The most controversial comic book of all time won't go away
The hit movie "Joker" depicts a man descending into homicidal rage after decades of isolation, abuse and humiliation.
That's the movie version. In the comics, it only takes a day.
One really, really, really bad day.
At least, that's the hypothesis the Joker tries to prove in "The Killing Joke," Alan Moore's slim opus on the Clown Prince of Crime and an obvious inspiration for Todd Phillip's surprising (and disturbing) blockbuster.
It's one of the most revered graphic novels in the Batman canon—if not all of comics—and it's considered to be the definitive Joker story. It's a hallmark of the superhero revolution of the 1980s, when comics grew up, got dark, and prepared to take the world by storm.
It's also, to many feminist critics, a not-too-distant relic from a time when female characters in comics existed only to be mutilated, abused and discarded as signposts in the journeys of male protagonists.
It's a book so divisive that even its creators have mixed, at best, feelings about it and many of its defenders seem ready to move on. Yet, it continues to have a staggering influence on the Batman franchise, inspiring several of its movies, including this most recent hit.
As I imagine Gothamites feel about Batman, nobody's quite sure how to feel about "The Killing Joke"—but it's clear it isn't going away anytime soon.
