Review of The Killing Joke by Alan Moore

My first real encounter with the Joker was in Tim Burton’s first Batman movie. His other appearances (in comics and cartoons in the 90s) confirmed the image I had of him. Flamboyant, crazy and Machiavellian to the max, such was the Joker I imagined.

Add to that the fact that the first impression is always the hardest to get rid of, I thought for a long time that he was really the killer of young Bruce Wayne’s parents and that his face was only due to an acid bath.

In Batman: The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan gave his image of the Joker, a mafia godfather, intelligent, Machiavellian, dangerous. No one knows its history (unlike Burton’s), but in return, it loses its flamboyance to an almost inner madness, and all the more terrifying.

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The Killing Joke is easily in the top 3 of Batman comics, with Batman Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, both by Frank Miller !

Some fans present it as a major work, the best representation of the Joker, but all I see is a will to explain the over-representation of the Joker in Batman. Which is primarily for profit.

On the bottom, we have on one side the Joker who turns in loop and who tries to make always worse to attract the attention then on the other side we have Batman, who can only stop him continuously.

This is what I thought about comics, it can be pleasant to read but what is regrettable is the way of trying to make serious something that was never intended to be serious.
I also have the impression that the Joker is an outlet for the author.