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The whole point of Gordon yelling "BY THE BOOK, YOU HEAR?" "WE HAVE TO SHOW HIM!" "WE HAVE TO SHOW HIM OUR WAY WORKS!" is to call attention to the fact that Batman might not handle it by the book. Batman subdues Joker, says that they're running out of alternatives to inevitably killing one another and "MAYBE IT ALL HINGES ON TONIGHT". Batman presents The Joker with a final chance at redemption. Joker doesn't take it, and makes one last joke about one asylum inmate killing another by turning out the light. In the middle panel of the last page Batman is silhouetted to look like a grinning mad demon who grabs?(it's ambiguous) The Joker, after which the laughter stops and the light goes out in the final panel. It's stupid to say it's not ambiguous. Brian Bolland even calls attention to its ambiguity as a gag in the afterward of the deluxe edition and repeats a picture of the middle panel from the last page. The leaked script doesn't even deny this, but rather explicitly states that their last conversation is about both of them inevitably killing one another. Batman literally kills the Joker, and Joker metaphorically kills the Batman. Even if Batman doesn't literally kill the Joker in that scene, the point of the conversation is to say That Joker and Batman have crossed a threshold and there's no going back. One or both of them will die after this, it doesn't really matter if it's on that page or in some other imagined story. I think people react badly to this because it's cynical and that's fair, but it's just one guy's idea of the final Batman story. It's not canon. I never much liked The Killing Joke either.
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Jul 27, 2016 20:51
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ImpAtom posted:I don't think there's any reason to react badly to that interpretation to be honest. It's not even an uncommon one. (Basically every other Batman Elseworlds is "Batman kills The Joker/vice-versa") I'm not even sure it's cynical in that even if you assume Batman kills The Joker, Gordon shows that he escapes the cycle. I think people react badly for a similar reason that people reacted badly to the end of Man of Steel-- people like to imagine that Batman will always finds another way. And he does of course, because he's a comic book character. It's cynical in so far as it presents the final solution to the cycle of order vs chaos they represent as a violent suicide pact. Even if Bruce is now 'free' psychologically, the price he pays is to betray what he represents and becomes a 90s Image character (the ultimate death, in comics). Dark Knight Rises is the most optimistic for Bruce because it acknowledges that you can't actually break the cycle, there will always be a Joker and a Bane and other madmen, and Dick Grayson takes up his mantle. Bruce retires, but Batman doesn't die.
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Jul 27, 2016 21:46
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It's also possible that the idea to explicitly kill The Joker was mostly Bolland's. The book, after all, was his inception and it was him who wanted to bring Alan on to write it, and it's Bolland who repeatedly teases the ambiguous ending in the afterword. If you compare the script to the final page, a few things are off. Most notably, the crucial 5th panel on the last page doesn't match the description in the script. The script describes Batman and Joker as "collapsing forward onto each other, both ragged and bloody". That's not what's happening at all! They aren't leaning on each other. The script makes no mention of the sudden dramatic shift in lighting to make Batman look like a monster, or that the laughter should become so hysterical that it breaks out of the word balloons and you can no longer tell who's laughing. This is of course the panel that Bolland highlights in his afterword simply by repeating it.  According to the script, we shouldn't see The Joker's hand in panel 6 at all, but it's there nonetheless to illustrate it relaxing from panel 5. Kurzon posted:It's not easy to strangle someone to death. You have to be massively stronger, and even then it can take as long as 10 minutes (source: some books I read on the Camorra). Batman would not have been able to kill the Joker before the cops stopped him. This is a really stupid post BUT it does lead us to the much cooler theory that Batman doesn't actually break The Joker's neck, he kills The Joker with The Joker's own super fast acting paralytic Joker toxin seen from earlier in the book. In their final fist fight, the second panel is of Batman kicking The Joker's toxin buzzer out of his hand. In the next page, Batman is seen picking himself off the ground and he spends half the page then staring at his hand. Why's Batman staring at his hand? Has he got something in there? It's really weird! And this isn't mentioned in the script either. If you imagine that final shot of silhouette Batman is not of him grabbing The Joker, but stabbing The Joker with Chekhov's toxin buzzer, everything in the book finally makes sense.
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Jul 28, 2016 15:50
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We've already established that Batman will kill The Joker, it's said right there in the text and in the script something like five times. Thematically it doesn't really matter if Batman kills The Joker before the police show up or later; the dour, bleak point is the same. This is just flavoring. And he's really looking at his hand weird! Exhibit B In the deluxe editions of The Killing Joke, Brian Bolland appends a colored version of his 8 page story "An Innocent Guy" from Batman Black & White #4. This story is told to us by a The Author figure who literally talks to a camera, saying I want to do "SOMETHING COMPLETELY CRUEL AND HORRIBLE... AND UNNECESSARY... AND MOTIVELESS." As The Author's monologue goes on we see a montage of Batman interacting with his various villains: Penguin, Poison Ivy, Two Face, some golden age characters in animal masks that I don't recognize. Batman defeats The Penguin to "LEAVE THE BAD GUY TO PONDER THE ERROR OF HIS WAYS." The next and final two pages show The Author shooting Batman in the head, the pentultimate panel a shot of him lying dead in a pool of his own blood. "I'VE ALWAYS BEEN HIS GREATEST FAN" "I'M ALSO HIS GREATEST ENEMY" "BEFORE ANYONE FINDS HIM LYING THERE I'LL BE LONG GONE. I'LL DESTROY THIS TAPE. I WON'T HAVE A MOTIVE. I WON'T LEAVE A CLUE. I'M JUST AN INNOCENT GUY." It's loving terrible, but why did Bolland want to include this story in a book with The Killing Joke? Notice that The Joker wasn't in Batman's montage of villains in this story. Bolland already killed The Joker and got away with it years ago, and he didn't leave a clue! Now he's back to kill The Batman and complete the symmetry. It's a crude, tasteless parody of 90s realism and The Author as a guiltless murderer, and its juxtaposition with The Killing Joke says volumes.
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Jul 28, 2016 16:46
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