Even Batman: The Killing Joke’s Writer Thinks It’s Too Violent

Not all classics are perfect. While Batman: The Killing Joke has long been considered the quintessential Batman story, following what many consider to be the definitive origin story of failed comedian Joe Kerr’s transformation into the villainous Joker, its detractors have also long pointed out that the 1988 graphic novel, while groundbreaking, has many faults and flaws. The chief criticism, that the hyper-realistic violence imbues a deeply disturbing aspect to the story that doesn’t necessarily serve the purpose of bettering the work, has a rather high profile proponent: legendary writer Alan Moore, the man who many would say introduced realistic violence into mainstream comics in the 1980s.

Having retired from comics, Moore has often been credited with introducing a maturity and physical realism to comics with his landmark maxiseries Watchmen in 1986. The popularity of Watchmen, while making Moore a household name and propelling many of his other creative works to the mainstream cultural consciousness, eventually led to a series of bitter legal disagreements between Moore and publisher DC that caused him to break with mainstream comics, and eventually the medium he’d helped revolutionize entirely as well with the final installment of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen IV: Tempest in 2019.

Moore’s seminal Batman story The Killing Joke was often credited as serving as the inspiration for many Batman writers, including depictions of the Joker in multiple feature film franchises including the famous 2008 film The Dark Knight and 2019 psychodrama Joker.

Moore has been famously reticent in discussing his comic book creations in recent years as they’ve seemingly become more and more dominant across the cultural landscape, however he did explain himself once again in an interview with Deadline recently, in which he once again lambasted his injection of physical realism into the comics genre as a whole.

“I have no interest in superheroes, they were a thing that was invented in the late 1930s for children, and they are perfectly good as children’s entertainment. But if you try to make them for the adult world then I think it becomes kind of grotesque.

I’ve been told the Joker film wouldn’t exist without my Joker story, but three months after I’d written that I was disowning it, it was far too violent – it was Batman for Christ’s sake, it’s a guy dressed as a bat. Increasingly I think the best version of Batman was Adam West, which didn’t take it at all seriously.”

Moore’s reasoning here is clear: there’s only so far one can go with a character like Batman in a world like Gotham in terms of applied realism, and at some point, a point he believes he may have crossed in The Killing Joke, the application of this realistic violence becomes a detriment to the story. Batman, after all, was invented as a detective-hero fantasy for children in the 1930s, and perhaps adding realistic themes such as psychological trauma and graphic depictions of physical harm might have been a tad too far in terms of good taste for such a fantastical setting. Even with the presence of diabolical costumed madmen who test their wits and fists against Batman with garish and gaudy gimmicks and deadly traps and weapons.

While Batman: The Killing Joke may continue to inspire creators across the comics industry, Alan Moore, having abandoned the paneled page, has turned to screenwriting. He is releasing a new film, directed by Mitch Jenkins, a neo-noir fantasy ironically entitled The Show.

Source: Deadline

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Andrew Firestone
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Andrew Firestone is a writer of sentences, paragraphs, chapters and words, cultural enthusiast and a hard news junkie from Allston, Massachusetts. An editor, audio engineer and evangelist of all things awesome, he’s saddled with an all-consuming awe/fear of Alan Moore, so please be kind. Formerly a writer for the public interest in local government, Andy is a graduate of Lesley University and holds a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. He enjoys loud music and soft music and sometimes in-between.

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