killed the joker so that theory can kindly go away and die too.
@@terradraca you talking about the one where he hands himself to the cops and Superman walks straight through a wall to hug him?
What do you mean by "the imposter"?
My favorite part of "The Killing Joke" was when Joker said "Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... if I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!"
I love it because I try to understand my own desires but never do understand them.
On a side note, the adaptation of the killing joke is absolutely terrible. They added an awful Batgirl story that completely tainted the dynamic between her and Batman and then rushed Moore's story. There is a better fan impression of Mark Hamill doing that Joker monologue that is over a decade old than in the actual film.
The writing of the first half of that film was atrocious. Felt like both halves were completely different films. They said they wanted to tell more of Barbara's story to give her more agency, which is fine I guess, but what they did with her is worse than doing nothing at all. Love Bruce Timm for playing such a pivotal role in the creation of Batman: The Animated Series, the DCAU as a whole, and a lot of the animated movies, but he's clearly got this thing for Barbara Gordon, and for some godforsaken reason, he tries to live vicariously through the characters by trying to rationalize Bruce Wayne and Barbara Gordon being a thing. He does this here just like he did in the DCAU. That's a massive violation of the Bro Code on soooo many levels. DCAU Batman is almost perfect as far as adaptations of the character go. It's a near perfect distillation of the essence of the character, but for some crazy reason, he tried to insert some weird Batman/Batgirl subtext which some of the tie-in comics and I think Batman Beyond made more overt. As a result, it's absolutely tragic how Bruce basically severs all hope of a continued relationship with his first adopted son, Dick Grayson. He basically droves everyone away. Sure he eventually restores that, but never with Dick from what I know. The near perfect Batman adaptation dies estranged from the OG Robin because Bruce Timm made Bruce Wayne violate the Bro Code by dating (and impregnating) his best friend's daughter...
@@Tyler_W Bruce Tim inserts more of his weird fetishes as he gets older and his writing suffers because of it. Sadly looking back it was always there in some shape. Bruce Wayne and Barbara Gordon being a thing is wrong on so many levels Bruce is like a second father to her, Gordon is one of Bruce's closest friends, Batgirl is the love interest of Nightwing Batman's adopted son.
I like the ambiguity of the ending, I personally don’t think he killed the Joker simply because it’s so antithetical to his overall character
Yeah I was positive he didn't kill the Joker, it's just not in Batman's character. It's also not like he'll absolutely never kill, but he will always try his hardest to save everyone, even his villains. The three Jokers storyline also confirmed that the Killing Joke Joker survived or a version of him survived and wasn't killed by Batman in that story's canon.
Yeah, you think that because you have the same interpretation as a child
@@quentinsavage1123 Care to explain?
he didn't have his hands on Joker's neck. he would've if the artist was trying to communicate it. It's showing that Batman is a little nuts and like the Silence of the Lambs, which was popular, the FBI people would empathize with sth serial killers in that series. It's a nineties trope of the crime hunter being a little nuts too. Clint Eastwood had a movie where he was a little perverse too at that time.
Moore was just being trendy. The picture plainly shows Batman laughing as they pan away. JOker's feet aren't on teh ground or anything. It isn't ambiguous. His hands would for sure be on teh neck if it was saying he killed him. It surprises me people see it that way and don't see how it woud've been badly drawn if it was trying to say that.
@@quentinsavage1123 you're dumb. He grabbed Joker by the lapels in that last panel. there is no indication either way that he killed him, just wishful thinking on your part.
This is the nerdiest argument i've ever seen here,,, I love it more of this please.
I didn't think it was any where NEAR as deep in the follicles as you guys are reading in. Batman just laughs because of the symmetry in the joke, they have a moment where they relate to each other, and then batman ties him up. I'm literal-minded, so the light turning off in the last panel does nothing for me. It doesn't signify an action, only perhaps the hope for the Joker, that Batman had been holding out, dying forever.
To me I think if the Joker is momentarily serious then it would make sense for Batman to have an equal and opposite moment of chaos. Joker is the epitome of chaos and batman the epitome of order just like ying and yang so if one changes then the other must follow suit. So when the Joker is not only serious but serious about how rehabilitation wouldn't work then batman, assuming he believes the Joker, knows that the outcome of this will be either the Joker continuing to kill the innocent and reeking havoc or he is stopped. The fact that we don't even know what happened is chaos that contrasts with the aforementioned seriousness of the Joker.
I wonder when they'll get to ''Under the Red Hood'' either the book or graphic novel.
The issue with the "first appearance" argument is that it ignores the decades of continuity which followed and refined the character
In Batman's first appearance he used guns (because he's a ripoff of The Shadow) and yet, in the past 80 years precisely how many times has Batman used a gun?
The answer is that it has been few and far between.
Therefore it is safe to say that Batman doesn't shoot criminals.
By this character continuity Batman doesn't kill, but you are correct that he doesn't have to save you. That's actually a perspective of heroism laid out in great detail in Mr. A by Steve Ditko
To use another hero example, if we used his first appeared then Superman can't fly
I think it's should be ambiguous.
It doesn't hurt continuity if he kill the joker.
It's better if ambiguous.
Nah, sorry, but I hate the idea that Batman kills the Joker here. I think it goes up against the meaning of the scene overall, that being that this is one rare moment in time when Batman and the Joker simply talk to each other like two normal men. Joker is telling a fairly mundane joke that a normal person would tell, and Batman gives a genuine reaction. They both break character for a brief moment, and we see what could have been if the two of them hadn't gone down the paths that twisted them. Quite frankly, I think the "Batman kills Joker" interpretation is just edgelord nonsense.
It was purposefully ambiguous by design. There were many, many articles in Wizard about this when it first came out. The writers acknowledged leaving it open-ended.
Kids talking about 'edgelord nonsense' is hilarious when they are zen-splaining to you why there is NO evidence in the 1990 Total Recall of it all being a dream and that's just internet speculation. The world existed before 2008...
@@Laneous14 First off, I'm in my late 30's. Maybe not old enough to have read these comics when they were released, but I still have my dad's old copies. Point being, don't call me a "kid."
Secondly, I don't know why you decided to bring Total Recall into this but for the record, I've never seen it because unless the movie is Terminator or Predator I'm not really interested in Arnold movies.
I think the story is actually a reflection of these two
On one hand, the joker is the one with the flashlight trying to get batman to break but batman will always refuse
On the other, it is batman holding the flashlight and the joker refusing the help as he would loose the everything that made him “ him”
No matter what, neither can help each other and neither can live without the other
I know Batman and Joker's cyclical relationship is really about psychologically and philosophically exploring the characters, their issues, and morality broadly, but it always frustrated me to no end. That's why, as I got a bit older and into my teenage years, I became much more interested in Frank Castle.
I've always, even as a young kid, viewed stories through the lens of reality - what if this really happened? What would that be like? What are the greater implications? Even accepting that a man from another planet can fly and move mountains, or a man can turn into an enormous green rage monster, or a purported super-genius dresses up like a bat and fights armed criminals with his bare hands instead of a gun, I still always viewed it through the lens of the real world. Real human behavior and real-world consequences. And the fact that Batman refused to kill the Joker always made me pull my hair out. I knew he had his "one rule," and I knew all his reasons, but I had a very pragmatic realpolitik view that some bad guys can't be - and more importantly don't DESERVE to be - redeemed. Which is why Frank Castle became, and remains to this day, my favorite character.
Frank doesn't kill indiscriminately. He has a code, much like Batman's, just that the line Frank won't cross is set a bit further out than Batman's. And, by killing bad guys, he actually protects life, which was always my biggest issue with Batman. The fact that Batman, self-appointed guardian of Gotham City, won't do what is necessary, not even in extreme cases such as the Joker's, all because of the self-appointed guardian's self-imposed rule, means that he allowed the Joker to kill all those people.
We're seeing a very real-world parallel of this play out in major cities across the US, with radical left governors, mayors and city councils decriminalizing huge swaths of the criminal code, and radical left DA's refusing to prosecute what little crime is still "criminal," making it de facto legal. And the result is an atmosphere of lawlessness and chaos and zero consequences. The radicals who have completely abdicated their responsibilities have created an extremely dangerous atmosphere where a lot of people are getting hurt or killed, and no one is being punished. (Batman's way.) Contrast that with places where law and order-oriented officials uphold the law and the criminal code, and prosecute crime appropriately, and when necessary, harshly, which creates a much safer and more ordered place. (Frank's way.) It's not a perfect parallel, but it is an interesting thought exercise at the very least.
The original 1930's/40's Batman killed people left and right
These guys would fit right in on Friday Night Tights
Personally it thought it was more of a comparison to Jokers joke and the moon light is to be the light beam, meaning Batman is offering the way to help but Joker rejects it and thusly the light is off and Batman just do the same things again sending Joker to the asylum once more. So the conflict stays as was Joker on the beam or not?
the moment of lucidity from the joker is the small part of order deep inside him, and batman laughing at the joke is the part of him that is chaotic.
5:23 I very much agree but I also think that in the context of the Book, the Joker (Before he had his chemical bath) was a failing comic and could never make anyone laugh and his whole career was marred in failure. His Joker persona wasn't much better as a unstable lunatic, who is broken beyond belief. But in his own way still wants to make the world laugh. As if he can do that one thing all his suffering would be worth it...
The Batman is the only constant left in the Joker's life and probably the toughest audience he'll ever have. So in a moment of quiet when both their gaurds are down the Joker tells a joke, one he knows is good and hopes that they'll have a moment if only a brief one where they connect and can reach one another as people and mourn their fates together.
The moment genuinely works. Now that might just be me being needlessly pretentious and full of myself, but thats what I get from it.
The moment doesn't mean the Joker is redeemable, he is still a monster but it's a small moment that shows under the Clown Make up there is still just a man under there
Joker acknowledging piece of humanity = do you bleed moment
Great discussion! I'd love to see more from the Lotus Eaters concerning comics and graphic novels.
What’s ironic about Alan Moore is that in the “ultra dark, edgy, and extreme 90s era of comics,” he recanted a lot of his previous work on the Killing Joke and Watchmen, stating that it placed to much darkness/strain on superheroes that was never meant to be there.
Those stories influenced young writers and artists to inject a lot of superhero comics with an abundance of mature content. The creators of Youngblood, Spawn, the Authority, and some of the darker Marvel and DC comics - all cited Watchmen as their influence. Each title had lots blood, gore, cursing, substance abuse, sex, and violence but none of the emotional maturity that was intended to go along with it.
That’s why he wrote incredibly fun and accessible comic books like Supreme, Tom Strong, and Top 10 in the 1990s, to celebrate superheroes as an all-ages medium.
That fact that those books are completely obscure while his more darker cynical stories are still critically praised probably only pushed him further away from the genre.
The Batman doesn’t have the rule of not killing because he’s a pacifist. He has that rule because it’s a slippery slope. As a vigilante, he’s already breaking the law to stop violent crime. If he were to start killing people, he would become a violent criminal just like the villains he’s fighting - it could lead to him becoming more and more villainous and defeat the very purpose of the Batman.
Thank you.
It sounds similar to the case when purple aki chased that kid onto the railway line. Purple Aki was so not found guilty of murder or manslaughter so I don't think you could accuse batman or murder when he chased the guy who fell into the chemical vat.
If Joker would become sane he would realize all the horrors he's done and that would drive him crazy.
More of things like this please
6:43 Chad.yes
Batman doesnt want to kill. Thats like, part of his schtick. But i HATE this sort of Lawful Stupid character. The way I see it, Batman absolutely killed Joker, but the truth is they both agreed it was the right thing to do. For a moment, they were both on the same page. Joker is never going to stop, and hes too brilliant to be retained in Arkam. Batman wasnt psychologically broken, but rather forced into an ideological corner where the answer was obvious. Joker admitted that he cant be helped. And, the critical part, he admitted it to the only person he actually trusted and respected: Batman.
Also Batman mercy killed Ace so dont even at me. Batman kills people. He just hates doing it.
5:18-5:57 THANK YOU. I've said this for a long time now.
Writer's forget how compassionate Batman is. He WANTS his villains to reform and be good. I always saw the end like it was an episode from the animated series I grew up with, a brief moment at the end where Batman and the Joker have a moment of understanding and the series music would play a sad piece of music. Batman got Joker to admit he's wrong and at fault and insane and needs help, but Joker no longer believes he can be, he lets Joker share a joke and laughs about it.
It's not insanity. It's super sanity. Joker knows he's a comic book character. Batman figures iChat out about himself in the end. They know the cycle must continue. They know their respective roles. They do them well. Just like Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, the Bat laugh is his time clock punch.
"Turning off the flashlight" made me think of Joaqim Phoenix's version of the Joker. The system that was meant to help him with his mental health problems was turned off. It was his "flashlight". I think its a statement in regards to crime and mental illness. You see this sort of thing, these sorts of people in the real world. The fact that this help is coming from someone who might just be as crazy (Dude wearing a Batsuit) doesn't really help that trust. So that leaves the system/Batman with the quandary of what can we do for these people if they don't want to stop, if they don't want to be rehabilitated so the end is left ambiguos because we don't have an actual answer for that. Do we rely on things like capital punishment?
I know that cancer killed Batman 😞
Rest in peace Kevin Conroy.
RIP Adam West
Just shows each has a crack in their armor and the other sees it and that's what drives them to change the other.
To me, the way that ending plays out feels to me like that is the moment that Batman realized that the joker was so incurable that not only would the joker never reform, but also that the city itself was insane for offering that reform, so the joker died that day.
And I find that theory depressing.
The alternate theory I will use is that Bruce Wayne starts to lobby for harsher criminal penalties and not using Arkham asylum as an excuse to keep from bringing Justice to criminals who kill repeatedly and show no signs of remorse, eventually making it so that society actually will kill people who are rampant murderers and just don't care.
I love the pop-culture sources critique on this channel.
Id rather the Joker win and be dead than the Joker lose and keep killing people...
Please do Court of Owls or Death in the Family
The joker isn't human anymore, after what he was to what he became, he is no longer human, and doesn't follow any form of humanity, he's purely a creature of chaos.
Batman wanted to try and help the joker rediscover his humanity, but the joker, in a moment seeing and understanding what batman was trying to do, I think the moment confused him, trying to make sense of it in his chaotic mind.
The joker is what happens when someone is broken.
Batman is what happens when you almost break, but have the will to hold yourself together.
The joke is a metaphor for their current situation. That is why Joker starts with “this reminds me of…”.
Batman was in a nuthouse as the Joker is, but Batman was able to cross to the other side. His offer to help rehabilitate Joker is him extending the beam of light, but Joker, being too far gone, denies it.
In the end, Batman kills him, not out of hate, not to solve a problem, but as an act of kindness towards the Joker.
This does not break Batmans character, it evolves the Joker. In the end, Joker gets what he always wanted, not by breaking Batman, but by finally understanding each other.
This makes me think of that Joker quote from The Dark Knight, "An unstoppable force against an unmoveable object".
Simple answer YES both laugh at the end one with hehe he and one with hahaha the jokers laugh goes away as the sirens get louder.
Look forward to your review of Jerusalem, lads! ;)
The joker is saying that batman can't help him because he's just as crazy as he is.
Did Batman kill the Joker in TKJ?
1. Batman’s early statement “I don’t want your murder on my hands” could foreshadow the Joker’s murder by Batman’s bare hands, à la TDKR. Ironically, Batman’s hands are literally stained (by white makeup) in this scene
2. Batman asks the Joker impersonator “Do you realize what you’ve set free?”, implying that Batman doesn’t regard the Joker as a mere human but an animal, a force of nature or a demonic entity; i.e., dehumanised, something one would have less reservation about destroying
3. In a conversation with Alfred (prior to the Joker’s brutal assault on Barbara and Jim), Batman admits that he hates the Joker: “How can two people hate each other so much without knowing each other?”
4. Batman states that “one of us will kill the other” near the beginning in Arkham (with Batman and what appears to be the Joker, captioned as “two guys in a lunatic asylum…”, sitting opposite each other in the Joker’s cell, with Jim outside looking in) and the "one of us will kill the other" monologue (the second time internal) appears again towards the end: he reluctantly accepts the necessity of killing the Joker (if the Joker doesn’t kill him first). Batman’s “we’re both running out of alternatives”, “Maybe it all hinges on tonight” and “it doesn’t have to end like that” come just before the Joker apologises, rejects Batman’s “last chance” offer of rehabilitation (after “all these years” of conflict) and tells the eponymous joke
5. Batman laughing maniacally with the Joker (who recently committed atrocities against partner Barbara and best friend Jim to boot) is extremely out of character (getting through to archnemesis Batman and breaking his stern exterior represents a major victory for the former failed comedian in itself), possibly suggesting that Batman’s snapped (proving the Joker at least partly right but TKJ is his story after all) and is raising his arms to kill (in the last panel where we see Batman’s face his facial expression can easily be interpreted as being sinister)
6. The way the perspective pans down after Batman places his hands on the Joker, first excluding their chests and above, then excluding all but parts of their feet, and finally omitting the two men entirely, suggests that something significant may be happening just out of our view
7. The laughter ceases abruptly (maybe of one first, then both) while the police siren continues
8. In the last panel the “light” (which has been “on” since the 2nd panel) has gone out, the “bridge” has disappeared and the two men are out of the picture, their visual opposition gone. Having finally understood the insane futility of trying to rehabilitate the Joker (who has escaped from Arkham to maim and murder time and time again), Batman may have ended their duality and conflict by killing him
9. The title being “The Killing Joke” may be a hint in this direction: the final joke doesn’t describe killing but maybe that was its consequence, killing the Joker physically and Batman metaphorically
10. The flashbacks show what was potentially the “bad day” which sent (an already mentally unstable) Joker over the edge, maybe TKJ is (an already mentally unstable) Batman’s second “bad day”, orchestrated by the Joker with fatal consequences
11. From the Joker’s (and Moore’s) perspective, Batman (a renowned costumed outlaw and obsessive genius of questionable sanity with a generally unknown identity, whose genesis was a response to tragedy) has more in common with the Joker than he does with the politically correct and legalistic Jim (“You know the laws regarding mistreatment of inmates as well as I do!”, “If you harm one hair on his head…” and unlike Batman and the Joker, Jim’s seemingly unchanged by his “bad day”: “I want him brought in by the book!”, followed by Batman’s “I’ll do my best”, suggesting that he’s seriously considering murder, especially if all else fails). Furthermore, Batman was apparently present and instrumental in the Joker’s “birth”, there’s a definite symmetry if the Joker was present and instrumental in their “deaths”
12. TKJ was written as a standalone story, perhaps as the final Batman-Joker conflict (similar to how Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”, published 18 months prior, was written as the final tale of the Silver Age Superman)
13. TKJ was an extremely brutal, politically incorrect, “realist” graphic novel
14. It’s strongly implied that Batman killed the Joker in Miller’s TDKR, which was published two years before TKJ and influenced Moore
if you actually listened to what batman was saying before the joke you can obviously tell he killed him.
people just can't accept that batman finally lost against the joker in the most joker way by JOKE.
Right. Because you know so much better than the man that actually _wrote_ the story...
@@_XR40_ yeah people have never had disagreements with writers of famous characters ever.
@@fersuremaybek756 Moore (the writer) distinctly said that Batman _didn't_ kill the Joker in the story. You can "disagree" all you like, but what do you think your opinion is worth compared to his? Are you really that arrogant?
@@_XR40_ That's not exactly the best argument when you have George Lucas's "Hans/Greedo shot first" debacle, among other examples of authors changing, making up, or reframing things after the fact to try and make a scene more family-friendly. I'm not saying you're wrong about Moore's intentions, but that doesn't exactly mean a whole lot, either.
(The irony of calling someone else arrogant because they disagree about an ambiguous scene in a comic book, lol).
@@chad_bro_chill Except when Lucas changes things he doesn't deny he did it - And as the creator, he has the right to change it. The audience doesn't - _It isn't theirs._ You actually think that your "interpretation" of something should override the creator's intent?
You guys are the perfect audience for things like _Rings of Power._ I seriously hope that one day you create something of your own and, years later, have to watch some self-important edgelord corrupt it to try to make themselves look clever.
And btw, what "ambiguous scene"? Claiming it to be ambiguous doesn't make it so. And it really doesn't make you look "deep" or perceptive - Just gullible...
it means that you have to kill evil or it will continue to spread evil
"You wouldn't kill the insane"
Oh, I would. If someone is criminally insane, then death is a mercy for both them and society. It offers them freedom from that state being, and it protects the innocent of society. If I had my way, the death penalty would be greatly expanded.
"All the people I've murdered by letting you live."
Should discuss if Rorschach is a good guy
4:20 - Unfortunately, Joker isn't upset for a brief moment as he considers the monster he is and if he could be brought back from the brink. Rather, he would be upset simply because after all this, Batman still doesn't understand the Joker and by extension: himself. Joker can't be saved because of what he is. Cringey as it sounds, Joker isn't so much a man as he is an idea.
There is a reason the Joker is so enamored with the Batman and why they're 'destined to do this forever'. They're a mirror to something else.
I'm not going to point it all out, but I will ask you just to consider a similar scenario:
You just had someone you love beaten and broken by your worst enemy. He also tried to destroy the psyche of your best friend. Imagine how righteously infuriated you would be. Then he looks you in the eye and tells you a stupid joke.
And in that moment, no matter how much you hate him, he makes you laugh. You can't control it. You can't even believe that you're doing it but there you are, sharing a laugh with the worst person in the world just after he's done the worst thing he could possibly do to you. It should be impossible; there's no way he could ever appeal to you let alone cause you joy. But he does. Nothing the Joker can do to you is enough to steel your resistance to his, let's say, charm. You have no control in the face of his 'humor'.
That's what's so horrifying about this. This isn't a contrived scenario, it's reality. The Batman laughs and you'll laugh too. The right joke, the right timing and you're guffawing along with the man who killed your children. We all like to think we're immune to this baser behavior, but we're powerless against it.
'Their morals; their code? It's a bad joke.'
I won't spoil what the Joker truly represents, but the biggest hint I can give is that it's the reason he can't have an origin story (or just one) and it's the same reason Batman slowly developed his 'No Killing' rule (especially for the Joker). The second hint is that Batman, Gotham and his rogues gallery doesn't need to operate anywhere else but inside the soul of a single man: Bruce Wayne.
The third hint is that in the entirety of Gotham, only the Joker and the Batman 'get the joke'. But only one of them thinks it's funny.
There's also the idea of just being caught of guard by a joke and it's context and just laughing your ass offat it.
If he did then there's more than one Joker.
Won't kill Joker because of ethics. Joker repeatally breaks out of Arkham and kills hundreds of people.... save one, kills hundreds. GJ
Terry McGinnis did something that Bruce Wayne couldn't, finally beaten the Joker.
How do you read that without analyzing the joke he tells though? Clearly it’s allegorical about Joker’s self sabotaging inability to dare to hope or trust.
I think the best way to describe Batman is that he's not a murderer, he is a killer though, he lets people die if he has no choice but he won't outright try to kill them, but I'm not a comic buff so I might be wrong but I think this is a better way to describe him.
It is an outright lie that Moore didn't know this was going to be canon. Not only did he know, but DC knew too. The Batgirl Special released the same month as Killing Joke headlines itself as being "The Last Batgirl Story". This story is canon & in main story continuity. & Batman never killed The Joker in it. The final joke is a moment of levity shared between two people who know they are set on a path to one of their eventual deaths.
best Killing Joke is mighty python's killing joke.
"Mein hund hat kein nase..." something like that.
A lot of people hate the Barbara Gordon crippling, but she was a MUCH more interesting character as Oracle than she ever has been as Batgirl. I think with their constant “representation” nonsense these days it is hilarious they took away the wheelchair bound brilliant hero of Oracle.
No, I reject the point of making fun of Batman doesnt kill.
I am aware he has in past comics, however, this rule is incredibly potent for batman as a heroic part of his character. It shows that he is also mentally disturbed, and contrasts with the joker, but also giving a sort of way that they are similar.
The artist F'ed up. Batman didn't kill Joker and it was never supposed to be open for interpretation. Moore himself has said he thinks this story is lame because it wasn't about anything in particular, with no major themes. I thought it was pretty good though. The story is that evil man tries to prove that anyone can be as crazy as him, is proven wrong, and the day is saved. Simple superhero story, not bad
Very good and very clever writers plan overall concept of doing a comic book based on 1 joke.
This is in line with the Joker's calling card.
Call it Killing Joke cos Joker is a murdering clown/jester. Insert joke that is not very good, like that joke bombed, fell flat, killed (before modern day switching to kill as a positive).
Leave it all ambiguous at the end so it presents as profound which will prompt the reader to explore the possible outcomes in their own time and mind. The joke is not bad, per se, it is about 3 guys on the roof of an asylum trying to escape and so are Batman and Joker. It is all rather clever. Batman would not have laughed and if you think he didn't kill joker at the end here he wpyld regret it big time only a year later with Joker murdering Robin in the 4 part A Death in the Family
I entertained the "Batman kills the Joker" theory, but I agree, it means the Joker won which arguably defeats the purpose of the whole story. Honestly, although I like the ambiguity to make you ask the question, it's just more interesting for him not to have killed Joker because of how many more nuanced questions you have to ask as this video very clearly shows. I love these cultural segments.
I mean you could argue it's more crazy for batman to keep letting these people live just to break out to kill thousands of innocents again so he can keep playing batman
If anyone has a functioning pair of eyes, they can see that Batman grabs him by the lapels, NOT the goddamned throat. Look at that panel closely. So, Moore really did leave it up to the reader whether or not they imagined Batman going one way or the other. The ending is actually a pretty cheap copout, despite the brilliance of the rest of it.
AY UP LOTUS EATER'S
have you guys seen Gangs of London?
Connor Wallace.
Harry can't help himself. Just has to interrupt more often than not.
The fantasy aspect of the Superhero reality has a number of innocent conceits. Chief among them is the concept that heroes don't kill. They always find an alternative, because they have to in order to remain a hero. Regardless of what was in the Batman comics in the first decade of the characters existence, Batman does not kill. He also doesn't use guns, yet in his first few appearances he did. The character we know today solidified in the early 70's with the Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams version of the character, so pretty much everything about his ethics can be seen in that brief run.
The Joker is, indeed, a candidate for capital punishment, if he were to exist in the real world. But he doesn't, he exists in a fantasy world that is offers a better, more ideal, vision of humanity in it's Superheroes. A world where mercy is always the right option, unlike in the real world. That's why it's called "escapism", because for the brief few pages of a comic book you see the hero win, the villain lose, and the good guys never stoop to the level of their evil opponents. It's not realistic, it doesn't make any kind of sense when viewed through the lens of the world outside your window. But that's the point. It's better than that.
For twenty-one pages the good guys always win by always doing the "right" thing, the "right" way. Then you close the floppy pages, walk out your door and see reality again. But you can still smile at the memory of that brief fantasy where "good" and "evil" are pure. Where heroes always do the right thing for the right reasons.
We gonna start talking about marvel films next? Maybe anime? My little pony?
What about all the Joker's victims that Joker wouldn't have killed because of Batman's one rule? Batman has a lot of blood on his hands because he won't deal with evil the way evil needs to be dealt with.
You can't blame the innocent for what the guilty do, especially when someone is trying to do right. That's just moral transference. In this case, it's also really weak moral transference, because even thought Bats won't kill Joker, ANYONE else in Gotham easily could and just won't for some reason. Joker has to have accrued a thousand death penalties by now. Is it Bats' fault that they don't kill Joker? No, not any more than it's his fault that Joker kills.
what if the joker is the only one who is sane .... super sane hint hint
Batman tried to reason and it was pointless and that's why he laughed. Joker realized they were having a "moment" and stopped laughing.
ive only seen the movie, but i too thought bats finally killed joker
Fidel always wore the military uniform because 'the revolution never ends'.
It wasn't meant to be canonical and was always meant to be an elseworld story until they created the character of Oracle. That was Moores biggest regret was his treatment of Barbara.
It is an outright lie that Moore didn't know this was going to be canon. Not only did he know, but DC knew too. The Batgirl Special released the same month as Killing Joke headlines itself as being "The Last Batgirl Story". This story is canon & in main story continuity. & Batman never killed The Joker in it. The final joke is a moment of levity shared between two people who know they are set on a path to one of their eventual deaths.
@@drakocarrion you know, Elseworld stories can extend past that book?
@@juliangrant9718 It wasn't ever an elseworlds story. It was main continuity. Only idiots who never actually read the comics at the time believe it wasn't canon
@@drakocarrion and if you've ever actually read The Last Batgirl Story and not just watched The Killing Joke cartoon, you'd know that was a continuation of a pre Crisis storyline that they were wrapping up. If you've ever actually read a comic, you'd know how they wrap up storylines as they change writers. When they pass the baton, the character has to start back from zero. They have to take the character back to where it was before they began work. There was no plan for Babs once she was done with The Last Batgirl Story. Everything points to them ending her off since she is a pre Crisis character. Using that Barbara gave Alan Moore room to do whatever he wanted to do to those characters since they were using a Barbara who was inconsequential to the main continuity. No, someone messed up in 89 when they turned that Barbara into Oracle. There was no plan to connect that event to a post Crisis Babs. They never had this grand plan to create Oracle. They never wanted Joker's origin legitimised. Moore never wanted Joker's origin explained. Moore always looked at it like it was an Elseworld story. Not saying he's the best reference to legitimise my point but even the guy who wrote it has stated as such. Not saying that your argument is invalid. It's fair to see your side of the argument but it's always been debatable even without the Last Batgirl story. Your argument was never a thing until the Killing Joke animated movie was made and connected the Last Batgirl Story without giving context to how that story was even connected.
@@juliangrant9718 Go read the actual interviews with Moore about the subject & stop talking such complete & utter ignorant & incorrect bullshit.
It was always in continuity as is LITERALLY verified by the editor of DC comics himself. & Alan Moore has never ONCE said it was an elseworlds story, because it wasn't. & Barbara Kesel was SPECIFICALLY hired to write that batgirl special AFTER Moore had put in his request to cripple Barbara Gordon.
Oh & Crisis on infinite earths wrapped up in 1985, a full THREE YEARS before that Batgirl special, so once again you clearly don't know what the hell you're on about.
You're wrong. Deal with it.
No
ooga booga
I don’t get this: Batman’s principles dictate that he never kills the criminals he encounters. Batman’s countervailing villains are lunatics who are responsible for hundreds (maybe thousands) of deaths. What justice are his principles based on? Just send them back to Arkham so they can escape and invariably kill again? The real crime is not exterminating these inexorably violent criminals.
Batman is a classic example of what JBPs lectures are about. Batman and the villains are all one psyche. That is ehy he can't kil the main villains. They are just another part of him.
Great to see the psychologist and the fan discuse.
Joker would never kill batman. Than the joke has no punchline. Jokers end goal is to be killed by batman thus proving batman morals is a joke and so is his life
Thank you. This is the whole point of the no-kill rule for Batman. If he broke it, he'd break himself.
I'm kinda sick of this high horse batman's always riding on. With villains like the joker, it's just the lorry problem, basically. You can spare them, but you know from experience that they will escape out of prison or return in other ways and murder many more innocent people. So bloodshed is basically inevidable, you can only choose whose blood it shall be. And batman, through his inaction, basically always decides in favor of the villain.
Very simple: The author says that Batman _didn't_ kill the Joker. That's it - Any further discussion is pretentious rubbish. The reader does not decide these things. If 10 years from now some _poseur_ starts claiming that Tarzan was Mongolian, would it deserve serious debate?
Edit; Btw, the laughter at the end is simply because the joke _is_ actually funny...
No, he didn’t, and I can’t believe that the story got warped and the people believing he did. I bought this graphic novel the day it came out, and nobody back then thought Batman killed the joker. It was implied that at the end they’re standing there, shaking hands. ( you can plainly see, Joker, stretching his hand out for a shake ) That silhouette where people think Batman put his hand through the joker, I don’t know how anyone came to that conclusion. He’s obviously leaning up against the joker, and they’re both having a laugh. And the lights at the end, it’s just a cop car pulling up, Batman putting joker into it, and the car driving away. My God what is wrong with people.
6:10 cuz you don’t get Batman… somehow that’s his whole shtick and you missed it.
Joker has done this before so the only reason Batman would break this time is cuz it’s personal or fatigue and I just don’t buy it here. Batman spares him every time because he knows he’s a damaged person. All of his villains are (were at some point idk anymore) traumatized and “insane” and closely modeled (albeit cartoonishly extreme but on point) psychiatric disorder and the same for Batman.
Batman is the best, all the rest are super by nature. He's just a man driven by vengeance with the financial backing to make it a reality.
Killing someone isn't always murder. And I think you guys have a little too much time on your hands.
To me it is absolutely obvious that Batman kills the Joker at the end of killing joke. Besides, the Joker not only leaves Gordon's daughter incapacitated but he also rapes her. So he deserves to die. Even so, Batman gives him one last chance and he rejects it, there is no other option. This theory that this comic represents the cyclical relationship has nothing new, those stories always do that, the innovative thing is that the cycle is broken and Batman ends up killing the Joker. It's not part of the canon so don't suffer, and if it were, the fact that the jocker is also a rapist doesn't sound so nice. It is more of a work of art apart from the official line of events.
Batman and The Joker are the two inmates in the asylum. They dress up like idiots and fight each other, and it's all delusion.
Here's why I don't "get" Batman: killing the Joker shouldn't "break" anyone.
I would think, after what he's done, I'd sleep better after ex-living him.
Especially if the Batman is half-insane, himself! Having that constant, nagging itch on your conscience; day in, day out, year after year after year would be much worse than a singular instance of acknowledging you aren't infallible.
I really just can't empathize with BM.
Batman in the original run only killed because Batman is a shot for shot rip off of the shadow whole panels where traced from a shadow comic
I'm sorry but i don't share Commissioner Gordon's "moral code". If someone would cripple my daughter and caged me i would just go biblical with them even when i am not religious at all.