KILLING JOKE, THE 345
objective of speaking to and achieving some sort of reconciliation with his nemesis.
Th e Joker, however, has already managed to escape from captivity without detection.
In an infamous scene, the Joker and his henchmen assault Police Commissioner James
Gordon and his daughter, Barbara (secretly the superhero Batgirl), in their home. Th e
commissioner is kidnapped, and the Joker shoots Barbara with a revolver, paralyzing
her. Joker takes Commissioner Gordon to the carnival grounds serving as his head-
quarters, strips and binds him, and then forces him to look at the photographs of his
daughter’s suff ering, which some believe includes an implied rape. Th e Joker’s intention
is to make Gordon crack from his anguish, and prove that random tragedy will cause
any person to be reduced to madness. Even before Batman’s intervention, however, Gor-
don does not snap and insists that Batman brings in Joker “by the book” to prove that
their “way works.” After a brutal fi ght, Batman off ers to help rehabilitate his adversary,
but the Joker recognizes that he is beyond hope and the two enemies even share a laugh
over a poignant joke.
Intercut amongst this narrative are fl ashback scenes that indicate the Joker’s trans-
formation into a deranged killer. Moore draws upon “Th e Mystery of the Red Hood,” a
story published in Detective Comics #168 (1951). In that story, Batman investigates the
true identity of a long-missing criminal known only as “Th e Red Hood,” who earned his
name from his distinctive red mask that gave no indication of his appearance. Batman
uncovers that the masked thief was the Joker, whose disfi gured, clown-like appearance
is the result of plunging into a vat of chemicals while fl eeing Batman. In Moore’s version,
the Joker begins as an unsuccessful (unnamed) comedian trying to fi nancially support
his pregnant wife. Desperate for money, he agrees to assist two thieves in a robbery, and
they have him wear their gang’s signature “red hood” as a disguise. Although he tries to
back out of the burglary after his beloved wife is killed in a freak accident, the criminals
force him into abetting their crime. As in the established version, the heist goes awry
amid interference from the police and Batman, and the Joker’s physical appearance is
altered after exposure to chemicals during his escape. His horrifi c new face and the
traumatic loss of his wife and unborn child cause the Joker to snap, and he embraces
madness as the only recourse in a world that makes no sense. Although many fans con-
sider this origin to be defi nitive, Moore gives a caveat within his story by having the
Joker mention that he is unable to truly remember his old life, and that he prefers his
memories to be “multiple-choice.”
Th e Killing Joke was a commercial success and its impact on subsequent depictions of
Batman was immediate. Th e tone of Batman (and many other comic book characters)
continued to grow darker in the wake of Th e Killing Joke , and many writers were infl u-
enced by Moore’s psychological approach to the characters. Moore presents Batman
and the Joker as refl ections of one another; both are men who experienced great trag-
edies that forever changed their lives. Joker’s gag at the end of the story suggests that he
and Batman are on opposite sides of a hairline dividing sanity and madness. Many later
writers would elaborate on this theme, emphasizing Batman’s obsessive personality and
implying that his sanity is questionable. Although Moore presents the Joker somewhat
