Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: The Killing Joke
By Alan Moore, Brian Bolland
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Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #343 in Books
Published on: 2008-03-19
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
64 pages
The Killing Joke, one of my favorite Batman stories ever, stirred a bit of controversy because the story involves the Joker brutally, pointlessly shooting Commissioner Gordon’s daughter in the spine. This is a no-holds-barred take on a truly insane criminal mind, masterfully written by British comics writer Alan Moore. The art by Brian Bolland is so appealing that his depiction of the Joker became a standard and was imitated by many artists to follow….
Customer Reviews
A review on the 20th Anniversary Deluxe Hardcover version
This is a review for the deluxe version of The Killing Joke released on March 19th 2008, not the differently colored version originally released in 1988 that went on to be a sequential art classic.
It’s nice to see The Killing Joke in hardcover and in a bigger page format. The crisp line work of Brian Bolland shines even more on a wider, longer page. His legendary hatching and feathering technique deserves the industry version of "widescreen". This is where my compliments on this edition mainly lie. The recoloring brings out a very different response in me.
The recoloring by penciller Brian Bolland for this edition was a mistake. Gone are the atmospheric tints and lighting effects from John Higgins. Gone are great effects like raindrops on The Joker’s shoulder when he appears in the story for the first time. Gone is an important component of the story that stood along Moore’s script and Bolland’s fine penciling as something that made The Killing Joke a visual tale to be remembered by Batman and comic book fans alike.
Bolland’s recoloring job for the most part looks like he turned white lights onto every scene set in the story’s present narrative and therefore effectively kills the disturbing mood that Higgins colors had substantially helped inject into the story. Instead of the original presence of emotion and horror, this version takes on some visual blandness. The scene between Alfred and Batman in the Batcave loses its somber tone. The attack on Barbara Gordon loses some of the terror of the original. Where has the strong mood of this story gone DC? I can see adjusting the intensity of Higgins original color palette to some degree like the method they chose with his coloring when they released an Absolute Version of Watchmen. It sophisticated his coloring job without changing the tone of the original. Production services at DC Comics should have just ignored Bolland’s plea to recolor it altogether and let John Higgins go back and tweak his original job. I could even see Bolland and Higgins collaborating on a new recoloring but not Bolland by himself.
The flashbacks in the "possible" Joker origin have been changed to black and white with emphasis certain objects that are colored. This seems to work in a foreshadowing sense and it is disquieting to see what is chosen to be labled crimson. However, the flashback’s black and white could have used more grays or a darker tint overall on these sequences (with the exception of the red objects). The Killing Joke is a very dark tale and a nice retro feel should not take the place of overall atmospheric disposition. If it was originally done as a play or film a good lighting designer or cinematographer would acknowledge the original intention through the lighting methods, but not dilute the story being told.
I loved the back up 8-pager, "An Innocent Man" when originally printed as a black and white tale for the 1996 Batman: Black and White anthology. However, I don’t believe stories originally intended to be printed in black and white should get colored reprintings and vice versa. The only reason it seems to be included it because it is another Batman story by the same artist as The Killing Joke. I would much rather have seen more Joker sketches and covers that Bolland has done for fanzines, conventions, commisons and DC over the years–after all this book is supposed to focus on the Joker. (Read more…)
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Tags Customers Associate with This Product.
alan moore, batman, joker, batgirl, brian bolland, dc comics, comics, dc universe, books, dcu, vigilante
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