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I don't see why everyone places it so high on the list of good comics. Moore does a decent job at displaying the Joker and Batman's relationship on how they seem to play off each other, but looking at his other work I kinda expected better.

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"My greatest fear in life is not knowing where Bjork is at any given moment." --Me

I cannot express how much I loathe the phrase "overrated" and everyone who uses it. It gets thrown around so much, often without the person realizing the lack of logic behind the phrase itself and using it.

Just because you don't like something doesn't make it overrated. It means you don't like something that is usually held in high regard or has considerable popularity. If you don't like Shakespeare does that mean Shakespeare is overrated?

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"With our thoughts we make the world."
-- Gautama Buddha

You know, I do love Killing Joke, it's a great read -- enjoyable story, beautiful art, wonderful atmosphere, nice exploration into character -- but personally don't think it's as great as some people seem to harp it. Speaking as a long-time 25-year comic reader, I personally wonder if those whom have read the novel have read anything else! I do think it's good book, but there's a lot of other books that are just as good -- even superiour, in my opinion -- therefore, yes, I do think it's terribly overrated, which I find quite sad and very unfortunate.

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The Killing Joke is better than The Dark Knight (the movie).

Different mediums, yes... but I think I know which of the two is truly "overrated". Just sayin'.

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I don't think it's overrated. Sure, a lot of people like it (myself included), but nobody is going around saying it's the greatest of all time.

You could imagine a regular issue of Batman being about Joker hurting Barbara, kidnapping Jim, trying to drive him crazy at a crappy carnival, and Bats showing up to fix everything. Moore's ambition put in a lot of memorable things, like the crippling of Batgirl, the "definitive" Red Hood story, the speeches about madness and absurdity, the sick shit that goes on with Gordon, and the laughter between the two enemies at the end. It's those things that Moore added to an otherwise mediocre tale that make it such a big deal in my opinion.

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Gone fishin'

I remember reading it when I was 9 years old and just loving the violence of it. Of course since then Joker was one of my favourite vilains. It's a very good history, but nothing OHHHH in my opinion.

I think it is a better character study than novel. It truly paints the Joker as a tragic character who had good intentions, but what is the road to hell paved with boys and girls? It seems like Characters having good intentions backfiring is a recurring theme in Moore works... calamari anyone?

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@RealSlimCAvery

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I don't know, it seems that every new big Joker story always gets compared with The Killing Joke, usually with people saying the new one is not as good as it.

If that were true, then I could say that TDK, for example, was comparable to TKJ in the way that Joker tried to prove that everyone's prone to losing it under stress, as he tried to get the people on the ferries to blow each other up in a way that wasn't as interesting as the way he tried to drive Gordon mad.
I guess I just did say that.
The boat situation seemed like it could have been influenced by Watchmen. If so, am I comparing Alan Moore to Alan Moore?

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Gone fishin'

yes.



It's all good. I really expected Heath to start the TKJ joke about the crazy escapee's when he was hanging at the end of TDK, any one else?

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@RealSlimCAvery

That would have been amazing.

The guy's just that influential!




I've heard a lot of people say that, but it never occurred to me. The interrogation scene and the one where Wayne's looking at Joker on screens in the proto-Batcave made me think of TKJ.

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Gone fishin'

I'm a really big Batman fan, and for what it was it was pretty good. I thought it was too short though, The Long Halloween is so much better IMO.

Yeah, I do have to agree that it's hard to compare to longer stories like TLH, DV, or even DKR or YO (so. many. abbreviations.) But I think that it's good that's it's short and sweet because it doesn't get bogged down by some things that plague longer stories like repetition and Batman fighting off generic henchmen... I mean I've seen him kill more nameless hench men that Niegel Powers!

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@RealSlimCAvery

The Killing Joke was a one-shot. You can't really complain about it's length; that would be like saying a mini-series is too short compared to a regular TV show.

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"With our thoughts we make the world."
-- Gautama Buddha

I know The Long Halloween, Dark Knight Returns and Year One, but what does DV stand for? (Sorry I'm a bit of a Batman noob)

Anyhow, as for Killing Joke, it wasn't my favourite Batman story I've read, but I did think it was pretty good (not quite great though).

I didn't like the 'humanising' of the Joker to be honest, admittedly I haven't read much Batman (KJ, TLH, DKR, Hush and YO is the extent of my knowledge), but it seemed strange how the Joker was teary and seemed to be 'broken' at certain points in the story. I always saw him as someone who was immune to that in a way. Even still, it was probably intended to be surprising, and I did think that in that case it worked.

I think that the Joker from DKR is probably my favourite interpretation of the character that I have read though, "I don't keep count..."

DV = Dark Victory