Rewind book: Batman: The Killing Joke, by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland (1988)
by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland
DC Comics
A generation on, Alan Moore's seminal entry in the Batman canon still creates waves among comic book nerds (admittedly not a community known for quiet, reasoned discussion).
Last year, the great Scottish comics writer Grant Morrison casually started a tsunami when he asserted that Moore had made Batman kill his nemesis the Joker in 1988 on the ambiguous final page of he and artist Brian Bolland's story, and no-one noticed.
Eventually the original script was unearthed, with the seemingly conclusive direction: "He and The Joker are going to kill each other one day. It's preordained. They may as well enjoy this one rare moment of contact while it lasts." Case closed?
Abstruse nit-picking it may be, but it shows the power that Moore and Bolland's book still holds.
Its fame springs from the fact it's the Joker's origin story. Moore goes back to a panel in a 1951 comic to extrapolate an entire background. He and Batman are presented as opposing dualities: "All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy," the Joker says, reminding us that reacting to your parents' death by dressing up as a giant rodent to beat up muggers is not quite normal.