Assessment - The Killing Joke
1.) What is your reaction to the text you just read?
As a Batman fan, I've sadly never read The Killing Joke before. It was very powerful and pretty disturbing. Each panel is exceptionally well drawn, the compositions are all stellar, and the story is very compelling (despite reading a while back that Alan Moore was very disappointed with this book). The most interesting part of the story was that it centered primarily on the Joker (the antagonist) more so than Batman (the hero). To see a monster character like the Joker be given a very human backstory (and very sad) was intriguing, given that the character's past was almost always a mystery.
2.) What connections did you make with the story that you read? Discuss the elements of the work with which you were able to connect.
I was able to connect this story with Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight films and Tim Burton's 90's Batman movie. In Tim Burton's film, the Joker seemed to be the center of attention and retained that clown-like/comic aesthetic. We also received a little bit of Joker's origin (when he falls into the chemical acid), but not as deep a backstory as The Killing Joke. In The Dark Knight, the Joker was was way more dangerous and the film had a similarly brooding and dark subject matter. The psychological thriller aspect of The Killing Joke was also heavily present in The Dark Knight.
3.) What changes would you make to adapt this story to another medium? Which medium would you use? What changes would you make?
In all honesty, I don't think that this story NEEDS to be adapted into any other medium. Its a great story and should be left on its own as a graphic novel. But I think if I were to adapt The Killing Joke into another medium, I would probably make a live action film. However, given there's already a TON of superhero films being made nowadays, I think it would be interesting to see Batman and the Joker not as comic superhero/supervillains, but an actual detective and a serial killer. They would be stripped of the costumes, capes, makeup, and all that jazz and make it a smaller scale film about the relationship between this detective and this one psychotic criminal/how this criminal came to be.
As a Batman fan, I've sadly never read The Killing Joke before. It was very powerful and pretty disturbing. Each panel is exceptionally well drawn, the compositions are all stellar, and the story is very compelling (despite reading a while back that Alan Moore was very disappointed with this book). The most interesting part of the story was that it centered primarily on the Joker (the antagonist) more so than Batman (the hero). To see a monster character like the Joker be given a very human backstory (and very sad) was intriguing, given that the character's past was almost always a mystery.
2.) What connections did you make with the story that you read? Discuss the elements of the work with which you were able to connect.
I was able to connect this story with Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight films and Tim Burton's 90's Batman movie. In Tim Burton's film, the Joker seemed to be the center of attention and retained that clown-like/comic aesthetic. We also received a little bit of Joker's origin (when he falls into the chemical acid), but not as deep a backstory as The Killing Joke. In The Dark Knight, the Joker was was way more dangerous and the film had a similarly brooding and dark subject matter. The psychological thriller aspect of The Killing Joke was also heavily present in The Dark Knight.
3.) What changes would you make to adapt this story to another medium? Which medium would you use? What changes would you make?
In all honesty, I don't think that this story NEEDS to be adapted into any other medium. Its a great story and should be left on its own as a graphic novel. But I think if I were to adapt The Killing Joke into another medium, I would probably make a live action film. However, given there's already a TON of superhero films being made nowadays, I think it would be interesting to see Batman and the Joker not as comic superhero/supervillains, but an actual detective and a serial killer. They would be stripped of the costumes, capes, makeup, and all that jazz and make it a smaller scale film about the relationship between this detective and this one psychotic criminal/how this criminal came to be.
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