344 KILLING JOKE, THE
a 1999 documentary fi lm by Samuel Bell featuring a look at Katchor’s New York with a
surprise appearance by Julius Knipl.
While he was still working for Th e Jewish Daily Forward , Katchor decided that he
wanted to tell the story of Mordecai Manuel Noah, a Sephardic Portuguese American,
who after becoming a prominent journalist and playwright, tried to establish a Jewish
state on Grand Island, New York, near Niagara Falls in Lake Erie, a strip he called Th e
Jew of New York. With this collection, Katchor moved from the 1930s-ish New York of
Julius Knipl back to the 1830s. J. Hoberman encapsulates Katchor’s style in his review
of the collected Th e Jew of New York strips (Pantheon, 1998) for the New York Times:
“In Katchor’s drawings, reality typically has the quality of a facade put up to conceal
the ruins of some fantastic scheme, and Noah’s bizarre enterprise is more alluded to
than represented.” While Julius Knipl was freer form in structure, Th e Jew of New York
relies more upon narrative continuity. When this series was collected, it was subtitled
A Historical Romance (1999).
Katchor has contributed strips and panels for issues of Th e New Yorker , the New York
Times , and the architecture and design magazine Metropolis. He wrote a journal for
Slate in 1997, and articles for the now-defunct magazine of the Library of Congress,
Civilization. Th e 1999 opera Th e Carbon Copy Building , which Katchor composed with
the Bang on the Can collective, won an OBIE award for outstanding off -Broadway
stage production. Katchor was awarded a 1995 Guggenheim Fellowship in fi ction, and
in 2000, he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” Fellowship. During
the end of the 2000s, Katchor worked on a strip entitled Shoehorn Technique , for Th e
Jewish Daily Forward.
Selected Bibliography: Hoberman, J. “Gaslight.” Th e New York Times ( January 10, 1999).
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/10/reviews/990110.10hobermt.html?_
r=1&oref=login; McWeeney, Catherine. “A Conversation with Ben Katchor.” Random
House.com. http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0800/katchor/interview.html.
Jason Gallagher
KILLING JOKE, THE. Written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Brian Bolland, Th e
Killing Joke is a short graphic novel published by DC Comics in 1988. Aimed at an older
readership, Th e Killing Joke is often cited—along with Th e Dark Knight Returns , Watch-
men , and Sandman —as a key part of the movement toward darker and more mature
superhero stories that took place in the late 1980s. It has been in continual publication
since its original release, and in 1998 DC Comics produced a 20th-anniversary edition
featuring new colorization by artist Bolland, who felt that the original coloring had been
rushed and was substandard. Although its full title is, technically, Batman: Th e Killing
Joke , the story is ostensibly a tale about Batman’s most famous enemy, the Joker.
Moore and Bolland explore the relationship between the vigilante Batman and the
psychotic criminal, the Joker, and also delve into the Joker’s mysterious origin and moti-
vations. Th e story begins with Batman traveling to Arkham Asylum with the apparent
